Hi,
I have a problem with expanding one of my hard drive partitions. When I try to click on the E: drive in order to expand it, the "Expand" option is greyed out.
Here are the details:
I have a 500gb drive. It is divided into 3 partitions: C, D, E, and the system resides on C. I have 377gb of unassigned disk space. C=39gb D=39gb E=49gb. On E I just have some games installed, but i would like to expand it. What should I do, to enable the Expand option? If I do everything correctly according to the tutorial from your website it is still greyed out.
Does vista have any options which eg. limit availavble disk space? Maybe that could be the problem?
I would be grateful for any help.

PS: my OS = Vista ultimate, 100% legal and activated. I have sevice pack 1.

Have you run chkdsk on e?

Billy3

I don't have a disk with any unallocated space handy to check on this - but what happens if you format the unallocated space?

Billy: I just performed a chkdsk e: - no bad sectors were found. After the operation the "Expand" option is still greyed out:( Any other tips?
usasma: theres no option to format unallocated space.

Formatting unallocated space will create a new partition, which we cannot do. My guess is that your E drive is located on an extended partition, and is therefore a logical partition. To my understanding, vista cannot expand logical volumes. You'll need something like Acronis Disk Director for that.

Billy3

Yes, both d: and e: drives are labeled as:
Healthy(Logical drive)
I dont know if this is an accurate translation, but I have a Polish copy of Vista;)

Anyways...if I use the suggested software, should i be prepared to lose data on e:, or maybe even on all partitions, or is the operation safe?

Acronis can resize non-destructively, but it is not free .

Something like Ranish Partition Manager can do it for free, but will wipe the partition in the process.

Billy3

I saw a free trial version of acronis - maybe it would do well for a one time job.
Thanks for help!

create a new logical drive and format it

I'm confused. Why can't we create and format a partition in the unallocated space? Should be simply initializing the unallocated space, creating a partition and then formatting the partition (haven't done this recently in Vista).

Vista can expand the volume just fine. It cannot, however, expand the extended partition in which that volume resides, hense the problem

Billy3

I made an extended partition and logical drive and then expanded that into the primary partition after shrinking it.

It will not expand a partition into unpartitioned space

I am with John on this, no need for acronis



You create a new extended partition and logical drive in it and then format.

Really? Because... I run Vista... and I've done this several times before.....

Oh well.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_partitioning
A hard disk can contain only one extended partition.

I think GPartEd should be able to expand the extended partition, and then you should be able to use Vista to extend the volume. (Non destructively)

Billy3

It would be nice to know what unassigned space meant, I assumed it was unallocated in the extended partition which was ALL the drive left after creating the primary or primaries?

Nope. An extended partition is a primary partition, into which logical volumes volumes can be created.



Billy3

an extended counts as one of the four allowed but is not a primary as an extended allow multiple logical drives

but regardless of this I feel it's dangerous to reccomend acronis to a beginning user, disk partitioning after the fact is just as dangerous or more so than registry editing

recovery or backup is practically non existant for such programs

Agreed.. that said, the user is already using windows disk management to partition, so they are already acknowledging the risks. We need a tool that can non destructively resize the extended partition. Vista's disk management tool cannot do this. Nothing says Vista's disk management is any more secure than any other partition utility.

Billy3