Extend harddisk space, but extend is greyed out

[Okkie26]

Dear,

I need to extend my harddisk space for the C drive. Now there is unallocated space available, but between the C disk and the unallocated space there is a extra L drive present.

Therefor extend hard disk is greyed out for the C drive.


Is there anywat to solve this?

See screenshot for explenation.

 

[goombawaho]

There are many ways to handle this. Number 3 is what you are actually requesting.
1. Get a new drive only for booting and clone everything over to it. Change partition sizes. Use the old drive for data.
2. Get a new hard drive only for data and move the data over to that and then expand the C: drive
3. Shrink the size of L: and then expand C:
4. Get one huge drive and clone over to it and manipulate the partition sizes as you are doing it.
If you are not comfortable with these concepts, don't make a mistake and wipe your system out. Have a GREAT backup before you begin no matter what options. Otherwise, call an IT person. This is what we do.

Here is an article on number 3. But as small as your drives are, I would think you would be better off doing 1, 2 or 4.
Link
You need non-microsoft software (some made in China) to do this)

If you wanted to do 1, I would use something like Macrium, which I own and recommend.
If you wanted to do 2, you wouldn't need anything other than Windows tools.

 

[spamjim]

The link above leads to a great tool buried in the comments. Here's a quicker path to it:

https://gparted.org/index.php

The "Live CD/USB" boots you into Linux to partition your Windows drive.

I cannot imagine the hassle of going through this exercise to only gain 19.53 GB. You could instantly augment your storage by just plugging in a USB thumbdrive (for the price of a beer).

However, the biggest issue you have here is BitLocker. I believe you need to decrypt these drives before repartitioning. Decryption may be a problem if you've already run out of space. "extend hard disk is greyed out" may simply be due to the encrypted state.

 

[Okkie26]

Thanks huys,

The point is that I already did shrank the L disk. That's where the unallocated space came from..

 

[goombawaho]

There are lots of tools. Just make sure you end up with a situation that is MUCH better than when you started. Otherwise you will face the same space problem in the near future. I wouldn't use thumb drives as permanent storage - not as reliable as you would hope, subject to crypto-malware, etc. Better to have all data on one or two drives and maybe back them up to a USB stick or external HDD.

 

[pmonett]

Your drive is <250GB.
I suggest buying a terabit drive and cloning your existing drive to it.
You can get a 1TB HDD for less than €60, and your system issues will be solved for a lot longer than resizing partitions on a cramped disk.

Of course, you might want to improve your system performance and go with an SSD, which will only cost you about three times more for a terabyte. Still acceptable in my view.

I've got nothing to hide, and I demand that you justify what right you have to ask.

 

[goombawaho]

That is the best performance option and simplest route - adding an SSD or moving to one drive that is an SSD.