How to increase disk space with. Increase the size of the C drive by taking advantage of the free space on the D drive

09.08.2019 Errors

Sometimes it becomes necessary to increase the capacity of the C drive at the expense of another partition. Most likely you need this, because there is almost no space on it, but you need to expand. In this article, I will analyze two programs that will help you do this and a small instruction.

We will talk specifically about increasing the C drive at the expense of another partition, for example, the D drive, while they must be on the same hard drive or SSD. If you have Windows 7, 8 or 10, then this guide will work for you.

It would be possible to do this by standard means, but unfortunately it will not be possible to do this without data loss. Therefore, we will use third-party software.

How to increase the size of the C drive with Aomei Partition Assistant

Aomei Partition Assistant is a great program that allows you to expand your C: hard drive or solid state drive partition. This program does not install along with itself various garbage, which some programs are famous for. Also, the program is in Russian with a completely understandable interface. Works on all operating systems starting from Windows 7.

The most important thing to pay attention to: incorrect work with partitions can lead to data loss. If they are important to you, I recommend storing them in a safe place.

Download and install the program, I think there will be no problems with this. After launching, you will see a pleasant interface, although for whom how. All your disks and partitions are displayed there.

In our case, as I said, we will increase section C at the expense of section D. Now let's do this.

Right-click on the D drive and select "Resize Partition".

A window will open where we can change the size of the slider, or enter it manually. You need to make sure that the unallocated space of the partition after choosing the size is in front of it, as shown in the screenshot. Then click OK.

Now, in the same way, we change the section C, only now we increase the size on the right. It will grow at the expense of the free space that we took from disk D. Click OK again.

After the work done, at the top of the program, on the left, there is a button Apply, press it.

Now the computer should be rebooted, usually there are two of them. As a result, the size of the C drive will be increased.

This is not the only function of the program. With it we can. Also, you can create a bootable USB flash drive in the program and resize the partitions in the same place.

How to Increase C Drive with MiniTool Partition Wizard Free

So, there is another not bad program called MiniTool Partition Wizard Free. It is free, does not install third-party software, but its disadvantage is that it is not in Russian, it may be difficult for some, but thanks to this article, you will understand everything.

The program interface is somewhat similar to the previous one. In principle, there are almost no differences from the first option. We will increase the system disk in the same way.

First press on the D dial, and then press Move / Resize Partition up. Now we take the required size of the D disk, select it on the left and click OK.

That's all, after the operation done in the explorer, you can already see the increased size of the system partition. Now you know how to do it.

You can download the program from here.

How to increase the volume of the system disk as standard

Standard means using standard Windows tools. You can do so, fortunately, like Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10 there is such a function. But this method has a drawback: the data on the D drive will be erased, therefore, you will need to first transfer them somewhere. Perhaps you decided to use this method, then, first, press the combination Win + R, a window will open in which you need to enter the command:

diskmgmt.msc

This will open the tool "Disk Management"... There you will see all connected drives and partitions. If there are additional sections, they are also called hidden, then I do not recommend touching them.

So right click on section D and select "Delete volume"... Subsequently, the data on the disk will be deleted, and to the right of the C drive, free, unshared space is formed.

To increase the volume of the system disk, right-click on it and select "Expand Volume"... Next, the volume expansion wizard will open, where we need to specify the volume by which we will expand the disk. You shouldn't choose a lot if you still need section D.

We increased the system disk, now we need to use the unused space that we have left. To do this, click on what is not distributed with the right mouse button and click Create Simple Volume... The drive will be assigned the drive letter of your choice, and it will also be formatted. That's all.

Now you can put all your important data back on the D drive.

The first, the most natural "devourer" of free space on the hard disk is the Windows operating system. During the operation of the PC, the so-called paging file is used, into which the OS unloads files if there is not enough RAM. It is not recommended to disable the use of the paging file, but a competent person can change its size if necessary.

