I need to shrink one partition, partition D, and extend partition C with the newly unallocated space. I can shrink D without any problems, however, for some reason the two partitions are seperated by a small recovery drive that i can not delete. Any advice about getting the two partitions next to each other or how to extend the drive otherwise?
The Microsoft rule is that a drive or partition to the right of the C: drive, or whatever drive you want to extend, must be Unallocated Space to extend that drive.
The recovery partition, to the right of the C: drive, is used to restore your computer to Factory Defaults if there is disaster.
There are 3rd party utilities like Easeus Partition Master, or Minitool Partition Wizard that may allow you to do this, but it may make the Recovery Partition unusable.
If you have Windows install media, and do not care about using the Recovery Partition, then you can right click the Recovery Partition in Disk Management and Delete Volume. Making it Unallocated Space, then you can Right click the C: drive and choose to Extend Volume into the Unallocated Space. Be sure to backup in case this goes wrong.
The other alternative is to get another HDD that is larger,(ie) 2TB drive. And Clone the old HDD to the new, replace the old with the new and be back in business with a much larger drive. You then can keep the old drive as a backup, or you can format it and use it for storage.
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