Windows 7 Cannot convert unallocated disk space into a new drive

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Vesa

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I have a brand new Toshiba Qosmio portable computer with Windows 7 pre-installed in the "C" (=the only hard) drive.

I wanted to create an "E" drive and partition, so in Disk Management I focused the largest partition and selected "Shrink Drive". As a result, I got 208,26 GB of unallocated space. However, when I proceed to create a new drive from that unallocated space, I get the notification "There is not enough space available on the disk(s) to complete this operation."

Therefore, I now have 208 gigabytes of unallocated space ("Varaamaton" in the attached screenshot; I'm using a Finnish version of Windows 7) that I for some reason cannot utilize. What can I do to regain the space?

I don't know what the two partitions to the right of the unallocated space contain - one sized 35,41 GB and the other 8,71 GB. (The leftmost partition - 1,46 GB - is for restoring Windows.)

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Vesa
 
Solution
I do not know enough about your system to give you a good answer about deleting any partitions. Notebook manufacturers usually have a restore partition containing things like system images to restore your system without a DVD, so be careful. If it is under warranty, deleting a partition may also void that. It might be best to check with the manufacturer or their forum to see for sure.

The Win 7 System Reserved Partition is normally 100mb, but you manufacturer may have changed that.

Since I don't understand some of the notations in the partitions, I am not sure what to tell you. I also do not see any drive letters. Can you open the partitions and check what is inside. Make sure you have the folder options set for showing...
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You have 4 primary partitions on the drive, which is the most you can have. If you want more partitions, you will have to use 3 as primary and make the last one an extended partition and add logical drives.

You can get third party software that will convert one of your partitions to logical if you so desire.

Are you using all of the current partitions, or could you delete one?
 
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Hello Saltgrass,

And thank you for your help!

I know that the leftmost partition in the screenshot is reserved for Windows 7 restore purposes, while the largest partition - TI30547100A - contains Windows and applications. I don't know what the remaining two very small partitions are for; I think the disk was partitioned like that when I received my new notebook.

Windows resource management only shows "C", which contains Windows and some applications.

Do you think I could remove, say, the 8,1-Gigabyte partition? If I do that, can I then utilize the unallocated space?
 
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I do not know enough about your system to give you a good answer about deleting any partitions. Notebook manufacturers usually have a restore partition containing things like system images to restore your system without a DVD, so be careful. If it is under warranty, deleting a partition may also void that. It might be best to check with the manufacturer or their forum to see for sure.

The Win 7 System Reserved Partition is normally 100mb, but you manufacturer may have changed that.

Since I don't understand some of the notations in the partitions, I am not sure what to tell you. I also do not see any drive letters. Can you open the partitions and check what is inside. Make sure you have the folder options set for showing hidden and system files to make sure you can see those types of files.

If you decide to delete a partition, or change one or maybe two to logical, we can work with that. But deleting the 8,71 partition would allow for another primary partition, but not add to your unallocated space.
 
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Solution




If you have XP/Vista/7 installation disk, you can boot from it and create and format your unallocated partition.

Alternatively, you can try:

Link Removed
 
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Back to square one

Hi guys,

I restored factory settings using the Toshiba installation program. Now there are four partitions, like prior to my attempt to modify the settings - please see the screenshot. (I was hoping to be able to change Windows' language into English, but for some reason the installation program didn't ask me to specify language this time. Is it possible to change the language after Windows has been installed?)

Now, could I somehow divide

TI30547100A (C : 420,18 GB NTFS

in two, so that the other part would be an extended partition labelled "E"?

(I wouldn't like to make mistakes this time, as re-installation causes the computer to reboot a whopping 14 times before Windows has been set up - which the retailer confirmed is a feature but which Toshiba is working hard to change anyway )
 
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Hi vesa, can you translate the notations in each partition in your screenshot?
I think the smallest partition contains the Win 7 boot info.
The others may be the recovery stuff.

Can you translate the notations indicated on the image below.



Can you assign drive letters to each to see what they contain.
Use Disk management to do this. It's possible the recovery data is on the 8 GB partition.

Does the computer have a way to create a recovery DVD from this data?

Can Toshiba provide recovery DVD's for this purpose?
 
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Translations ("?" means "uncertain about translation")

1,46 GB
Working correctly, Active, Restore partition

420,18 GB
Working correctly, Active, Startup partition, Paging (?), last good config(?), Primary partition

35,4 GB
Working correctly, Primary partition

8,71 GB
Working correctly, Primary partition

Resource management works only for the 420,18 GB partition. It contains Windows and application files.

Yes, I've created a recovery DVD. I'm not sure if it was used when the factory settings were restored (it was in the DVD drive).


 
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Well it looks like the three other partitions have non standard filesystems if Windows can't assign drive letters.
Possibly they contain all the recovery data including an image of the entire system. I don't know for sure however.

The fact that they (toshiba) has created all 4 partitions as primary kinda stinks.
It is the reason you can't do what you want.

I would call their tech support and explain what you wanted to do and see if they can help.

My bet is they will complain about warranty issues.

Unless you can delete one or both of the partitions after the C:\ partition I don't know how you would create an extended partition.

I doubt you can safely do that.

Deleting those partitions would probably at the least prevent recovery to factory state.
 
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Time to rethink


Thanks Frank. Yeah, perhaps I'll just drop the idea of creating a different drive/partition for my own data and create a folder with subfolders in the C partition instead, creating a shortcut to the folder from the desktop so that I don't have to search for it among all the Windows and application folders in the root of C.
 
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