In order to store data in an organized manner, operating systems now give you a feature to create separate partitions out of your HDD or SSD based storage. Microsoft has always been supporting this small yet powerful feature. But many times, you may fill up on some particular partition very soon. This results in the lack of space for that partition and hence makes the entire process of using your computer slower as a large chunk of files are to be indexed in a smaller partition. So for this, either you need to delete other partitions to allocate their storage to your partition that is short on storage or just recreate the partition so that all the useless data is deleted and you can start afresh with the overflowing partition. So, today we will be discussing how to delete any storage partition from your Windows 10 computer using Disk Management, Command Prompt or Windows PowerShell.
Windows 7, 64 bit. I've just added a new 4TB Western Digital hard drive. I divided the drive into two unallocated areas. The first area is 2048GB and the second area is 1678GB. This is not a boot drive.
I can subdivide the 2048GB area, partition and format it as I like. I can just as easily delete and repartition it again as I like. I CAN'T do anything with the 1678GB unallocated area. This inability includes deleting it. The only option that's available is to look at it's properties. I'm certainly not new at this, but I'm stumped for a solution. Any ideas? Thanks
I'm not sure why you are not able to create a new Logical sub-partition in the Extended partition's Free Space. Remember that it is a container shown there within the green box, designed to hold as many Logical sub-partitions as you want. But Free Space may not be deleted without deleting the whole Extended partition which also contains your D drive.
What I would do is use the Partition Wizard feature to Extend partition easily with Partition Wizard - video help. You may have been trying to do this from the free space but you'd instead want to do it from C or D. I would extend C if I were you so that it doesn't eventually become cramped which you never want on an OS partition. But you can also Extend D into the Free Space if you'd prefer, or you can split the space between both. If you absolutely want a new partition there, then instead use Partition Wizard to Resize Partition - Video Help. Drag the left border of the Free Space to the right up against the D volume which should give you unallocated space that might better create a New partition. I would use the Partition Wizard boot disk which never fails, since all others except Disk Mgmt can fail with data loss. But you should always have your data and a System Image backed up against drive failure anyway. I frankly don't know why you can't create a new Logical partition there, but we had a lot of problems with the older version of GRUB requiring its partition or the entire HD to be wiped to overcome its inteference with Win7, the boot sector and partition table. Delete a Volume or Drive Partition in Windows
1] Using Disk Management
This one is simple. From the WinX Menu, open Disk Management, select the Drive you want to delete, right-click on it and then click on Delete Volume.
2] Using the Command Prompt
Start by pressing WINKEY + X button combo or right-click on the Start button and click on Command Prompt (Admin) or just search for cmd in the Cortana search box, right click on the Command Prompt icon and click on Run as Administrator.
Now, type in the following command,
This will start the Diskpart Utility. It is a command line based utility just like the Command Prompt but will get a UAC Prompt once you invoke it. You have to click on Yes for the UAC Prompt.
Then, type in,
This will list all the partitions created on your computer. This will include both types of partitions that are visible to a normal user in the File Explorer and also the ones created by default by Windows 10 that help it to store the boot files and other important system files.
Now you will get a list of the partitions that are made on your computer.
Select the partition that you wish to delete by its Unique Identification number as Volume X where X denotes the Unique Identification Number.
Now, type in the following command to select the desired volume,
Now, to delete the volume you just selected, type in the following command,
Now, this will delete the volume you just selected and convert it into an unallocated space.
3] Using Windows PowerShell
First of all, start by pressing WINKEY + X button combo or right-click on the Start button and click on Windows PowerShell (Admin) or just search for Windows PowerShell in the Cortana search box, right click on the Command Prompt icon and click on Run as Administrator.
Now, type in the following command to get a list of all the partitions on your computer,
Now, just select the drive letter that you wish to delete.
And then, enter the following command to delete that particular partition,
Replace with the letter of the partition that you wish to delete.
It will then ask you for a confirmation. Hit Y to say Yes or hit A to say Yes to All.
It will delete the partition you just selected and will move it in as an unallocated space.
This is how you delete a Volume or Drive Partition in Windows 10. We would only recommend the user to follow the last two methods in case the usual method with Disk Management is unable to fulfill the user’s requirements.
Read next: How to create New, Resize, Extend Partition using Disk Management Tool.
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What does “unallocated space” on a hard drive mean? Is it just sitting there, waiting to be used when needed or what? My hard drive is now divided into two halves of 250GB each. I would like to have the whole hard drive clean and free. I searched your archives but there is nothing on deleting a stuck partition
A partition is a division of the area on a physical hard disk (or disk-like device) into one or more logical disks. '>partition.
(Click on the term for full definition.)
Well, in a sense, it is just sitting there, waiting to be used. The problem is that it’s waiting for you to tell it how it should be used.
Basically, you have an empty, unused partition and you need to decide how you would like that space to be used. Then, you need to tell Windows to use it.
Fortunately, this is pretty simple in Windows 7 and doesn’t require any additional tools; basic partition management and rearrangement is built right in.