Another "fruit" of the work of Windows - the creation of system restore points. The files needed to restore the operating system after a failure can take up a very decent amount of the total disk space and are not always needed by the user. If you save important data to an external hard drive or USB flash drive, and the installers of the programs you need to work are at your fingertips, then you can disable System Restore altogether. If you need restore points, periodically use them in case of system failures, then in the settings you can reduce their number, as well as the amount of space for them.

For Windows Vista or Windows 10, the path you need to follow to access the above settings looks like this: "Start" -> "Settings" -> "Control Panel" -> "System" -> "System Protection".

How to remove garbage after running various programs

Of course, the files that create various programs in the course of their work cannot be called junk in the full sense of the word, but after obtaining the desired result, they can be cleaned quite painlessly. For example, in the browser, you should clear the cache more often. After removing the programs, it is worth checking the place where it was installed and manually deleting the folders and files that were created and not deleted automatically.

Sometimes computer owners are faced with an unpleasant fact: the free space on the hard drive disappears like snow under the hot sun. The feverish removal of installed programs does not help - the place is steadily disappearing.

You will need

scanner program

Instructions

First, clear out the Temp folder where the temporary files are stored. These files are created by the operating system during operation l to store intermediate results of various operations. The folder itself is located on the system drive and is constantly growing in the process. Press Win + R and type% Temp% at the Open prompt. The Temp folder will open. Use the Ctrl + A keys to mark all the files it contains and press the Delete key. If a file cannot be deleted, the process. Mark the rest of the files with the mouse and press Delete again. This operation will free up a lot of hard disk space for you.

Download the free scanner program from the developer's website, unpack the archive and run it by double-clicking on the scanner.exe executable file. Mark the logical drive on which space is being lost. The program will scan it for some time.

The result of the scan will be, in which the files and folders located on the checked disk are indicated in different colors. Move the cursor over the colored area, and the name of the folder, its size and the number of files contained in it will be displayed in the upper left corner of the dialog box. If you want to uninstall an unnecessary program, click on the colored area, and then on the "Uninstall Programs" icon (top in the right row). The standard Windows Add or Remove Programs window will open. Click the "Remove" button under the program name and follow the instructions.

The essence of the problem

It is quite common to have to add several gigabytes to the C drive. This problem occurs when, during the initial installation of the Windows operating system, the disks are incorrectly divided and the system drive C is set to no more than 20 GB. 10 years ago, that would have been quite enough. However, now computers are more powerful, and the list of programs has significantly expanded, not to mention online games and updates, which weigh tens of gigabytes. Therefore, 20 GB, taking into account that Windows has just been installed, will be enough at best for a month of work, after which the PC user will start to seriously think about how to increase the C drive. the one on which the operating system stands, since in most cases it is he who performs this role.

In fact, this is much easier than it might seem. There are a large number of utilities that relate to hard drive partition managers and are able to manage them, including increasing the capacity of one by taking a piece of memory from another. A good program for managing your hard drive is Acronis Disk Director. The only negative is that it is paid. You can certainly find a pirated version, but why break the law if there is a good, absolutely free utility AOMEI Partition Assistant Standart Edition.

A couple of lines about the program

AOMEI Partition Assistant Standart Edition is an excellent hard disk management utility. The license is absolutely free for both home and commercial use. The utility is completely in Russian, as a result of which problems with use should not arise. In addition, its interface is similar to Acronis Disk Director, and those who used Acronis will hardly feel the difference and will not have to think long about how to increase the C drive. But those who are faced with this for the first time will be able to intuitively level to understand what and how. This utility has proved to be the best, as evidenced by a bunch of positive reviews on various sites and blogs.

Without preparation, nowhere

Before increasing the C drive, you need to download and install this utility. We go to the official website of AOMEI, find the required program and download it. We start the installation process. Click "Next" and wait for the end. If it was downloaded not from the official site, but from a third-party, then the installation process must be controlled so as not to install Sputnik Mail and the Amigo browser for yourself. The utility is installed, but we are in no hurry to launch it.

