Question 'The size of the extent is less than the minimum' error when trying to add New Simple Volume

BenX41

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I have an older hard drive that I use as a secondary storage area and found it had an unnecessary partition on it with an ancient backup of windows, so I formatted that partition to get the space back and went to then add it as a new simple volume (hoping from there I could merge it with the existing main partition that already has stored files on it).
However when I go to make a new simple volume from the now unallocated space it gives me an error message of 'the size of the extent is less than the minimum' seemingly no matter what size I select for the new volume.
Does anyone know how to fix this?
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
The reason is that you are trying to extend a primary partition by adding some free space. Usually, unallocated space can be used to extend primary only (in Server 2003, things are a little different, see more), and free space can be used to extend logical partition only. Thus, when using free space to expand primary partition, the size of the extent is less than the minimum error occurs.

Then how to avoid this error? You can turn the primary partition to logical (will lead to data loss) or you can choose to delete the free space to make it unallocated.

https://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmagic/virtual-disk-service-error.html

their solution is use their tool, its your choice if you do or not. it might be easier as tool treats unallocated and free space as the same thing.

to delete free space, you meant to create a partition in that space. See here: https://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-devices/109301-cant-delete-free-space-partition.html

if problem persists, run chkdsk /F in elevated cmd.
 

BenX41

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That software would only solve the problem if I paid a large sum of money for the pro version, at this point I've backed the data up and am just looking for a way to wipe the whole disk and all its partitions clean, as though it was factory new.
Can you help me do this instead please?
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Copy the existing data to some other storage location.
Completely wipe the entire drive, resulting in one large single partition.
(commandline function diskpart and the clean command will work for this)
New Simple Volume, using the whole drive space.
Reformat, give it a drive letter.
Copy your data back.
 

BenX41

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Jun 10, 2016
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Copy the existing data to some other storage location.
Completely wipe the entire drive, resulting in one large single partition.
(commandline function diskpart and the clean command will work for this)
New Simple Volume, using the whole drive space.
Reformat, give it a drive letter.
Copy your data back.
How would I go about selecting the right drive when doing this?
I don't want to wipe the wrong one accidentally, could you tell me how to do this precisely?
 

BenX41

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First, show us a screencap of your current Disk Management window.
If i put either an image or a link to the image the site is giving me this message:
'Your content can not be submitted. This is likely because your content is spam-like or contains inappropriate elements. Please change your content or try again later. If you still have problems, please contact an administrator.'
So can't really do that rn.
I can describe it though; it's labelled as Disk 0 and is a Basic disk with 931.39 GB of space on it. There are 3 active partitions (partition 2, 5 & 6) as well as a recovery partition and a push button reset one.
Not sure if you need any thing else other than this?
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Right click on each of those partition in Disk 0.
If it allows, DELETE each one.

Otherwise, we can go into the commandline function diskpart, and the clean command. That will absolutely kill off that entire drive, and allow you to use it as desired.
 

BenX41

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Right click on each of those partition in Disk 0.
If it allows, DELETE each one.

Otherwise, we can go into the commandline function diskpart, and the clean command. That will absolutely kill off that entire drive, and allow you to use it as desired.
It doesnt allow me to delete any of them, could you walk me through what to put in the cmd so as to not wipe my other main drive?
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-clean-and-format-storage-drive-using-diskpart-windows-10

Just be absolutely sure you are referencing Disk 0 when you do this.
 

BenX41

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https://www.windowscentral.com/how-clean-and-format-storage-drive-using-diskpart-windows-10

Just be absolutely sure you are referencing Disk 0 when you do this.
Thank you very much the problem is finally solved!