How to Merge Non-adjacent Partitions in Windows 10

When building a brand new computer, we tend to partition a usually capacious HDD into more than two partitions, for distinct data classification. E.g., C drive is for system-oriented files, D drive is for personal archives, games, and downloads. Or, perhaps there is one more E or F drive.

It's acknowledged that computer owners can benefit from having several chunks for storing diversified types of data. Nevertheless, some occasions would push us to start over, to redefine the number of partitions, particularly after some time the C drive is running out space.

Are you thinking of a way to combine an almost full partition with an idle one? Or simply want to cut some useless partitions off? No problem, try to move partitions and merge into one.

Why you can't merge non-adjacent partitions in Windows 10

Windows Disk Management is an exclusive hard drive & partition management program. It features with the common manners of formatting, creating a new simple volume, extending/shrinking a volume, deleting a volume and changing a drive letter and paths.

Whenever there is unallocated space on the right side of the drive partition you want to expand, you can easily use the "Extend Volume" option to get it done. But the truth is, the real-life situation is far more complicated. In most cases, we don't have any unallocated space, nor the involved partitions are next to each other. As a result, the "Extend Volume" grayed out and totally disabled. 

In a word, it is available on condition that there is unallocated space between the two non-adjacent partitions. According to the drawing, for example, you can merge C drive and the neighboring unallocated space. However, you can't directly merge C drive with either D or E drive because they're not adjacent.

How would you react to such limitations and drawbacks of the native Windows tool being unable to add non-adjacent partitions to the C drive? In fact, there is a solution.

1. 1. To get the result of C+D, you must delete the D drive and turn it to unallocated space.
2. 2. While for C+E, you need to delete both D and E to form one massive unallocated partition, and then extend the C drive.

I recorded a gif picture to illustrate the process for your reference, but they're with different drive letters.

Let's draw a conclusion of what you're going to miss by using the inbuilt disk management software to handle two hard drive partitions that are not adjoining relationship.

• A total data loss while deleting a volume.
• A fixed region for the unallocated space. It has to be placed on the right side of the target partition you're going to modify its storage size.

Merge non-adjacent partitions in Windows 10 with EaseUS partition software

What's the difference? You might ask. Third-party partition manager software - EaseUS Partition Master is designed to make up for some shortcomings of the Disk Management. It goes 100% compatible with all Windows platforms, including Windows 10, and it provides customers with additional disk management features. You may explore its abilities by yourself after a minute install. The interesting highlights that make it a must-in-demand product mainly include "Migrate OS", "resize/move", "Wipe", "Hide", "Convert between MBR/GPT or Basic/Dynamic", and too many to present here.

The point is, instead of deleting all associated partitions and allocating the empty pace into one, you can directly use the "Merge" feature to gather two partitions into one. Since many of you would be interested in the difference between the two programs I cited on this page, here is a comparison table for you.

If you are one of those users who is attempting to extend partition with a non-adjacent or non-contiguous unallocated disk space rather than using the Windows management tool, carefully read the detailed steps.

Tip:

• If two partitions are separated by unallocated space, right-click on one partition (you want to keep) and select "Merge" > Select another partition and click "OK" > Keep all changes by clicking the "Execute Operation" button and "Apply".
• Whereas the partitions are disconnected by one or more data partitions, you can choose to delete either target partition and directly use the "Resize/Move" feature to combine the two together. See the detailed guide below.
• For your notice, deleting partitions is supposed to remove its data, back up the exact partition data before proceeding.

Step 1. Delete a partition.

Launch EaseUS Partition Master. On the main window, right-click on the partition that you want to merge with and select "Delete". Make sure that you want to delete the partition and click "OK". 

Step 2. Resize the target partition.

Right-click on the target partition that you need to add space to, select "Resize/Move".

Step 3. Extend the selected partition.

Drag the target partition handle into the unallocated space and click "OK".

Step 4. Preview the result.

Click the "Execute Operation" button and click "Apply" to keep all changes.

What else can EaseUS Partition Master do for you?

After a long scroll of this tutorial, you may find that EaseUS Partition Master tends to take care of data more tenderly, as well tries to simplify the complete process more intelligently. Other than merging non ajacent partitions in Windows 10 as instructed, it seems that people still concern the following questions. How is EaseUS going to solve those questions?

How do I merge unallocated partitions to C drive?

To merge unallocated space to C drive, you should place the unallocated space next to the C drive. Then, you can right-click on the C drive and choose "Resize/Move", drag the mouse pointer towards the unallocated space until all space being merged into the C drive. Click "OK" and then "Execute operation".

Can I combine two unallocated spaces?

For EaseUS Partition Master, it's quite easy to combine two unallocated spaces together to form a big one. You can directly use the feature of "merge partitions" or "Resize/Move". Either depends on how the unallocated spaces are aligned, continuous or not.

How to merge partitions on two hard disks

Is that all you can do to join two or three drives as one? As a matter of fact, there is another group of advanced users who demand to merge a drive on disk 0 to a drive on disk 1. It's a combination of across disks. The detailed guide is on the linked page, and here's a standard operation for you to follow:

• Convert to Dynamic disk if the current hard drive status is Basic. (The information is visible in the software interface)
• Locate the drive on one disk and merge it with the other.