Merging free space & unallocated space in Hard Drive

Question

Here is a screenshot of my Hard Disk's present condition:

Now I want to add the 30.00 GB Free space to 20.91 GB unallocated(It was previously a primary partition) so that I get 50 GB unallocated space. Is it possible? I've heard that Gparted can do operations like this. But is it possible to add Free space to Unallocated space?

Update: Finally done it using EaseUS Partition Master 9.1.1 Home Edition. It needed a reboot though, worked just fine.

Answer 1

It looks as if you have a disk with a MBR setup.

MBR allows for only 4 partitions. If you want to use more than four then one of these four must be of type 'secondary'. In your case that is the 'green' partition in this picture:

You can try the following things to merge the 20 and 30GB parts:

1. Shrink the secondary partition by 30GB. That will result in 50GB free space.
2. Increase the secondary partition by 20.91GB, resulting in 51GB free space inside the secondary partition.

I suspect the windows build in tools can do both of that, if not use partition magic or a similar tools.

Regardless of what you use: make a backup first. A power failure during a partition move can really ruin your day.

Answer 2

Within that window itself, you should be able to right-click the partition and delete the volume. That should do what you are asking for. (Although I am unsure and slightly interested as to why?)

Answer 3

You'll probably need to use a 3rd party utility such as GParted/Parted Magic/Partition Master Home etc. First shrink the extended partition that contains the 30 GB free space This will result in 30 GB unallocated space adjacent to the 20.91 GB already present, and you can use the 50.91 GB for a new partition.

Answer 4

You can right click your free space, delete the volume. This will "merge" the unallocated space and you may then recreated a partition from that space.

Also, I'm not sure if it lets you with free space, but you may also be able to right click and select extend which will by default get all the unallocated space following it.