[Atomik]

My C Drive is nearly full and I'm constantly having to remove software I still need just to make space, I checked the forums and found I could merge my C: and D: together to make more space but when I went to My Computer - - - Manage - - - Disk Management My C: Drive doesn't show up, Just the D: Drive and my external Drive G: appears. Can someone please help as I want more space on my C: Drive its a nightmare! Thank You
P.s I use vista.
I currently have just 743 MB free on my C: Drive and 24GB free on the D: Drive

[Ent]

You can merge them if they are partitions of the same drive but not if they are physically separate hard drives. Be aware that in doing so you would lose All Data on drive D:. The other option that you might want to consider is moving parts of your user profile onto the other Drive.

For example if you had 12GB of music stored in your music folder, you could move the actual files onto the other drive to free up 12GB.

Go to your user folder.
Go to the Properties of your Music folder
Go to the "location" tab.
Click move, and navigate to a new location on your D: drive.
This way you can make sure that anything reading from your music will work with the new folder on the other drive. If another folder is your main space sink you could do this against the other folder instead.

[Atomik]

The C: Drive and D: are internal drives spilt into 2 so Im looking at how to merge them both together. I have as little as possible already saved onto the C: Drive and have already had to go to lengths as deleting saved games and sample pictures.

[Ent]

The question is how much you have saved to the D: drive. You would have to delete the D: partition and extend the C: partition; all files in D: would be immediately lost.

However if you're sure you want to go down this route please Post a Screenshot of disk management showing the C: and D: partitions.

[Atomik]

I don't have any problem with deleting everything on my D: Drive as theres nothing important on it but my problem is when I go to Disk Management it does not show my C: Drive
I have attached a screen shot of my disk management screen.
Thanks

[Ent]

That is very strange. You could try using the command line tool Diskpart. Type Diskpart into the Run box. In the window that appears type List Volume. Does the system partition appear there?

Meanwhile I notice that your D drive shows as being on Disk 1. Hard disks count from 0, is there no Disk 0? You can go to View > Top > Disk list to see the disks it's identifying.

[Atomik]

I have attached what came up when I typed diskpart. Thanks for all your help

[Ent]

What about the discrepancy with Disk 0?

[Atomik]

sorry not sure what you mean

[Ent]

Disk numbers Count from 0. Your screenshot shows D as being on Disk 1. I'm wondering where your Disk 0 is.

In particular I'm wondering whether C: might be stored on Disk 0. If so the two volumes are on separate drives, and you cannot merge them. There would still be ways to redirect data onto your D drive even while they're physically different.

[Atomik]

So what would u suggest I do? Sorry but when it comes to this part of computers im totally dense. lol

[Ent]

I have no idea what might be wrong with disk manager. Perhaps some other partitioning software would show the drive, but just seeing it isn't really going to help you much.

I would suggest that you redirect some folder onto your D: drive. That is move all files from that folder onto D (freeing the space). Then set things up that anything which adds files to that folder adds them instead to D while anything that reads files from that folder reads them instead (without realizing) from D. It wouldn't be as good a solution as merging the partitions, but as merging is impossible it's a fair second.

[Elvandil]

If C: and D: were on the same physical drive, they would be shown in the same line in Disk Management.

Your D: drive is a separate drive, Disk 1.

If they were contiguous, and on the same drive, you could merge them and still keep all the data that is on D:. But since they are on separate physical drives, they cannot be merged.

It may be a good idea to examine all your drives and partitions when Windows is not running:

Parted Magic disk partitoning tool (Bootable CD image)

[Ent]

Of your user folders (especially Documents, Pictures, Music, or Videos) do you have any in the range of 10-20GB. If so follow my instructions in Post 2 to move them to the D drive. They will continue to function as though they were still in your user folder, but won't take up space on your C drive. If instead you have another folder that you would like to move and redirect onto the D drive, let me know.

[Atomik]

is there anyway that I can swap the drives around so that the D: Drive becomes the C: Drive as my D: Drive has 31.4 GB and my C: Drive only has 18.6 GB