How to Merge Allocated Disk Space
Computer hard drives are made up of partitions and sectors. When you partition off a hard drive, you are splitting it into multiple parts. Each partition then acts as if it is a separate hard drive. This is useful if you are running more than one operating system on your computer or you use one partition for business and the other for personal. Fortunately, when you run out of space on one partition, you have the ability to merge space from one allocated partition to the other.
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Instructions
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Connect the hard drive that needs to be reallocated to your computer with either a USB cable, SATA cable, firewire cable or any other data connection cable that your hard drive uses. USB ports are flat and easily recognizable with their rectangular port opening. If you are allocating disk space with your native hard drive (the hard drive that is always connected to your computer internally), skip this step.
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Click the "Start" button followed by "Control Panel" and "System and Security."
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Click the "Administrative Tools" menu link, which is one of the last options. Double-click "Computer Management" on the next screen that appears. A computer management window will appear after a few moments.
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Click the hard drive partition that you would like to expand to the other allocated space, ensuring that you are selecting one from the same hard drive. You cannot join a partition from one hard drive with another partition from a separate hard drive.
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Press the right button on your computer's mouse to bring up a context menu, and then click "Extend Volume...." Select how much space you would like to join from one partition to the other by typing in the amount of space to join in megabytes.
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Click "OK." The disk space will be reallocated into a single larger partition.
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Click the "Close" button in the upper-right corner of the "Disk Management" window when the merge successfully completes. You will know it is successful when the partition you extended shows a larger number of megabytes available.
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References
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