I have a Windows 7 system and by mistake, I have created two partitions. I
would like to remove the added partition without doing damage to the original
partition. I have not been able to find information on this subject.
In the past, this required third-party tools, but as youâre using Windows
7, youâre in luck: everything that you need is already on your system.
Iâll show you, step by step and in video, how to remove that partition and how to recover the space that it occupied into the adjacent drive.
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Disk Management
The disk management tool thatâs always been a part of Windows was upgraded in Windows 7 to allow you to do exactly the kind of partition management task that youâre talking about.
Right-click âComputerâ â either the icon on your desktop, or the item in the Start menu â and click Manage:
(Iâve renamed âComputerâ on my machine to be the name of the machine â
âDemoMasterâ in this case â to help me keep all of my machines straight. 
)
In the Computer Management tool, click Disk Management:
The disk manager will show a representation of the physical drive:
As you can see, this particular drive has three partitions:
-
The âSystem Reservedâ partition where administration information is stored.
-
The âC:â partition, your system drive and typically the drive on which Windows is installed.
-
The âExample Partition (E:)â which is the partition that we want to get rid of.
Your computerâs disk will almost certainly be quite different, but the concepts here are the same.
Deleting the partition
Right-click the partition that you want to delete and click Delete VolumeâŠ
(Volume, in this scenario, is a Windows synonym for partition.)
Youâll get a warning:
Important: Deleting a volume or partition deletes all of the data thatâs inside of it. All of it. If thereâs any data in that partition that you want to keep, STOP! ⊠and back up that data first.
Click Yes when youâre ready to delete the partition and everything inside of it.
The partition becomes marked âUnallocatedâ:
Extending into the freed space
Right-click the immediately adjacent partition, the C: partition in our case, and click Extend VolumeâŠ
Thatâll bring up the Extend Volume Wizard:
Itâll list the available areas on the disk where you can add to the volume that youâre extending, or as in our case, itâll simply default to using all of the only available area.
All that you need to do is click Next and then Finish.
The result:
Next Steps
Before deleting that partition, you might want to put some thought into whether or not you might use it instead. Should I partition my hard disk? covers the issue; be sure to read the comments there for various points of view.
Youâll want to make sure that the data on your partitions is properly backed up. How do I backup my computer? has thoughts on what steps you might take.
Video
Transcript
Hello, everyone! This is Leo Notenboom for askleo.net.
Today, Iâm going to show you how to remove an extra partition on a hard drive using Windows 7.
We start by right-clicking on My Computer or whatever your computer happens to be named.
You would also find this on your Start menu as âComputerâ or âMy Computerâ; right-click on that and select âManageâ; select âDisk managementâ and here we can see on our hard drive, we actually have three partitions: our C: drive, the system reserved partition, and then this example partition Iâve created that we want to remove.
Itâs very simple. Itâs a two-step operation: select it to make it current; right-click on it and say âDelete volumeâ.
Now remember, any time youâre working with partition management tools, the risk of or in this case, you are explicitly erasing all of the data on those volumes or partitions; we definitely do want to delete all of the data here.
Now, we need to extend the existing C: drive into the space we just released. Youâll note that it only works because these two spaces are adjacent to each other. We right-click; we say âExtend volumeâ; we have selected the space thatâs available next to it; which happens to be the unallocated space; we say âNextâ; we say âFinishâ and now, all of a sudden, our C: drive has grown to encompass both of the original C: and E: drives, including space used by the partition we just deleted.
Thatâs it!
Iâm Leo Notenboom for askleo.net.
Actually, Windows XP has the âDelete Partitionâ option in the same place. As often is the case, Microsoft simply changed the name (âpartitionâ to âvolumeâ) to give the illusion of progress, like many other annoying changes they make from version to version of their software.
19-Oct-2011
And for those of us who donât have the newest version of windows, we must resort to gparted. I was actually surprised that windows got around to doing better at partitioning. The most it could do before 7 was delete partitions. Everything before it had a delete only way of doing this. Even now the 7 one can only do very basic partitioning, and its not on a livecd, so it can have issues with that also.
The partition I want to get rid of on my Dell XPS has no letter, itâs labelled RECOVERY 16.65 GB NTFS (System, Active, Primary Partition) and lies between a 39 MB (Healthy OEM) partition and my C drive. I have all the recovery and backup I need so I donât need Dellâs item. However, Delete Volume is greyed out â I presume because of the âActiveâ item. Could you fill me in on whatâs going on and how I can remove it please?
@Austin
It might be possible to delete the volume by booting from a Linux live CD and running gparted, Linuxâs partition manager.
http://ask-leo.com/how_do_i_resize_a_partition_in_windows_xp.html
For Austin â
Since, according to hypothesis, your Recovery Partition is undeletable because it is listed as Active, have you as yet attempted to render it Inactive, and if so with what success?
What I regret in this area:
Why is everybody speaking its individual language or two?
A volume should be a volume, a partition a part of a volume, etc. Not even thinking of drives, disks, and other âentitiesâ.
Why does MS now again mix volume and partition?
This doesnât help a lot to aid the (perhaps not so savvy) user âŠ..
Just in case anyone found this page when trying to find answers why âDelete Volumeâ would be greyed out:
in my case it was because there was a paging file on that drive, and I needed first to turn off that page file in âAdvanced system settingsâ for that drive.
Be careful in Win 7: Do not delete this partition if it is the System partition, else your computer wonât boot.