Procedure to extend Windows System Partition with non-adjacent or non-contiguous unallocated Free space

Scenario: 
  • You have a single physical disk having System Partition, Data  Partition and some unallocated free space at the end. 
  • Your System Partition gets filled and you want to extend it by adding the free unallocated space available on the same physical disk.
  • Windows Disk Management tool doesn’t enable the “Extend Volume” option (i.e., “Extend Volume” option is greyed out as shown below)
  • This behavior remains same irrespective of Unallocated space is just RAW of Formatted as FAT32/NTFS volume.

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Cause:
  • In order to be able to extend a volume, the Unallocated free space must be on the same disk, and it must be adjacent/immediately follow the volume which you want to extend
  • In particular the logical drives, boot, or system volumes can be extended only into contiguous space.
  • In case of other volumes, you can extend them into non-contiguous (non adjacent) space, by converting the disk to dynamic disk.

 

Solution:
  • You need to get the free unallocated disk space adjacent to the system partition then you can extend the System Partition to include the free space.
  • You can use Windows Built-in command diskpart to manage the  volumes and get the free space adjacent to System Partition and then extend it.
  • More better is to use a third party Partition Management software which provide rich GUI options
  • EaseUS Partition Manager, allows you to move unallocated space adjacent to System Partition and then extend the System Partition.  Note: always use latest version of the Partition Manager software as I have encountered errors and failure with older version of the software.  However, the latest version jus did the job fine. 
  • EaseUS Partition Manager, I didn’t use move partition option, instead I used below steps:
  • I extended my second partition to include  the free unallocated space.
  • Resized the second partition to free up space at its beginning.
  • Then allocated that free space before the second partition to my System Partition
  • That’s all, job done.  Upon simple refresh, I got my system partition (the C drive) space extended.
  • AOMEI offers Free Partition Software, which allows you to Merge the System Partition directly with non-adjacent or non-contiguous unallocated free space.
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