Extend Volume Disabled in Windows 2008
When I looked for Windows Disk management Extend Volume problems, I found people are fixing Extend Volume Disabled issue by deleting the D Drive, at least some of them.
I definitely would not follow this solution, because my D Drive stores large amount of important and sensitive data of my company. I know you're deleting this partition to create unallocated space for activating Extend Volume option in C Drive, but I have better solutions to make Extend Volume active without losing data. So this is the picture from sysprobs.com, they delete D partition to extend C Drive when low disk space happens, it's an option for users who don't have much file in D Drive, but not for me.
Macrorit partition software provides us with two perfect solutions to extend C Drive and fix Extend Volume disabled problem without deleting volumes on the disk: Macrorit Partition Expert and Macrorit Partition Extender.
- In Macrorit Partition Expert Server Edition, we can fix Extend Volume disabled problem by resizing not deleting D Drive to make free space and use it to extend C Drive. Details of extend volume disable solution is here
- In Macrorit Partition Extender, on the other hand, there's even no need to resize D Drive first but extend C Drive directly using the handle, created by Macrorit, between C Drive and D Drive. The handle can be dragged, if you drag it to the rightward, you can shrink Drive and Extend C Drive at the same time. The theory is the same to Partition Expert of extending C Drive, but steps are simpler than the all-in-one partition software. Here's the guide page on Extend Volume Disable workout
Although this guide is about to fix extend volume disabled problem in Windows Server 2008, it also applies to Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2012. The screenshot is from Windows Server 2012 64-bit system, you can find the system information at the bottom of Partition Expert.
Aforementioned solution of deleting D Drive and extend C Drive is a good choice for new disk repartitioning, you can still keep data by doing this, if D Drive has a backup before you delete it. Here's how to do it in Windows Disk Management:
- In Windows Disk Management, Extend Volume option in C Drive is now disabled, so we right-click D Drive first, and select Delete Volume
- Confirm it in the pop up dialog window, and unallocated space is created
- Right-click on C Drive now and we activated Extend Volume, click on it
- Extend partition wizard window pops up, and we click on with the guide
- After C Drive extended, restore D Drive again
During the whole process, deleting D Drive is just the transition step. We don't want to but we don't any choice either, in disk management default settings, continues unallocated space to activate Extend Volume option is the rule, but with the help of partition software, we can fix Extend Volume disabled problem without deleting D Drive, or the neighbor partition of system volume, we just skipped the step of backup and restore, and saved time on this.
- Published in Partition Magic Server