Hello everybody!
In this video I’m going to tell you how
to combine two partitions of one hard disk,
SSD or USB drive into one, or how to extend
one partition at the expense of another within
a Windows operating system, and how you can
do it with standard system utilities or third-party
programs.
If you face the need to extend the system
partition or another partition on your hard
disk - for example, if one of your partitions
is almost full - you can choose between several
ways of solving this problem: it’s either
moving the data to another disk, or extending
this partition at the cost of another one
- as long as it’s possible.
Later on, I’ll show you what means of your
operating system can help you cope with the
problem, and what third-party apps can help
you merge partitions without losing important
data.
Combining partitions with Windows tools
You can combine two partitions of a storage
device into one with the help of a standard
utility within your Windows operating system
- the Disk Management.
You can find it by right-clicking on the Start
menu and selecting it from the list.
Or by right-clicking on This PC / Manage / Disk
Management.
In the window that opens you’ll see the
list of all your disks, their size, file system
and other data.
Combining two partitions into one is no rocket
science, but before you do it make sure the
two partitions really belong to one hard disk.
As you can see, my computer has two separate
hard disks, and one of them is divided into
two partitions of 200 Gb each.
These are the partitions I can combine, or
I can use one of them to extend the other.
Yet it’s impossible to combine two different
hard disks into one.
As you can see, in this case the function
“Extend volume” is inactive.
Before you start combining partitions you
need to delete the existing volume which you
will use to extend the other partition.
To do it, right-click on it and select “Delete
Volume...”
As a result, there’s a window warning you
that deleting the volume will destroy all
its data.
So if there’s anything worth keeping, copy
such information to another device.
Watch another video on our channel about recovering
accidentally deleted data; find the link in
the description.
Choose Yes to confirm your decision.
When the operation is over, you will see a
partition containing some unallocated space.
Now you can move on to combining, so right-click
on the disk you want to extend and select
“Extend Volume.”
In the next window you can choose how much
space you would like to add to the existing
disk; by default, all the available space
is selected, but you can change the size in
this line.
Click “Next” and then “Finish.”
When the process is over, you’ll see a disk
of large size, or several disks, if you didn’t
use all the available space for extending.
This is the end of combining disk partitions.
Such method will work with both conventional
hard disks and SSDs.
You can watch one of our videos to see how
to split a disk into partitions; find the
link in the description.
Extending a disk with AOMEI Partition Assistant
There are also lots of third-party apps to
help you combine partitions without losing
your data.
One of those worth mentioning is a free utility
AOMEI Partition Assistant
With this application you’ll be able to
extend a disk at the cost of another disk
and without losing a single bit of data.
To do it, right-click on the disk you are
going to use for extending another disk - in
my case the donor disk will be disk G - and
choose “Change partition size.”
On the left, drag the slider to select the
necessary amount of space to add to the disk
which you want to extend and click Ok.
Then right-click on the disk which you want
to extend – in my case, that’s disk H.
Select “Change partition size” and in
the window that opens drag the slider on the
right until the free space is filled, then
click Ok.
Click Apply to start the process, and agree
to begin combining the disks.
When the operation is over, you will see a
notification that all operations have been
completed successfully.
Now let’s check the disks: as you can see,
their size has changed but the information
stored on them is still available and intact.
Combining partitions with AOMEI Partition
Assistant Standard
In this program, you can also merge all partitions
of a disk without losing data.
To begin, right-click on one of the partitions
you are going to merge; it should be the one
which is treated as primary when merging,
and the one where all data will be saved.
Select Merge.
Choose all partitions you want to merge, and
the letter below will be the name of the final
partition you get after merging.
The data from the other partition can be found
under this path.
Then click Ok and Apply; if one of the partitions
is a system partition, you’ll have to restart
your computer, and this process will be longer
than usual.
When your PC restarts you’ll see that the
partitions have been merged into one, and
the data previously stored in the second partition
is now saved on the new partition, with a
corresponding letter.
As you can see, the procedure itself is not
too complicated, but if you are a beginner
and there’s some important data on the disks,
it’s recommended to copy it to another device
which is not going to be affected by the merging
operations.
All these methods can be applied to a conventional
hard disk or an SSD: the merging process is
similar in Windows 10, 8 or 7.
How to delete partitions in a USB drive
If you split your USB drive into partitions
- there is a special video guide about in
in our channel (the link is in the description)
- and now you are wondering how to roll back
these changes, run the Command Prompt as administrator,
and then type the following commands one by
one
diskpart
list disk
After you typed the command, you have to find
out the number of your flash drive; in my
case it’s number 2.
Now type the command “select disk 2” and
add the number of the disk.
Follow it with the command “Clean” to
destroy all data in this USB drive.
After that just go to Disk Management, right-click
on it and select “New Simple Volume.”
Now the USB drive has one partition of the
corresponding size.
That is all for now.
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Leave comments to ask questions.
Thank you for watching.
Good luck.