Create a backup

Before increasing the C drive in Windows 7, you need to make a backup of the system. Backup is a function that creates a copy of data (restore point) of one or more disks to return to this point in case of problems. This is done very simply:

We open the properties of my computer, where you can find the section "Advanced system settings".
When the parameters window appears, click on the "System Protection" tab, where the available disks and information about their security should be displayed, ie. whether a restore point has been created on them or not.
Select drive C, click "Configure". Here we put a tick on "Restore system parameters ...", if not, and allocate space for the backup (5-10 percent). This must be done so that you can save several restore points and roll back from an earlier one, since they are constantly replacing each other. Click "OK".
Now click on the "Create" button. Give a name to the future backup, click "Create".
The same procedure can be done with the D disc.

You can view the newly created restore point in "Start", then "standard: / service: / system restore".

Of course, it is absolutely not necessary to make a backup before increasing the hard drive C. But it is worth remembering that AOMEI Partition Assistant Standart Edition is a hard drive manager, and if any error occurs, then all information can be damaged.

How to increase the C drive?

We launch the program. You can immediately notice that it displays all the disks on the hard drive plus the reserved area. So, our goal is nothing more than to increase the C drive with the D drive (Windows 7) without losing data. To do this, right-click on the D drive and click on the first item from the "Resize Partition" list. Now we either move the delimiter from left to right, marking how much to separate, or in the "Unallocated space before" column we type the required number of gigabytes. Click "OK".

As you can see, the picture has changed somewhat: an unallocated area has appeared, which needs to be attached to C. We click on it with the right and act in the same way as with D, - "Resize the partition". Here, a window already known to us opens, in which you need to move the delimiter slider to the right to the end. To start the process, click "Apply". But before increasing the C drive at the expense of the D drive, let's double-check the operation parameters in the window that appears. If everything is in order, click "Go" and "Yes". After that, the process of transferring free space to C will begin. This is, in fact, the whole operation for the separation.

Acronis Disk Director

As described above, Acronis is similar in interface to AOMEI Partition Assistant Standart Edition. However, the problem regarding how to increase the C drive at the expense of the D drive (Windows 7) is solved here a little differently.

First you need to have a license for this utility, since the demo version only allows you to transfer a few gigabytes. Install, create a restore point, run. Select drive D and click on the left toolbar "Resize Volume". Up to this point, it was necessary to decide how to increase the C drive at the expense of the D drive (Windows XP or 7). Drag to the right as needed for C. After clicking on the "Apply pending operations" button, which is distinguished by a black flag. As you can see, the utility has started to separate space.

We do the same with the C disk, namely, go to the section for resizing the volume and move the slider to the maximum to the right. The only difference is that here you need to check the box "Add unallocated space to volume". After that, click on the black flag in the same way. However, after splitting memory with this utility, you will need to restart your computer.

It is also best to do the partitioning of disks with Akronis using a bootable disk or a USB flash drive with the program. The program itself will help you to do this.

This article answers the question: "How can I increase the space on the C drive?" It provides instructions for using third-party utilities as well as the firmware. It should be noted that the increase in the size of the system partition is performed by reducing the volume of one of the neighboring ones. Moreover, it is necessary that they are located on the same physical storage device. Of course, the attached space of the adjacent partition should not be occupied by files. The instruction is suitable for any version of Windows.

Aomei Partition Assistant

Aomei is a free utility that allows you to perform any kind of hard drive manipulation. During installation, it does not install any adware with it. The interface is fully translated into Russian. The utility supports any version of Windows OS, starting from 7.

Be careful! Any action in programs of this type may result in data loss. Back up important documents in case of an unexpected failure or unexpected power outage.

Step-by-step instruction

After installing the program, run it.

The main window will show the hard drives and their partitions.How to increase space on drive C with drive Dusing the Aomei app?

Right-click on section D. A menu will open in which you must select the inscription "Resize".

In the window that appears, you can edit by dragging the borders to the right and left or by specifying numerical values in the input lines. You need to move the borders so that the unallocated space is located after section C. When you are finished with the settings, click OK.

Increase the size of partition C with the new unallocated space. Click on OK.

