Increasing disk volume

[XPTO]

Hi there!

I have Windows 7 and a Disk 0 with the following partitions : C: ( 50 GB ), D: ( 98 GB ), E: ( 298 GB ) and 20 GB ( Free space ).

How can I to increase partition C: from 50 GB to 10 GB?

Thanks for your help.

[pandy]

Rather decrease than increase - 10GB is smaller than 50GB.
Search for partition manager program, some operations (like partition resizing) can be done within Windows (Disk Management) - increasing partition size is named Extend and decreasing as Shrink.
You can add 20GB unused (free) space to disk E (extend), later move date from D to E, delete D, Extend C to 100GB (assume this is your goal) then extend E to remaining space (unless you really need 3 partitions - i use personally 2 partitions, one dedicated for system relatively small (like 64GB) and remaining HDD capacity to second for data).
You need to be warned that any changing partition size may be dangerous to your data so better backup critical data if something goes wrong (for example on external USB HDD).

[XPTO]

Thanks Pandy.
You are very explicit and I understood you.
I'm going to Expand the volume C: this way.

[pandy]

Thanks Pandy.
You are very explicit and I understood you.
I'm going to Expand the volume C: this way.

My English is self learned thus apologies for grammar.

[lingyi]

As Pandy stated, this can be done in Windows, but it's better done with a dedicated program like Easeus Partition Master (free). Resizing and moving data between new partitions is slow. It's probably quicker to delete all the partitions after C:, resize C:, then restore the data to the new partitions.

[Cornucopia]

Quicker, and safer, if backed up first.

Plus, rarely are multiple partitions on a single disc needed these days (not counting recovery, multi-boot, swap, etc specialty volumes).
Take care if certain apps were installed from or to those extra partitions, as the change may screw them up enough to make un-installation be broken, or mess with links or file associations.

Scott

[abolibibelot]

Plus, rarely are multiple partitions on a single disc needed these days

The main purpose of having two partitions (one for the system / software and one for any added data) is that in case of a major system failure requiring a complete re-install or backup restore, only the smaller system partition is affected. Also, making an image backup of a small partition containing only the system and installed softwares (with a dedicated software like Acronis True Image, Macrium Reflect...) is way more convenient and faster : even in case of a major disaster (nasty virus, wrath of Jupiter, 6 years old cousin left alone with the computer...), it takes about 10min. to recover the system to its exact state at the time of the last backup update. Imaging (and restoring) the whole drive would be more time-consuming and is not an efficient way of backing up personal data, especially media files (photo, audio, video) which are not compressible and are usually never modified.

[pandy]

Plus, rarely are multiple partitions on a single disc needed these days

The main purpose of having two partitions (one for the system / software and one for any added data) is that in case of a major system failure requiring a complete re-install or backup restore, only the smaller system partition is affected. Also, making an image backup of a small partition containing only the system and installed softwares (with a dedicated software like Acronis True Image, Macrium Reflect...) is way more convenient and faster : even in case of a major disaster (nasty virus, wrath of Jupiter, 6 years old cousin left alone with the computer...), it takes about 10min. to recover the system to its exact state at the time of the last backup update. Imaging (and restoring) the whole drive would be more time-consuming and is not an efficient way of backing up personal data, especially media files (photo, audio, video) which are not compressible and are usually never modified.

Yes, exactly, i would add also that there are different strategies of de-fragmentation for system and data partitions and generally such approach reduce required maintenance effort. Also in case of disaster is way easier to recover data as they are "physically" (logically) separated from system area. Two partitions seem to be optimal approach.

Quicker, and safer, if backed up first.

Very true

Take care if certain apps were installed from or to those extra partitions, as the change may screw them up enough to make un-installation be broken, or mess with links or file associations.

True but letter can be changed (E changed to D) also OS command 'subst' may be helpful (beware as it doesn't solve all problems - why? more on https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/subst )

[XPTO]

Thanks Pandy.
You are very explicit and I understood you.
I'm going to Expand the volume C: this way.

My English is self learned thus apologies for grammar.

I'm portuguese and my English is not very correct too. Ahahahah.
Thanks again!

[lingyi]

Unless you're on a laptop, a dedicated hard drive (ideally an SSD), with a second cloned drive as a backup is the way I go. I swap out the cloned drive with the original, then re-clone the swapped out drive's image to the one I pulled out.