Win 10 extended extended partition free space

[errolgreer]

I have about 30GB in an extended partition marked free space. I would like to delete that partition to unallocated status in order to extend an existing partition into that space. If I try to delate the free space it warns me that it would become unusable ie I would lose those 30GB completely. Question is, how can I use that space?

 

[Tim Locke]

I currently don't have a suitable setup to try this but if this free space is immediately after a good (healthy) partition can you click on that good partition in disk management and see 'extend this partition'


Looks as if this could be what you need but note the caveats in the below.


extend

Extends the volume with focus into next contiguous unallocated space. For basic volumes, the unallocated space must be on the same disk as, and must follow (be of higher sector offset than) the partition with focus. A dynamic simple or spanned volume can be extended to any empty space on any dynamic disk. Using this command, you can extend an existing volume into newly created space.

If the partition was previously formatted with the NTFS file system, the file system is automatically extended to occupy the larger partition. No data loss occurs. If the partition was previously formatted with any file system format other than NTFS, the command fails with no change to the partition.

 

[Saltgrass]

An extended partition is created to hold logical partitions. On an MBR configured drive only 4 primary partitions are allowed. The message just means you would need to make that part of the drive usable again. Extending a primary partition would fulfill that requirement.

Using disk management you can extend a partition to the right but you can't move the leading edge.

 

[chrunos]

if you delete a partition (logical partition) in extended partition, the space will be shown as free space in Disk Management. free space can only be used to extend the contiguous logical partition. you can also use this 30GB free space to create a new partition (logical partition). I wonder where did you get the idea "If I try to delate the free space it warns me that it would become unusable ie I would lose those 30GB completely".

if you want to add this free space to primary partition like C: drive, you can use free third party software like AOMEI Partition Assistant to move unallocated space out of extended partition.