[SOLVED] C-Drive expansion issues

[RJGray]

Hi there.

I'm trying to expand my C-Drive to use the extra, unallocated space after cloning my old system onto my newer, larger SSD. But I'm struggling to do so without paying an arm and a leg for a software I'd only use once.

I understand that in order to expand a drive, they need to be next to the unallocated space. But here's a link to a screenshot of my partition space. Just one look should be enough to identify my problem. There's a space allocated to "Recovery Partition" that I cannot remove, edit, expand, or other that came over when I cloned my old HDD onto the new SSD. In fact, using disk management, I can't appear to do anything so far as my knowledge goes.

That said, does anyone know of a program or some way to expand my C drive so that it makes use of the unallocated space that's available?

I use windows 10 for my OS if that means anything btw.

 

[USAFRet]

Minitool Partition Wizard
https://www.partitionwizard.com/help/resize-partition.html

The free version should be able to do that.
https://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html

Before you start, have a known good backup of the entire drive. Just in case things go sideways.

 

[Mooons]

Try using MiniTool Partition.

 

[RJGray]

I tried minitool.
It asked me to pay $60 to merge my unallocated space with my C-Drive.

EaseUS asked me to pay $40 to merge.
Macrowrit asked me to pay $30

Genuinely, it seems that to merge unallocated space into an existing drive requires a premium service regardless of where I go or what software I use, when it's something that is as simple as relocating the positions of internal partitions. I just don't get the reason why it's so expensive...

As for a backup, I have a separate HDD that I used and cloned from that had only 500GB of space, whereas my new SSD has 1TB of space.

Also, disk management won't let me do it because of the recovery partition that I neither approved nor wanted.

Any other suggestions that work?
I'm not able to pay for a service I'd only use once, and it's almost worth just making it a separate partition altogether, though it means that I'd have to manually transfer all data and new download and etc, and create all the folders from scratch.

 

[USAFRet]

The Free version wouldn't let you Move one or the other, and then possibly migrate?

 

[ex_bubblehead]

The free version of Partition Magic will do what you want. In addition, any of the Linux Live distributions can be used to accomplish the same task.

 

[RJGray]

Okay, I don't understand it, but I tried redownloading the free version of minitool v.12, and deleted the recovery drive between the two, and it suddenly let me do what I wanted when before it said that it was a premium service. And now it is also letting me merge after that deletion?

When I tried last night, I tried expanding the recovery partition instead of deleting it, then shrinking it again. Then I tried expanding the c-drive. So I guess the trick was deleting the recovery partition altogether.

As for simply moving a drive? It seems that wasn't an option and still isn't. I don't know why, but it wouldn't let me simply move the unallocated space next to the drive I wanted it to go into. It only lets me shrink or expand drives.

But by deleting the recovery partition it's apparently working now.

Dunno why, but if it works, it works. I guess?

 

[SkyNetRising]

There's a space allocated to "Recovery Partition" that I cannot remove, edit, expand, or other that came over when I cloned my old HDD onto the new SSD. In fact, using disk management, I can't appear to do anything so far as my knowledge goes.

Delete recovery partition and extend C: partition.
No need for any additional software. You can do that with diskpart.

diskpart​

list disk​

select disk 0​

select partition 3​

(select 564MB partition)​

delete partition override​

exit​

Now you can extend C: partition in Disk Management.

 

[RJGray]

Yeah, just restarted my computer, and apparently needed to keep that recovery partition. Dunno why, but apparently that's where the boot manager is located. So I had to go back onto my backup drive. Glad I had one...

 

[RJGray]

So now my issue has changed somewhat.
Apparently I can no longer boot from my ssd, and I can only boot from my hdd backup drive.

it says before the computer even tries to startup the error "BootMNG is missing
Press CNTL+ALT+Delete to restart"
And everytime I restart, it gives the same.

So apparently that partition was crucial, and the only way to recover it is to reclone my entire drive, which means reformatting it again, or to wait more than a day to manually transfer all my files from one drive to the other and hope that it transfers the crucial boot manager or whatever...

Any tips where I can clone my backup drive without reformatting my existing drive, and be able to boot and use my ssd again?

 

[USAFRet]

'existing drive'
Which one?

Are you looking to redo the whole clone thing?

 

[SkyNetRising]

So apparently that partition was crucial, and the only way to recover it is to reclone my entire drive

Can you show latest screenshot from Disk Management?

No need to reclone. You can fix it by using bcdboot command.
Just show the screenshot first, before you do anything.

 

[RJGray]

Alright, here's the newest partition setup, and disk 0 is my backup drive, where disk 1 is my ssd.

Also, I'm unfamiliar with the BCDBoot command. Do I run that in command shell or something?

Oh, and I left about 4 GB unallocated in my SSD just in case. Once it's all figured out, I plan to merge that back into the primary section of my SSD.

 

[SkyNetRising]

You moved C: partition down by ~4GB.
This invalidates old boot configuration. Bootloader needs to be repaired now.

 

[RJGray]

So how do I do that? Also, that 4 GB was unallocated intentionally. Should I not have done that? I can easily make it so that the entire E drive is there and there's no unallocated space.

(As my HDD is the current boot drive, it apparently auto changed the lettering of the SSD, that bit was not intentional.)

 

[SkyNetRising]

Execute commands listed below (from elevated command prompt),
then shutdown your pc, disconnect HDD and reboot your pc.
Should boot right into windows.

diskpart​

list disk​

select disk 1​

list partition​

select partition 1​

(select 1GB partition)​

active​

assign letter=H​

exit​

bcdboot E:\windows /s H:​

​

Executing commands from elevated command prompt is important. Otherwise last step will give error.
https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-open-an-elevated-command-prompt-2618088

 

[SkyNetRising]

You execute commands first. This makes SSD bootable.

 

[RJGray]

okay. Commands are running, gonna try the reboot now.

 

[RJGray]

Alright. It seems to finally be working. Although now it appears that I have 2 copies of the same windows bios where one works while the other doesn't? I mean, it's working again, or one is anyways, so I'm glad.

Anyways, thanks for the help!

Gonna try to do a hard restart again to double check it works.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Also, that 4 GB was unallocated intentionally. Should I not have done that? I can easily make it so that the entire E drive is there and there's no unallocated space.

BTW - you'll not be able to do this. You can extend 1GB partition, but you can not add those 4GB to large 926GB partition. If you do this with 3rd party partition management tools, boot configuration will be invalidated again.

 

[RJGray]

Good to know. Before I ran all those commands, I remerged the 4 GB with the main partition. So there's nothing unallocated anymore, and everything seems to be running smoothly. Thanks again for the help!