Freeware To Fix Extend Volume Greyed out/Disabled on Windows 11/10/8/7

Problem: Cannot Extend Volume on Windows 10

“I tried to extend my C drive at Disk Management yesterday , but I find the extend volume grayed out at Disk Management on my Windows 10 system. What’s the problem? Can I extend the partition when the extend volume greyed out?”

This can be a common situation for Windows users, no matter for Windows 11/10/8/7/XP/Vista, or Windows server system, extend volume option greyed out will cause users much trouble managing the hard disk partitions. Why does this problem happen?

Have the same problem on Windows Server? Fix it here -> Extend volume greyed out Windows server fix

Reasons Why Extend Volume Grayed out Windows 11/10/8.1/7

People would like choose Disk Management to manage the disk partition when they want to extend, shrink, format the partitions. You can right-click the “Computer”, choose “Manage” to go, then you can enter “Disk Management”. There are all your disk partitions listed. You can choose the partition you need to manage, right click it, choose “Extend Volume”, “Shrink Volume”, “Format Volume”, etc. If you see the Extend Volume option grayed out on your computer, it means that there is no unallocated space on your hard disk. In this situation, you need to spare some free space first, then you can extend your partitions.

Besides no adjacent free space, here are some other causes for extend volume greyed out in disk management.

• The target partition is not NTFS filesystem
• There is no unallocated/free space next to the one you want to expand
• The free/unallocated space is far away from the volume you want to expand, non-adjacent free space
• The disk is MBR not GPT...

How to Enable Extend Volume in Windows 10

When the Extend Volume option on your computer grayed out, you want to extend the partition, “Shrink Volume” will not work since the shrinked unallocated space is not adjacent to the target partition.

What can you do to enable the extend volume on Windows 10?

Delete volume which is next to the target partition to make some unallocated space.

If the deleted volume makes free space on your computer instead of the unallocated space, you may delete the free space with free tool Partition Resizer to convert the free space to unallocated space.

The free space is from a logical drive that cannot be extended to c drive which is primary drive. You need to convert the free space to unallocated space at first.

Also read: how to convert free space to unallocated space

Video - how to shrink partition, delete partition to enable extend volume

But this process may cause you data loss problems on the partition, if you want to extend your disk partitions when the extend volume grayed out, the best solution is to use a partition manage tool. Here are some free partition manage software you can try.

Freeware to extend volume free on Windows 10

There are some cases that cannot be managed by disk management, however it could be done by freeware Partition Resizer Free when

• The target partition is not NTFS filesystem
• There is no unallocated/free space next to the one you want to expand
• The free/unallocated space is far away from the volume you want to expand, non-adjacent free space
• Resize partition without losing data
• Expand disk over 2TB

I will recommend IM-Magic Partition Resizer Free, which is a freeware to manage disk partitions, you can use to extend, move, shrink, resize, format, wipe, create partitions. It is compatible with Windows 11/10/8/7/XP/Vista, it also has server edition which is designed for all the server systems.

IM-Magic Partition Resizer Free has an effective partition manage capability, you can make it in a minute, what important is this tool is totally free.

Step 1 - Right click large partition to shrink some free unallocated space with freeware.

Right click large drive to make it smaller

Step 2 - Narrow large drive by moving its border in the following map

Drag large drive border to the right and free space will be available

It is very easy to use, after download and install this freeware, you can choose the partition, right click it, choose “resize/move partition”, then you can move the mouse to extend or shrink the partition easily. It is totally safe, and will do no harm to your data. You can totally trust it.

Free unallocated space is available after the shrinking

Step 3 - Right click c drive to claim the new free unallocated space without losing data

Expand c drive

Step 4 - Move c drive border larger to claim free space in the following map

Expand c drive

Step 5 - Apply changes to make it happen

Expand c drive

THEN YOU WILL SEE EXPANDED C DRIVE IN THE FOLLOWING MAP

Expanding c drive successed

Video - how to extend volume with/without free space

More video guide of Extending volume free with freeware on https://www.resize-c.com/video/

Also read: how to enable extend volume when it greyed out in disk management