how to recover unallocated hard disc space?

sam1970

My new desktop came with 2TB hard drive. While I was trying to create a partition on a connected external drive to create recovery disc, I created by mistake a 10 GB partition on the computer HD. Now this partition is showing as unallocated. I can activate it and it will show as a separate 10GB partition which I will have no use for!! is there a way of claiming back the 10GB to the main 2TB hard drive which has the operating system (windows 8.1)

victor2

How did you create it? If done using the Disk Management tool in Windows, the same tool will let you delete it. Just type Disk Management in the search box and run it. You can then create a smaller partition and/or add the extra space to another existing one.

AlecEiffel

sam1970 wrote: »

My new desktop came with 2TB hard drive. While I was trying to create a partition on a connected external drive to create recovery disc, I created by mistake a 10 GB partition on the computer HD. Now this partition is showing as unallocated. I can activate it and it will show as a separate 10GB partition which I will have no use for!! is there a way of claiming back the 10GB to the main 2TB hard drive which has the operating system (windows 8.1)

Disk Management in windows should let you extend your primary partition, thus using the unallocated space.

Edit: curses, beaten to it.

sam1970

Thank you for the replies. Yes i created it using windows disk management tool. The problem is when I deleted it it became unallocated and the option to extend volume on the main hard drive is greyed out so cant use it !!

John_Gray

If Windows Disk Management won't do what you want, then try a Partition Management product. You can often find a free version of EaseUS Partition Manager (or very similar name) on their website. I have used various versions of their product over the years with complete success - but (Awful Warning) there is always the risk of a problem when reorganising a hard disk, so try to make an image copy of it to an external USB hard drive with something like Macrium Reflect Free.
(After all that you might not think it worth bothering!)

Of course, "other fine partition management software is available, often at a charge..."

sam1970

John_Gray wrote: »

If Windows Disk Management won't do what you want, then try a Partition Management product. You can often find a free version of EaseUS Partition Manager (or very similar name) on their website. I have used various versions of their product over the years with complete success - but (Awful Warning) there is always the risk of a problem when reorganising a hard disk, so try to make an image copy of it to an external USB hard drive with something like Macrium Reflect Free.
(After all that you might not think it worth bothering!)

Of course, "other fine partition management software is available, often at a charge..."

I tried it but unfortunately the option to merge partitions does not work

John_Gray

Well, since neither Windows Disk Management and EaseUS Partition Management works on your hard drive, there must be something odd about where the partitions are located. Can you post a map of what Disk Management shows you, with numbers?

Gillor

Does this help?

sam1970

Gillor wrote: »

Does this help?

you are a star..worked like a dream