How to Shrink D/E/F and Extend C Drive for Free

The following guide is based on large D partition. It is the same guide if you have large E/F/G drive on your disk that needs to distribute the space to C system partition.

How to Shrink D and Extend C Drive with Disk Management - free method without software

Disk Management is a Windows system built-in tools to resize the disk partitions. You can use this tool to resize partitions, but for some, you will fail to extend the c drive, you will see the “Extend Volume” option grayed out. Why? Because you can not extend the partition without any unallocated space adjacent to the C drive.

So you can shrink the D drive which is adjacent to the C drive, and then extend the C drive.

I will show you the steps to shrink d partition and extend c drive with Disk Management:

Step1: Right-click the “Computer”, choose “Manage” to go. Enter “Disk Management” module.

Step2: choose the d drive which is next to c drive, right click it to shrink volume, type a number in the box you want to shrink the size. (Note: it is more eaiser to extend c if you directly delete the drive next to it, however this shall be done on the condition that you have already move the data on the D to somewhere else.)

Shrink D drive

You may enter the volume size for D drive to get it shrinked.

Shrink D drive

Step3: after you shrink the D drive, there will be a unallocated space there, then you can extend the c drive.

If the unallocated space is not next to c drive, you may use freeware Partition Resizer Free to move the free space to the right side of C by moving the D drive.

Or you may delete the D volume and then it is 100% availability that you can extend c drive with the free space under disk management.

It is very easy to extend volume C when there is free space if you deleted the D that became the unallocated space.

extend c by disk management

If extending c drive is not available under disk management, try the following freeware Partition Resizer Free to resize c drive for free.

Free to Shrink D Expand C Drive in Windows 11/10/8/7 with FREEWARE

Is there a safe way to shrink the D partition and add space to c drive in Windows 11/10/8/7? Sure, you can try a partition manage program. Here is a freeware for you which called IM-Magic Partition Resizer Free. It is a 100% safe and effective partition freeware, you can use it to resize your disk partitions, including shrink, extend, format, delete, wipe, etc. it has a way better resize ability than other freeware, it is definitely worth a try.

IM-Magic Partition Resizer Free has a good compatibility, if you use Windows 11/10/8/7/XP/Vista, you are lucky since it is free.

Step1: Download IM-Magic Partition Resizer Free and install it on the computer. Run the program.

Step2: Right click the D drive, choose “Resize/move partition”, and move the cursor to shrink the partition.

Shrink D drive and extend C drive with IM-Magic Partition Resizer

Step3: After shrink the D drive, move the unallocated space to C drive side. Then you can resize your C drive space by moving the cursor.

Shrink D drive and extend C drive with IM-Magic Partition Resizer

After these simple steps, you can have your C drive extended.

Shrink D Drive and Extend C in Server 2003/2008/2011/2012/2016/2019/2022

If you use Windows server system on your computer, the Resizer Free edition will not work on Windows Server OS. You can use IM-Magic Partition Resizer Server which is designed for Windows server edition, or you can use IM-Magic Partition Resizer Unlimited, which can be used for any Windows systems.

Shrink space from another disk

Shrinking space from another disk and extend the c drive shall be based on RAID array.

The large volume size shall be on the same disk with c drive if there is no RAID which means if you want to redistribute space from another disk, you need to build raid array. Raid is preferred by advanced users.
Or you may follow this video to see how to build a RAID Array on your PC.

Shink c drive without losing data? See this guide too: How to shrink c drive for free