Have you been in a situation where all you needed was to gain some extra space for an important partition? While using Windows OS, you come across various instances, where you are either required to extend a partition or merge smaller partitions to obtain a large one. For such situations, you must know how to combine/merge partitions in Windows.
Disk management processes like formatting partitions, cloning hard drives or combining partitions are not jargons anymore if you interact with Windows computers daily. Well you can also combine smaller partitions to create large ones or support a critical partition that has no remaining space by merging it with the neighbouring partition. In this article, we’re going to discuss how to combine partitions in Windows. Read the article and merge C & D drive easily!
How To Combine/Merge Partitions
All Windows versions i.e. Windows 10, 8/8.1, and 7 follow the same process when it comes to merge or extend a partition. In this article, we’ll merge two partitions in Windows 7. Before digging into the topic, verify these critical things: –
- The partitions that you want to merge must be adjacent to each other.
- Partitions should be of the NTFS file system. To convert a FAT32 format into NTFS, click here.
Here’s how to merge or combine partitions in Windows 7: –
- Right click on the Windows logo at the bottom left corner of the screen and select “Disk Management” option. If you are unable to find the Windows logo, type “Disk Management” in the search box located at the bottom left corner of the screen. It will provide you with an option “Create and format hard disk partitions”. Click on it.
- In Disk Management window, delete the partition you want to merge. For example, if you want to merge C & D drive, where you want to support C drive with extra space, delete the D drive by right-clicking on it and choosing the option ‘Delete Volume’.
Source image: – partitionwizard.com
Note: – Before deleting the partition, ensure that you have backed up all important data on another hard drive.
- Once the partition is deleted, right click on C drive and select the option “Extend Volume”.
Source image: – partitionwizard.com
It will provide some extra space to C drive.
That’s how you can combine or merge any partition in Windows 7, 8/8.1 and 10. Well there are many software that are available online that can be used to merge partitions without backing up data. However, we advise you to use the Windows utility program to combine partitions if backing up your important data doesn’t bother you.