Extend C Drive in Windows 7 without formatting
As we all know that Windows Disk management extend volume will grey out when there's no continues unallocated space to C Drive, to active this function we need to delete the partition next to it, always be the D: partition. We can of course backup D partition data to other partition, and restore them after unallocated space is created, but what if there's no more free space on other partition either? So how to extend C Drive in Windows 7 without formatting D: Drive or deleting any partitions to create unallocated space? Are there any options?
Yes, we will try Partition Expert to extend C Drive when this system partition runs out of space. We'll just resize C Drive and we won't touch any data on any partition, here're the details:
1. Download > Partition Expert Free > Local Download > Installation Package or Portable Edition.
2. Install and Run it; or Directly Run it if you downloaded the portable edition.
3. Click D Drive first and click Resize/Move Volume (I know it's C Drive we need to resize, but we should borrow some free space from other partition), or E Drive, any partition with more free space in is the target, no need to be right next to C Drive, the final partition is also OK if it is rich in free space.
4. In the resize window, you can drag the handle on the left side to shrink partition, and unallocated space is creating at the meanwhile, you can check how much free space you just shrank in the mini disk-map below, click OK and back to the main window.
5. Now we just made some unallocated space from the larger sized partition, check where the space locate now, if it is behind C Drive, we can go to step 6; Else, we can click Resize Move Volume to move other partition behind unallocated space.
6. Click on C Drive, and then choose Resize Move Volume again. In the resize C Drive window, we can drag the handle on the right side to the end, and C Drive capacity is increased in the mini disk-map. Click OK and Commit to finish the extension.