Now click on the "Apply" button in the main window of the Aomei utility.

Before that how to increase space on the C drive

In the same utility, you can create a bootable USB flash drive. With its help, editing sections is performed outside the OS. Restarting the PC with this approach during operations is not required.

Downloading the utility is available on the official developer's resource.

MiniTool Partition Wizard Free

Partition Wizard is a free application that will help you perform any action with hard disk partitions. Its only drawback is the lack of a Russian translation.

Once loaded, the utility will display a window with almost the same interface as Aomei. The actions that need to be done before increasing the space on the C drive are also completely similar.

expand the context menu by right-clicking on the image of section D;
click on the Resize Partition inscription and edit the space so that the area with unallocated space is to the right of the system disk;
now do the same with section C, but do not decrease its volume, but increase it;
click on OK and then on "Apply";
after the program has completed all the operations, open "Explorer" to make sure that the space is allocated correctly.

To download Partition Wizard, go to the utility's official website.

OS built-in tools

There is a way to helpeven if the installation of third-party software is impossible. It must be said that the built-in utilities do not allow performing the necessary operation without losing the data written to the adjacent system partition. Therefore, all important information should be saved on a separate storage device.

So:

Open the Run dialog. Enter the text diskmgmt.msc into the line. Click on OK.
The main window of the Disk Management application appears on the display. It will show all drives installed in the system unit and a diagram of their partitions. Do not take any action with hidden disks if you do not understand why they are needed.
Open the D drive dialog by clicking on its rectangle in the diagram. Click on "Delete". After this operation, free space will appear to the right of partition C.
How to increase the space on the C drive? Expand the context menu of section C. Click on the "Expand" caption.
In the window that appears, enter the size (in MB) by which you want to increase the disk. If you do not make any changes here, the system will automatically take all available space.

When you need to slightly enlarge the system partition, and then create an additional one again, click on the rectangle indicating the remaining unallocated space. Click on the "Create Volume" text and size it.

Conclusion

In addition to the tools described, there are many utilities that will helpincrease disk space C.Windows 7 and older versions boast a built-in tool, but its functionality does not reach the level of third-party products.

Always remember that performing low-level operations on any drive is risky. Before each action, it is advisable to make backups of at least important data, and if opportunities allow, then full copies of hard drives.

It so happened that when working at a computer, the user is accustomed to having a divided hard disk into two partitions D: / and C: /. Where the folder with the system is stored on one, and various media files are stored on the other, such as photos, music, films, etc. But, sooner or later, everyone who works on the Windows operating system has probably come across a situation where it was necessary to increase the size of the C drive at the expense of the D drive, due to a lack of free space.

As a rule, this disk fills up due to the fact that a surplus of various programs and games are installed on the computer. Also, this space fills up with incredible speed if the user only saves all possible files to the desktop. Another reason for filling up free space is temporary files from the Internet and. As a result, due to lack of space on the system partition, you will not be able to download anything from the Internet and you will not even be able to run more than one program.

A few suggestions below you will find detailed instructions on how how can I increase the C drive using a variety of methods, ranging from third-party software to the LiveCD, which I think a lot of people already know about with. Of course, we will by no means forget to consider increasing the size of the C drive using the standard Windows utility called "".

Before we get down to work, I want to note some of the nuances.

We will increase the size of the C drive at the expense of the D drive. Therefore, make sure that you have enough free space on the local drive D: /;
Unfortunately, you won't be able to increase the space on the C drive using a standard disk management program without losing data, so be extremely careful that you do not have to manually later;
All the tips that I will describe below are applicable absolutely to all major operating systems, the Windows family (7/8/10);

So we free up disk space, from which we will bite off a piece and proceed to the practical part of the instructions on how to increase the C drive at the expense of D.

Increasing Disk Space With Aomei Partition Assistant

First, we will use a program that is distributed free of charge and will help us increase the size of the C drive, directly from the Windows environment. But, before using it, of course, you need to download and install it on your computer. There is nothing to explain, I think you will cope with this with a bang.

