hard drive partition question.

I have Windows 7, 64-bit Home premium. I have a 250 GB hard drive on my computer, but only 193 GB are available to me (in my C drive). I have another 40 GB "free"...How do I get Windows to at least show that drive in My Computer? Right now, it's only displaying my C drive.

Best case scenario would be that I could somehow combine that 40GB with my 193 GB C drive...but if that's not possible, I'd still like to use that space!

Any help would be appreciated. To aid in understanding my situation, I have uploaded a picture of the disk management screen:

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/S-7k1Q46M9lZhQalfhL5kdsvdqhaOEQbXsPJkbjaUMY?feat=directlink

Thanks!!

 

Hmm well since the free space is before the C drive i dont think you can combine it with C, unless you reinstalled windows onto that free space saved all of your other files to either the new instal or a separate hdd then combined them.

 

If you just want to make the space usable, just format it as NTFS and assign it a drive letter such as D:.

If you want to combine them, that's trickier. If you have an external drive, you can back up your C: partition, then delete C:, then recreate it as a larger partition, and then restore the data from backup. One free program you can use to do this is Paragon Backup and Recovery (the free edition)... be sure to create the recovery disk first. Another option is to use the built-in Windows Backup and Restore Center... but you'll need to have a Windows disc for recovery, or maybe it'll let you burn a recovery disc, I'm not sure.

 

Thanks Swarmer!