# Expanding drive C: to unallocated drive in Win8



## Cholly (Mar 22, 2004)

My HP pavilion m8330f computer has two 300 hard drives (C: and E: ). I want to expand the primary partition on my C: drive to my second (E: ) drive. I've deleted the E: volume so that the drive (drive 1) is unallocated. When I right click on my C: drive in disk manager to expand the partition, the expand choice is greyed out. What can I do to expand C:?
I've tried running Command Console 3.0 (which obviously is already in Windows 8), but it shows the option grayed out.


----------



## PokerJoker (Apr 12, 2008)

I think the Windows drive-extend app doesn't allow you to expand the system drive. That's why it's greyed out. 

If this was my system? First, I would make a complete system backup, just in case, and I would make damn sure I had a way (a tested recovery disk) to do a complete bare-metal restore should the unthinkable happen. This is just prudent.

To do the actual expand, I would boot from an Acronis Disk Director 11 CD. Expanding a drive is easy using this product. You could also use something like a Gparted live disk, which is a free download. The key here is that these are Linux-based disks that bypass those pesky Windows restrictions.

Just make sure you have that backup. You should probably also have on hand the set of factory recovery DVDs for your system, which on an HP computer must be burned by you using an app that came with your computer.

Keith


----------



## Cholly (Mar 22, 2004)

I wasn't aware of an restriction against expanding a system drive. I don't recall if I have Disc Director 11. I lost all my applications when I upgraded the computer to Windows 8 and had to reinstall them. According to Windows update advisor, my Acronis True Image 11 wasn't compatible with my system and I didn't upgrade, choosing instead Seagate Backup Plus. I'm waiting for a reply from MS on this andif I can't get an easy fix, will probably just reformat the drive as E: and let it go at that.


----------



## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

You can try this software: http://www.paragon-software.com/home/pm-express/

Always have a backup before trying to resize


----------



## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

dpeters11 said:


> You can try this software: http://www.paragon-software.com/home/pm-express/
> 
> Always have a backup before trying to resize


Is there any dramatic changes in NTFS of W8 what would force to choke the PM12 [W7/Vista support] ?


----------



## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

The only changes I know of are in the Health Model which wouldn't affect this (and a drive using the Windows 8 health model works in Windows 7. If we ever move to ReFS on the Desktop, that might be a different matter.


----------



## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

I would like to see ZFS (by Sun/Oracle), but MS is not that comp who will go that way ...


----------



## PokerJoker (Apr 12, 2008)

Cholly said:


> I wasn't aware of an restriction against expanding a system drive. I don't recall if I have Disc Director 11. I lost all my applications when I upgraded the computer to Windows 8 and had to reinstall them. According to Windows update advisor, my Acronis True Image 11 wasn't compatible with my system and I didn't upgrade, choosing instead Seagate Backup Plus. I'm waiting for a reply from MS on this andif I can't get an easy fix, will probably just reformat the drive as E: and let it go at that.


If you still have your Acronis True Image 2011 disk I think you can boot from it and accomplish the same thing, however my memory is a bit fuzzy here. It won't hurt to try booting from it and see.

Keith


----------



## Cholly (Mar 22, 2004)

I got a reply back from MS support that nails the answer -- Expand is only avaailable for contiguous disk space. Oh, well.


----------



## houskamp (Sep 14, 2006)

only one I know of that allows multiple drives to look like one is the server editions..

otherwize you would need raid setup..


----------



## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

I completely misread the original post. My suggestion would not work.


----------



## The Merg (Jun 24, 2007)

Try EASEUS Partition Master Home Edition.

It's quite powerful and will do what you want. When viewing the drives in Disk Management, is there another partition in between the C: drive and the now unallocated space? If so, in Partition Master, you would first "Expand" the middle partition in that you move the unallocated space from after the middle partition to in front of it. Then you can expand the C: drive partition to take over the unallocated space as that space will be contiguous

Just to let you know, when you perform the first step, you can apply that change and the system will make the change. With the second step, the computer will need to reboot and the app will make the change via a special boot program before continuing on into Windows.

- Merg


----------

