I have two partitions in my laptop - C (100 gigs) & D (400 gigs).
Can I use Win 10 disk management to 'shrink volume' in D say 200 gigs and then use extend volume in C to add the available space to C drive? Do I need to backup my existing data in D and C before performing the shrink/extend volume operation?
Hi, operations such as that need a full featured (Free) 3rd party partition manager.
E.g. Minitool Partition Wizard, Aomei Partition Assistant.
Yes, as with any change, you are best advised to have a full backup. Time and time again, disk imaging is strongly recommended. That's much more than backing up data.
E.g. Macrium Reflect (free) + external storage for disk image sets.
Disk images allow you to restore your system or disk or partition to previous good state without technical help - even if your disk has failed and you need a new one.
No you can't without third party software.
You can only extend a volume to the right hand side. You could shrink D with disk management and then use some software like partition wizard to move your D partition a bit to the right, then extend C but it would be slow as all of the data on D would have to be moved.
100GB should be fine for C. Perhaps you could just move some data from C to D - perhaps by moving your Documents folders : Documents Folder - Move Location in Windows 10 | Tutorials
You can also move OneDrive, Video, Pictures etc in the same manner.
Have a look with Treesize Free and see what is taking the space.
While you can change your partition layout it is slow and you may then find moving an extra 50GB from D to C was too much (you are not using this new space on C and so it is wasted) or too little (you have to do it again for some more). In my opinion it is better to put everything in one partition or (if you really like tinkering with Windows and backup/restore all the time) make a partition of perhaps 40GB for C and put everything else in D.
thanks for your response guys...i will move the Documents folder to D drive for now and see how that goes..pretty sure that will make a good difference as that's almost 1 gig itself.
yep, will use that as you suggested...cheers!
Note that keeping personal data off C: is viewed by some as strongly recommended. If you keep as much personal data as you can on another disk or partition, then even if you need to do a clean install, your data is untouched.
You can't move everything, of course.
Another factor is that the default library folders can get stuffed with folders programs you install create. Thus I view them as 'their' folders, not mine!
There's nothing stopping you creating new libraries or adding folders to a library either.
Some people use the Location tab to move such folders. While this is valid, it also carries risk. Some make mistakes doing this, and these can be next to impossible to resolve.
I have done just what you were seeking to do with C: and D: with a partition manager. But the used part of D: is only about 20Gb. It was quite quick.
pls check this site
How to Extend Partition | MiniTool Partition Wizard Tutorial
is it that easy to do as they have explained there?
Yes it really is that easy.
As it is copying everything (to move data) there is a possibility that it might fail but I've used it many times and it never did fail for me yet.
It can be slow though - last week I used it to extend my ESP in partition 1 from 100 to 200 MiB and so move my C volume (about 30GB) that much to the RHS. On my (reasonably fast) SSD this took over half an hour which is much slower than just copying 30GB for example. If you are moving more or on HDD it may take longer.
ok..cool...can i do that from inside Windows or I need to boot into MiniTool Recovery Environment as the below site suggests?
A Powerful Software to Increase C Drive Partition in Win 10/8/7
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