When many friends use computers, they will find that the previously designated drive space is not enough.
For example, the C drive becomes more and more red during use, but the D drive has more than half of the free space. In this case, an idea will arise, that is, whether the free space of the D drive can be directly transferred to the C drive.
This operation is fully feasible and can be accomplished extremely safely with the help of the DiskGenius partition tool. The entire process does not require reinstalling the system, and there is no need to worry about data loss.
Preparation and software download
Before using DiskGenius to merge partitions, there are several things that need to be done in advance.
Back up key data to a mobile hard drive or cloud disk in advance. Although this operation is highly secure, if there is a power outage or an unexpected situation occurs, having a backup can always provide peace of mind.
Then go to the official website to download the latest version of DiskGenius. Be careful not to download third-party versions that come bundled with rogue software.
After the download is complete, you can unzip it and use it, no installation is required.
If you are using a PE boot disk, which generally already contains this tool, just enter the PE system and run it.
Find a free area and right-click
Open the main interface of DiskGenius and you can see the partition status of all hard disks in the computer. Each partition clearly displays the capacity and usage.
If you need to merge partitions, the core idea is to allocate the free space in one partition to another partition.
On the hard disk map, right-click with the mouse and click on the "free area" shown in gray. Note that it must be a free area. You cannot directly click on the partition itself. Please pay attention to this point.
Select "Allocate free space to" in the pop-up menu, and then a list of partitions that can receive space will be listed. Just select the partition you want to expand.
Create new partition and parameter settings
If there is a completely unallocated gray area at the end of the hard disk, and you plan to build it into a brand new partition, the operation is also quite simple and easy.
First, click to select the gray free area, then click the "New Partition" button on the toolbar, or select "Create New Partition" from the right-click menu.
After the dialog box pops up, select the partition type according to your needs.
If you are installing the system, choose the primary partition. If you are simply storing files, you can choose the logical partition.
The file system type selected is usually NTFS. For those games or videos whose single file exceeds 4G, this format must be used.
The partition size can be directly entered as a number or adjusted by dragging the slider with the mouse.
After the settings are complete, click OK and the new partition will appear in the list. However, at this time, it has not been actually written to the hard disk. You need to click the "Save Changes" button in the upper left corner for it to take effect.
Split new space from existing partition
Sometimes you don't want to touch the empty and idle area, but you have to carve out a part of the space from a partition that already contains data, and then build a brand new partition.
Select the icon of that partition, right-click and select "Create New Partition". At this time, a window to adjust the partition capacity will pop up.
In that window, there will be two sliders. The one on the left is the original partition, and the one on the right is the new space that will be divided, oh.
Drag the vertical line in the middle with the mouse, or enter numbers directly to determine the location and size of the new partition.
After starting this action at the execution point, the software will give a prompt that the computer needs to be restarted to complete the operation. At this time, just confirm the restart.
When the computer is turned on again, you will be able to see the new partition cut out.
Saving and taking effect after merging partitions
Either the free space is divided into other partitions, or a new partition is created. After the operation is completed in DiskGenius, these changes only take effect temporarily in the memory and are not actually written to the partition table of the hard disk.
Only by clicking the "Save Changes" button on the menu bar will the software record all the actions just now into the hard disk at once.
If the save has been completed, when the operation is a non-system disk, you can immediately see the corresponding changes in the "My Computer" category.
If it is the system drive C drive, you may need to restart the computer to fully take effect.
After it takes effect, you need to remember to format the new partition or the expanded partition so that files can be stored normally.
Precautions during operation
There are a few details to pay special attention to.
When resizing the partition, try not to set the capacity to an excessive limit. Just like the C drive only leaves enough space to install the system, it will turn red again soon. It is recommended to reserve dozens of GB of extra space.
For today's new hard drives, especially those with 4KB physical sectors that use advanced formatting methods, the optimal starting position when partitioning should be aligned with the 4K sectors. DiskGenius will complete the alignment operation task by itself by default, without manual adjustment.
If the merged hard drive is a mechanical hard drive, then the computer will be slightly lagging during the process. This is because the software is moving file data. Just wait patiently for it to complete. Do not force shut down or restart in the middle.