The main thing during the download is not to forget to change the installed language to Russian.

After launching the program, its interface should open in front of you, with various windows in which complete information about the hard disk and about all the partitions into which it is divided will be displayed.

Since we came here in order to increase the size of the C drive, taking the free space from D, we perform the following steps in order.

If you just resize the disks without hitting the apply button at the end, you won't get the expected result. After completion, the computer will reboot several times and you will receive the additional space on the system disk that you specified earlier.

We increase the space on the system disk using Disk Director.

The next option is also not bad, but it is not entirely convenient, in that to implement it we will have to and then boot from it.

Perhaps you ask, if it's so complicated why am I showing it? Hmm, there are actually a lot of reasons, for example, you need to increase the size of the C drive at the expense of the D drive, but when using various programs, a message constantly appears that the system cannot lock the drive to complete the operation. So, just in such cases, LiveCD with the Disk Director program can help us out.

So, who does not have such a disk yet, you can download the one that I use: Link. Next, just write it down to any disc, as a simple image and.

In the loaded LiveCD, find the Disk Director icon on the desktop and launch the program. An interface will appear that is very similar to the working environment of the program we have considered just above.

To increase the size of the C drive, perform the following actions:

In the top panel, click on the icon that will launch the window to increase free disk space;
In the dialog box that appears, select the partition to which we want to add free space and click " Further»;
In the next step, we will be required to select a partition due to which we will add free space;
Further, the wizard for increasing free space will ask you to specify the size of the expanded partition using the slider, in our case it is drive C. Having moved the slider as you need, click " Farther", to continue;
Before starting the process, the program will definitely show you the structure of the newly created partitions and ask you to press the button " Complete»;
Now, to apply all the changes, click on the checkbox;
A list of activities that have been scheduled appears. After reviewing them, click on "" to start executing all processes to increase the size of the C drive;
The conversion will take several minutes, although the procedure itself may take even an hour depending on the size of the hard disk;
After the program finishes, we restart the computer and check whether Disk Director has coped with its task;

Maybe this method is not the most convenient due to the fact that you need to create a new disk, but it is not effective for me than others, and will always help out in situations where programs from the operating environment of the system simply cannot cope.

Increasing Disk C Space Using Disk Management

And finally, as I promised, let's see how you can increase the C drive with the D drive using your own Windows resources. Those who decided to use this method, I hope you have not forgotten that it has one rather serious drawback in that when the partition increases, your personal data will be deleted from the disk " D". Therefore, I recommend using this option only on new machines and clean hard drives.

If you still intend to use this particular method, then we call the window " Execute"By clicking" Windows + R"And there we execute the command .

A window of the utility we need will open, in which all drives that are connected to the computer will be displayed. In the same place, you will see separately your partitions C and D, and several hidden boot sectors, by the way, which I recommend not to touch in any way, so that you do not have to restore the system later.

Now, having selected the section with the letter D, right-click on it and press, "". Doing this will delete both the disk itself and to and all the data stored on it, therefore, do not forget to save them somewhere else, for example on a USB flash drive.

In the next step, go to the C drive and call the context menu in the same way, but this time select “ Expand volume ...". A window will appear where you will need to specify the size of the added free space. Immediately, all the space that we freed up by removing the D drive will be displayed, but since we do not want to take everything, but only a small part, we indicate the number we need, for example 4000MB.

Attention!!! If the disk that you want to enlarge will have a button " Expand volume", I recommend using the first or second option.

By increasing the size of the C disk at the expense of D, we return our donor back to its normal form. To do this, click on the unallocated space with the right button and select the first line “ Create simple volume"And then follow the instructions to perform actions, which will recommend utility. It will be formatted and assigned a volume letter, after which you can use it as before.

In this article, I did not try to show you different programs that do the same thing, here I wanted to tell you about three ways that can help you in completely different situations. For example, you can use the first option during normal operation of the system, the second in case of some kind of breakdown, and the third, in the case of a new computer, you do not have to download anything, but you can quickly do everything using Disk Management, spending only 5 minutes.