Extend System Drive but Partition Recovery Gets in the Way in Windows 11/10/8/7

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Unable to extend C drive due to recovery partition

"I recently upgraded my system drive to a larger one. Everything is running fine, but now I can't extend the partition because the available space is not contiguous. I have a System Reserved Partition (350MB), C drive/Healthy/Boot etc. (297GB), Recovery Partition (450MB), and Unallocated Space (167GB). So when I right-click on the C drive, the Extend Partition option is grayed out. I guess it's because the unallocated space is not continuous. I'm running Windows 11/10. Does anyone know how to solve this issue so that I can merge them into a single system drive?"

This is a slightly modified post from the Microsoft Community (thread source), and similar issues can easily be found on other popular forums: "Can't extend C drive due to recovery partition," "Recovery partition is preventing me from extending C drive," "Can I delete recovery partition to extend C drive," and so on.

As a Microsoft Community user puts it, he has a default UEFI/GPT disk partition layout with System Reserved Partition (MSR), Windows C drive, Recovery Partition, and a large Unallocated Space. Now he wants to merge the Unallocated Space into C drive in Windows 11/10. But he fails due to the existence of the Recovery Partition in between. Once the C drive and Unallocated Space are separated by the Recovery Partition, the Extend Volume option is grayed out and unavailable. This issue may occur on Windows 11, 10, 8, 7, or any other Windows version, as well as virtual machines and VMware.

Can you delete the recovery partition to extend C drive?

And you might ask, what happens if I remove the recovery partition? We don't recommend that you do this because it's fairly risky for two reasons.

1. Restoring from a partition is the last hope when a computer crashes.

You might find a Recovery Partition (also called an OEM Partition, like Lenovo, Dell, or HP Recovery) without a drive letter and not doing anything. The system manufacturer has protected this partition, and you can easily remove it from the system hard disk with a click. This partition contains important system backup and restore files that users rely on to restore a Windows computer to its factory state in case of expected failures or unforeseen accidents.

2. Third-party software can perfectly extend the system C drive blocked by the recovered partition

As a renowned partition magic software for years, many of you might have heard about it when looking for alternatives to Windows Disk Management. It doesn't matter whether it's a recovery partition or any other data partition. You can easily expand the existing partition using unallocated space nonadjacent to it without affecting other partitions.

How to Extend C Drive without Deleting Recovery Partition

"Resize/Move" is the primary feature of Partition Master, which we continuously optimize for the best user experience. Apart from its straightforward operation, the partition management software resolves critical issues with the help of the following two groundbreaking technologies, thus outperforming its competitors.

1. Merge unallocated space to C drive which is not adjacent

This is exactly the same as the situation where "System drive cannot be extended due to the presence of recovery partition". Windows Disk Management cannot cope with unallocated space that is not contiguous. Users have to delete other relevant partitions to extend one, leading to data loss. With third-party software, this is not necessary. As long as there is unallocated space, no matter where it is located, no movement of the space is required.

2. Extend an existing partition without creating unallocated space

Another advanced feature is that the software doesn't require you to shrink other volumes to create unallocated space when there's none available; you can simply use the “Allocate Space” option to move free space from one partition to another, for example, from D to C, or from E to C, and so on.

It's very simple to merge the unallocated space to C drive with tools like Partition Master, even if it's blocked by the recovery partition. Just a few mouse clicks will do it.

Step 1: Locate the target partition

Launch the partition manager, find the target partition and select “Resize/Move”.

Step 2: Extend the target partition

Drag the partition to the right or left to add unallocated space to the current partition, and then click “OK” to confirm.

Select another disk to allocate space from

Extra option: Get space from another disk

If there isn't enough unallocated space, right-click a large partition with enough room and select “Allocate Space.”

Under “Allocate to,” select the partition you want to expand.

Get space from another drive

Step 3: Perform the operation to extend the partition.

Drag the partition with the bootable operating system to the unallocated space, and then click OK.

Click Run Task, and then click Apply to save all the changes.

Here, Partition Master also provides you a video guide for reference. Watch the guide and resize your partition accordingly.