How to Extend Hard Drive/Partition in Windows 12/11/10
Extending a hard drive partition involves changing the size of the partition. If you want to maintain the optimal performance of your Windows PC, it is recommended that you extend hard drive partition Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Windows 11, and more. When you have enough space on your PC, you can prevent a lot of issues. Some of these issues include pop-up warnings on low disk space; very slow Windows performance and lack of space in the C drive.
Part 1: How to Use Disk Management to Extend Hard Drive with Unallocated Volume
With this method, you can extend hard drive partition in Windows 7 as well as 8 and 10/11/12. Before you can use this, you must have the unallocated volume on the partition that you want to extend with the built-in Windows Disk Management utility. You should also know that if the unallocated volume is not adjacent to the target partition, you will be unable to use this method because of the issue of hard drive extend volume greyed out. Having said that, let’s look at the step-by-step guide on how to do this.
1. Right-click ‘My Computer’ and select ‘Manage. Click ‘Storage’ and select ‘Disk Management.
2. Again, right-click on the partition you would like to extend and select ‘Extend Volume’.
3. Add your desired size for the partition and click on ‘Next’.
4. Click on ‘Finish’ to complete this extend hard drive in Windows 10/11/12 process.
In the case that you do not have unallocated volume, you cannot extend hard drive partition with the steps above. However, you should not fret because there is always a way around these things. If you are faced with this issue, you will need to right-click a nearby drive and choose ‘Delete Volume’. You can also use the ‘Shrink Volume’ option to free up some unallocated volume. However, you should back up your data before you do this.
Follow the steps below to do this:
1. Click to open ‘Disk Management’ and find the partition that is next to the target partition and then check the state.
2. If the partition is empty, you should right-click on it and choose ‘Delete Volume’ and then click on ‘Yes’ to confirm.
3. If it has data in it but with a large space, you should right-click on the partition and choose ‘Shrink Volume’ and then set the space that you would like to shrink. Next, click ‘Shrink’ to confirm your option.
After this, follow the steps described above to expand the partition with the shrunk unallocated volume in the Disk Management.
Part 2: How to Extend Hard Drive Partition in Windows by Deleting Adjacent Volume
Another method to resolve the issue of how to extend hard drive in Windows PC is to free up partition space. You can do this by deleting useless large junk files from the system and drive. With this, you won’t have to change the partition state of your hard drive as all you will do is extend the current space available in the drive. Check out the procedure.
Step 1. Click to open ‘My Computer’ and then right-click on the ‘C Drive’. Next, select ‘Properties’.
Step 2. Look for ‘Disk Cleanup’ in the disk properties window and click on it.
Step 3. Select ‘Temporary Files, ‘Log Files’ Recycle Bin’ as well as other junk files that you can find. Click ‘Ok’ to delete them. This will free up space and extend the hard drive partition in your Windows PC.
Part 3: How to fix the issue ‘Hard Drive Extend Volume Greyed Out’
It’s possible that you can’t extend hard drive partition Windows 10/11/12 and many reasons may be responsible for it. Some of these reasons include unavailability of unallocated space in the hard drive; unavailability of free space or adjacent unallocated space behind the partition that you would like to extend. Additionally, you can only use the ‘Extend Volume’ option in Disk Management for NTFS or RAW partition. If you want to extend a FAT partition or other format partition, it will not be possible. You will also experience the ‘extend hard drive partition Windows 10 greyed out’ if the partition capacity already reached the limit of 2TB on the MBR disk. Despite these issues, you can still extend or increase the volume partition on your PC. Here is how to extend hard drive partition Windows 10.
How to Create Unallocated Space & Extend Hard Drive Partition
Step 1: The first step is to delete junk and empty partition if you do not have unallocated or free space on your computer drive. You can also shrink a partition to create unallocated or free space close to the target volume. To do this:
- Click on Windows + X and click on ‘Disk Management’.
- Right-click on the empty partition that is next to the target volume and then selects ‘Delete Volume’ and click on ‘OK’.
- You may also right-click on a nearby partition with enough free space and select ‘Shrink Volume’.
- Specify the space amount you want to shrink and click on ‘Shrink’ and then ‘OK’ to confirm your option.
With this, you are ready to enlarge the hard drive partition without getting the ‘can’t extend hard drive partition Windows 10’ error.
Step 2: Increase Partition Size by Enabling Extend Volume. To do this, follow the steps below:
- Right-click on the target partition that you would like to extend in the Disk Management.
- Choose ‘Extend Volume’ and amend the size that you want to increase the target volume to.
- Click on ‘Ok’ to confirm the action.
- Specify the space amount you want to shrink and click on ‘Shrink’ and then ‘OK’ to confirm your option.
This will fix the issue and allow you to extend the hard drive partition in Windows PC. This method also works for how to extend hard drive partition Windows 10.
This article has shared different methods to help you resolve the issues of how to extend hard drive in Windows 10/11 and how to fix the issue of hard drive extend volume greyed out. However, extending the partition is not a 100% safe task. To prevent any data loss, try iBeesoft Dbackup to back up the whole partition content, covering files and folders. And if you failed to extend hard drive, you can also try the software to migrate the smaller hard drive to a large one.