Windows 7 Understanding Disk Management: Free Space vs. Unallocated Space in Windows 7

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Hi there, I have the home premium edition of windows 7 and a have some little questions regarding disk management.

First of all what will the option delete partition under the a free space will do as it is already empty ( no data is present in it ) Also, what is the difference between a free space and unallocated space, and why can't I merge them together into 1 volume?

Thanks for your time
 
Solution
Again, there is no way to merge partitions, logical or otherwise and you certainly cannot join discontinued space as in your situation. I suggest you do as your friend advises.

With a third party disk management software, you can move partitions around but you still cannot join discontinued space as you suggest, and it is very risky.

Maybe discontinued is the wrong word, perhaps non-continuous would be better or not adjacent space. But you cannot do what you suggest and combine non-adjacent space.
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Hi, say for instance you have a 1TB harddrive, 2 partitions c: = 500gb d: =500gb

Are you wanting to make the partition into 1TB again?
 
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Unallocated space is not partitioned or I suppose you could say not formatted. Free space is unused partitioned space, and you can shrink a partition that has free space. But deleting it deletes the entire partition.

If you are trying to extend a partition into unallocated space, you can do that but you cannot merge two partitions, with Windows anyway.

If you use Disk Management, you can see unallocated with a black top and primary partitions blue.

If you are trying to do something in particular, you could take a picture of your Disk Management window using the snipping tool and attach using the paperclip on the Advance reply window.
 
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you can however do this
c: 500gb paritition
d: 500gb partioned

to

c:/ 1tb partitioned

( the 2nd partition has to be formatted and then unalllocated then extend from the 1st partition )

i wrote a little guide if you want to know how
 
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Greetings, and thank you for your help

What I have in mind is actually to use a free space to create a new volume, say D: and to extend the volume using the unallocated space. However when I create D: I'm unable to use the unallocated volume to increase D: space to 150 gig. I have attach a picture about my current situation. ( The unallocated space I obtain from shrinking volume C: )

Link Removed

Thanks!
 
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There are some things you need to know. Windows will support 4 primary partitions or 3 primary and 1 extended, unless you are using a GPT drive, which I assume you are not.

The logical partition (green) is between primary partitions, which is a little unusual by itself. I believe extended partitions that contain logical partitions have to be continuous. Maybe Kaos has an answer.

You should be able to extend C: into the Unallocated space.

If you delete the Green/logical partition and the extended partition that contains it, you would be able to extend the recovery partition into that space.

You cannot move the leading edge of a partition with Windows. To do so you need a third party partition manager and it is risky. Let us know and we can recommend some partition management software.
 
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Ok, so in order to merge the logical partition and the unallocated space I need to use third party partition manager? And what do you mean by the word risky? Also one of my friend said that it is likely to be impossible to merge both of them together so he recommend to format the entire disk. Is it really that necessary?

Thanks!
 
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Again, there is no way to merge partitions, logical or otherwise and you certainly cannot join discontinued space as in your situation. I suggest you do as your friend advises.

With a third party disk management software, you can move partitions around but you still cannot join discontinued space as you suggest, and it is very risky.

Maybe discontinued is the wrong word, perhaps non-continuous would be better or not adjacent space. But you cannot do what you suggest and combine non-adjacent space.
 
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Solution
I see, well ok then maybe I'll try to format my hard disk then when I have time to backup all of my data.

Nevertheless, thank you for your time and help!
 
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I thought he could format the green (Free space) to unallocated space then merge the unallocated space into a partition. Such as FAT32 or NTFS?
 
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