Member Avatar for SillyBilly

Hello everyone,
I have a 300gb Sata hard drive that I partitioned into 3 partitions: (C:(System, OS) 60gb) - (D:(Music and Videos) 100gb) - (E: (My Studio) 140gb) Something happened and D: & E: disappeared. I bought a program called "Mini-tool Power data recovery" and I was successful in recovering all of my lost files. Now I want to repartition the hard drive back and just use it as one Partition because I bought two more hard drives to do what I had done with the hard drive in question. When I click on "my computer" it shows my C: as "28.8GB used of 58.5GB". When I right click "My Computer" and Click "Manage" it shows C: as "289.09GB". I want to stretch the 58.5GB to utilize the whole 289.09GB of the drive which should be 300GB which in tell means that there is almost 11GB still unaccounted for. What do I do to make this happen without reformatting the the whole drive and just start all over? Please help.

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Good outcome — the data was recovered and the drive was merged. The command-line approach the OP used corresponds to the DiskPart workflow (select disk/volume, then extend), which is the correct tool when Windows' Disk Management GUI won't let you grow C: because the free space must be contiguous and on the same disk. Microsoft documents the prerequisites and why Extend may be unavailable in Disk Management. (Extend a basic or dynamic volume). (learn.microsoft.com)

Why Windows sometimes shows a smaller number than the label on the box: drive makers quote decimal GB but Windows typically reports binary GiB, and there can also be small hidden/reserved partitions and filesystem overhead that account for the “missing” gigabytes. That easily explains an ~10–15 GB delta on a nominal 300GB drive. (See Seagate’s note on capacity measurement standards.) (Storage capacity measurement standards). (seagate.com)

Practical, safe workflow (conceptual — do backups first): back up all recovered data; open Disk Management as Administrator and inspect the physical layout (unallocated space is shown as a black bar); if the unallocated space is immediately to the right of C: and C: is NTFS, use Disk Management or DiskPart to extend C:. If the free space isn’t adjacent you have two choices: delete the intervening partitions (only if you have verified backups) or use a third‑party partition tool that can safely move partitions to make the free space contiguous before extending. If you want to start fresh and don’t need to preserve anything, deleting all volumes and creating one partition is simplest. (learn.microsoft.com)

Notes and gotchas: ’s suggestion to delete other volumes then extend is valid when backups exist. ’s point about using folders vs partitions is a matter of preference — partitions can simplify reinstalls but add management overhead. If Extend is still greyed out check for non‑adjacent unallocated space, FAT32 formatting, MBR/GPT limits, or a system/pagefile blocking the operation; Microsoft’s docs and DiskPart references explain these errors and limitations. Back up before any destructive step. (learn.microsoft.com)

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Member Avatar for DRAZILLA

Hey SB, I was just wondering if you might have thought of just using the existing music and video folders in my documents? Partitioning a HDD for just that seems a waste, in my opinion

Member Avatar for caperjack

in disk manager right click on D:\ and G:\ and check delete Volume,then right click them format them to ntfs same as C:\ you then should be able to right click on C:\ and click on extend volume ,i think maybe twice to get it to extend to the other 2 partitions .
that what i just did anyway to a laptop drive i had lying around ,it had 2 partitions now has one bigger one .

also it normal for a 300gig hdd to format to less than 300 ,it all more than i can explain .

Member Avatar for SillyBilly

ok,, I might have confused you,,,, D & G now are my new drives I have,,, The partitions on the C: is whats missing... Notice the one picture I attached is in my computer,,, it shows the hard drive at almost 60GB? Well if you look at the other picture, C: shows almost 300GB. The partitions are not showing up on the C: Just the OS/System Drive which is at almost 60GB. It will not let me extend it either to the rest of the 240GB of the 300GB the drives capacity is.

Member Avatar for SillyBilly

I fixed it!!! wooooo hooooooo!!!!!! BCEDIT in command prompt,,, list disk: then select disk: then list volume: then select volume: then extend volume ? (? is whatever volume your extending!
It now shows the 300GB hard drive in "My Computer" as 300GB and only 260GB of 298GB free!!!! SOLVED!!!

Member Avatar for caperjack

great to hear ,yes i was confused

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