Hard drive partitions

I have a 750 GB hard drive but it's partitioned in half. One half is completely unused and the first half is filling up fast. I searched google but I'm nervous following a random website's directions. Can I combine the partitions? Should I? Just wondering what my options are here. Thanks.

 

Yep, you can and there's nothing preventing you from merging them. Just know that if you merge the partitions, when you reformat your laptop, you'll wipe the entire drive.

The question of should I is rather personal, if you backup to an external drive, then by all means do so, if you don't and you have data that you don't want to loose in the event of OS corruption/malfunction, you should keep the second partition to backup that data. You could merge the two partitions and re-partition to have a large one and a small one for your backups as well if you don't need to backup all of your data.

In the end, it's up to your usage patterns and backup needs.

EDIT: Whatever you do, do not remove the recovery partition from the drive though.

 

Windows 7 supports extending your primary partition into the free space created by you deleting the empty partition.

Just right click on computer and select manage, select the disk management and find the 750GB hard drive. You should be able to delete the empty partition and drag the C: drive partition bar to the right to fill the free space.

You shouldn't lose any data. Just make sure you have a good backup in case something goes wrong.

Cheers,

 

I don't have a backup... And I don't really have money at the moment to get an external drive

 

Any time you alter partitions you run the risk, though extremely minimal, of losing data. In your case, you're taking a partition that's unused, deleting it, and then extending the other partition to cover the free space. I can't imagine a scenario with less risk.

You should have zero problems doing this. No one will tell you that with complete confidence, however, because there is always that tiny little risk.

Press Start > type "create and format hard drive partitions" (well only enough typing as to get that to show up) > select it > navigate to the disk that's 750GB. I'm assuming the second partition (unused) has the letter D: assigned to it. Click on it to select it > right click delete/remove partition or whatever (you may have to delete volume before you can delete partition, I dunno) > Select your main partition (C:?) > right click extend partition > it will then query for how much it can extend > Select the maximum amount and proceed.

It's a relatively painless procedure.

 

Well, since I didn't have the money to back up anything, and I already have a complete system backup, I decided to just go and do it. Worked perfectly, although nerve-racking knowing that there was a risk of losing data. Lol who knew something like that could get your heart pumping..

Thanks a lot though. 417 gigabytes free now.

 

Glad it worked w/o any problem.

cheers,

 

It was always free and usable before

 

That's like driving a car without a spare tire. If you get a flat, you're in trouble. (Yeah, I know, you got AAA right?)

Anywho, maker sure you save and get a back up drive as soon as possible. When you make your next computer purchase, this should be included as part of it.

 

I plan on getting an external drive of course. They're considerably cheap so when I do get some spare money I will. I just bought this laptop a little over a month ago. I already have an OS backup on disks so that's really my spare tire there. All other data can always be obtained again.