Unallocated
Fire up the disk manager (right-click Computer, click Manage and then click Disk Management), and I’m guessing that you’re looking at something similar to this:
That line represents a single physical Hard Disk Drive [HDD]
An HDD, or Hard Disk Drive, is typically a small box inside your computer that holds several metal disks coated with a magnetic material. They are not unlike a video or audio tape or the strip on the back of a credit card. The disk spins at a fairly high rate of speed, and special “heads” can read, or record, a pattern of bits (1s and 0s) on the magnetic surface. Those bits are assembled into bytes, which in turn are the files that you save, receive, or create. '>hard disk that is divided into three partitions:
Disks do not lose what’s on them when you turn off the power. See also: Solid State Disks (SSD) (Click on the term for full definition.)
That unallocated partition represents disk space that will not be used until you allocate it. There are typically two approaches.
Format it as an additional drive
A very common approach is to simply create a new drive out of the unallocated space.
Right-click that Unallocated drive and click New Simple Volume…
This starts the “New Simple Volume Wizard”. Click Next on the resulting dialog to be taken to the page where you specify the volume size: The default answer is to use all of the available space, which is probably what you want. If you want to break the unallocated space into multiple drives, you might choose a smaller size.
Click Next and you’ll choose the drive letter to be assigned to the new partition:
Once again, the default is probably appropriate, unless you have a specific reason to change it.
Click Next and you’ll specify formatting options:
The answers to the default are typically appropriate, although this is a good time to specify the Volume label.
Windows 10 disable people. Click Next to get a summary screen for confirmation, and then Finish to complete the operation. Windows then formats
the drive and when complete, it appears as “just another drive” on your system: You can begin using the new drive immediately. Expand the adjacent drive
The other approach, which in previous versions of Windows required third-party tools, is to simply expand an adjacent volume to use the unallocated space.
In our example, we’ll right-click the C: drive, and click Extend Volume…
That option should only be available if there’s room to expand – meaning that there’s an unallocated partition following the C: partition.
This time, we’ll start the “Extend Volume Wizard”. Clicking Next takes you to the “Select Disks” dialog:
This somewhat confusing step is all about selecting which partitions on the disk are to be added to the volume that we’re extending. The good news is that in this simple and common case – an unallocated partition immediately following the C: drive – the dialog is pre-loaded with default choices that are probably what you want: extend into the entire unallocated partition.
So all we need do is click Next.
A summary screen confirming our choice appears. Click Finish, and Windows begins the operation.
When complete, the unallocated partition is gone and the C: partition is larger:
Do you know that hard drive manufacturers consider 1GB = 1000 MB while your operating system measures 1GB = 1024MB. That’s why a 1 TB hard drive shows only ~931 GB usable storage instead of 1000 GB. It does not mean that you have lost 69 GB space or partition. In your hard drive, you can create multiple partitions and volumes by shrinking the hard drive using Disk management tool or during Windows installation. But sometimes, things go wrong and your system may fail to allocate space while creating a new volume from unallocated hard drive partition. As a result, your hard drive space disappears after shrinking. Some factors that can possibly lead to hard drive space disappearance are:
Below we’ve explained three different solutions that you can try to restore missing hard drive space or partition issue.
Solution 1: Run SFC ScanSometimes, corrupted or missing system files can cause hard drive partition or volume to disappear. The System File Checker (SFC) tool is a utility provided by Windows that is used to scan and repair missing or corrupted system files. You can run SFC scan on your system by following these steps:
If SFC scan finds any problem with system files, it can ask for Windows installation DVD or media to repair corrupt and damaged system files.
Solution 2: Run ‘Chkdsk’ commandChkdsk is an inbuilt disk error checking and repair utility in Windows. Chkdsk scans the hard drive partition for internal errors and fixes them simultaneously. The ‘Chkdsk’ utility repairs the file system metadata and logical file system errors that corrupts the hard drive partitions and make them disappear. To repair damaged hard drive partition with Chkdsk, follow these steps:
After disk checking process completes, restart the system and then try accessing your hard drive partition from File Explorer. If you are able to access the partition, copy data from it and format the partition via Disk Management tool. Solution 3: Restore the Missing Hard drive Space using Disk ManagementDisk management is a tool that is used to create and manage hard drive partitions in Windows. You can use Disk management tool to restore the missing hard drive space by following these steps:
The Disk management tool creates a new partition with allocated disk space. Alternatively, users can choose an active partition and extend its volume by adding unallocated space. Follow these steps to extend a partition volume with unallocated space:
This adds the unallocated space to the active primary partition and recovers the missing hard drive space.
NOTE: When you delete a partition while shrinking or extending volume, it erases all data from that particular partition. You are advised to take a backup of important data before partition shrinking and before you begin fixing “Hard drive space disappeared after partition shrink” problem. In case there is no backup or backup is not possible, the only way to recover lost data from deleted partition is by using a professional Data Recovery tool. You can use Stellar Data Recovery- Standard for Windows that can help you recover data from the lost, deleted, and corrupt partitions. This Data recovery tool can recover all types of files based on their unique signatures along with files like movies, compressed files, images, music, documents, etc. Using Stellar Data Recovery- Standard, you can also recover Raw Data and other files from even a formatted hard drive partition. Conclusion:How To Remove Unallocated Space From Virtual MachineWe’ve discussed reasons to why hard drive partition disappears after partition shrink and solutions to restore the missing hard drive space or partition. The solutions explained above can help you recover deleted partition in most cases. However, if you’ve deleted or formatted the partition during recovery or shrinking process, you can’t access the data as it turns inaccessible. A professional Data Recovery tool like Stellar Data Recovery- Standard can help you recover this lost data from the deleted and formatted partitions with ease. Comments are closed.
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