Windows has removed the “Extend Volume” option. Check These Five Fixes

Are you looking to make a larger volume or partition of your PC, but Windows Disk Management has made the option “Extend Volume” unavailable? This article will explain why it happens and the steps you should take to rectify it.

Microsoft Windows Disk Management Console allows you easily to increase or decrease the size of your volume. However, what happens if you don’t see the option to extend volume?

It could be due to one of several reasons. Learn how to resolve the grayed out extend volume issue in Windows 10 or 11.

The “Extend Volume” option seems grayed out

These reasons can cause the “Extend Volume” option to a SSD or hard drive in Disk Management Tool to appear greyed:

• You have no space left unallocated on your disk.
• You will not find the unallocated disk storage directly below the volume that you wish to expand.
• You cannot extend the drive partition that you are trying to expand in NTFS or ReFS.
• This disk is based on the MBR (Master Boot Record), older partitioning scheme.

Disk Management limitations are the main reason for most of these problems. You may not find the above troubleshooting steps too complex, so you might skip the section about how to use a third party partitioning tool. This will allow you to increase the partition size.

1. Design contiguous unallocated space

When there is no unallocated space on your SSD or hard drive, the most common reason that you will see “Extend Volume” grayed out in Disk Management console. This is storage that you haven’t formatted with a filesystem.

Disk Management may indicate unallocated disk storage on its graphic representation. The “Extend Volume” grayed option will still be grayed unless you have the space to your right of what volume you wish to extend.

Let’s say, for example, that your computer contains two partitions C and D drive letters. Send letters if you wish to extend C drive, you must delete D Use drive drive to allocate drive space. Disk Management offers the “Shrink Volume” option D Driving won’t make sense because D Driving will be a barrier between you and your destination C Drive and any unallocated space that results.

You can delete a partition to create space that is not allocated:

1. All data from the partition should be copied to an alternate volume or external hard drive.
2. Click the right-click on Disk Management to select Volumes or Partitions Delete Volume.
3. Select Yes to confirm.

The partition will now appear as unallocated. You will be able to extend the volume without difficulty into the remaining unallocated area.

2. You can delete the Recovery Partition

Another reason Disk Management may appear grayed is the presence of a Recovery Partition between the volume that you wish to expand and unallocated space.

We recommend against deleting the recovery partition as it helps to restore your computer in an emergency. If you still want to proceed, however, the DiskPart command line tool can be used via Windows PowerShell and the Command Prompt console.

But, be sure to Create a USB flash drive or USB bootable Windows recovery disc Instead, protect your computer from operating system corruptions and data loss.

1. Right-click the Start button and select Windows PowerShell (Admin). cmd.exe Enter the Start menu Choose and Run as administrator.
2. Select Yes On the UAC Pop-up.
3. The following commands are to be run in succession.

• diskpart: Laden the DiskPart utility.
• list disk: List all of the hard drives on your computer.
• select disk [number]: You can select the partition with which you wish to delete the recovery partition, and replace [number] by the disk number.
• list partition: Get a list of all the partitions on your drive.
• select partition [number]: You can select the recovery partition by replacing “number” with its partition number.
• delete partition override: You can delete the recovery partition.
• Select the desired partition by right-clicking it in Disk Management Format.
• Set File System to NTFS Click on the Format Dialog.
• Select OK.
• Right-click to insert the disk Disk Management and select Properties.
• Change to the Volumes tab.
• Next to the box, check out Partition style To determine whether it is using the GPT partition scheme or the MBR.
• Resize Partition: Resize Partition You have the option of increasing the partition size by using space not yet allocated to your left or right.
• Merge Partition: : Join a partition that has not been allocated space on your drive. This option can be used to combine two partitions.
• Allocate Free Space: Free space in a partition can be assigned to an additional drive.
• Convert to GPT: Legacy BIOS can be converted to UEFI by hand,, though.