PROBLEM OF THE FORTNIGHT
Why can’t I extend my C drive?
Q I’m trying to increase the size of my C drive. Recently, I had to upgrade my Elite Dangerous Odyssey game with an update that was 30GB. I managed to complete the installation by deleting parts of the game I didn’t use. The size of my C drive is 237GB, while the size of my D drive is 540GB plus 391GB labelled as Unallocated. This is because I was able to shrink the space on D, which I was hoping to transfer to C. However, while the Shrink Volume and Extend Volume options are available when rightclicking the D drive, only Shrink Volume is available on C.
I run Windows 11 and the upgrades have been using up drive space that might have otherwise be available. Do you have any advice that would enable me to expand the size of the C drive? I’ve attached a picture of my Disk Management screen.
Piers Cardon
A There are a few points we need to explore here. First, it’s important to understand the difference between physical drives and drive partitions. The Disk Management screenshot that you sent shows your PC has two physical drives – Disk 0 and Disk 1. This means your PC literally has two different drives inside. Each physical drive can be divided into several ‘logical partitions’, which we tend to think of and use as drive letters (like C and D) in Windows. Currently, your C partition is on Disk 0 and your D partition is on Disk 1. This is a fairly common setup.
Extending any partition requires free space on the physical drive into which the partition can extend. Your physical Disk 1 now has 391GB of unallocated space, so extending the D partition into that is possible. However, remember that the C partition is on Disk 0, and all the space on that physical drive is already spoken for. Some of
