How to Merge Non-adjacent Partitions in Windows 11/10

When building a new computer, we often partition an 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. Perhaps, there is one more E or F drive.

Most of the users would create four partitions on the computer. While some occasions would push us to start over, to redefine the number of partitions, particularly after the C drive is running out of space.

Are you thinking of a way to combine an almost full partition with an idle one? Or want to cut some useless partitions off? No problem, on this page, we will tell you how to move and merge partitions.

Why You Can't Merge Unallocated Space in Windows 11/10

Windows Disk Management is a hard drive & partition management program. Sometimes, you want to extend a partition with unallocated space but find that the "Extend Volume" option is greyed out. Why would this happen?

Whenever there is unallocated space on the right side of the partition you want to expand, you can apply the "Extend Volume" function to get it done. But 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" option is disabled.

In a word, whether the Extended Volume is available depends on whether there is an unallocated space between two non-adjacent partitions. According to the drawing, for example, you can merge C drive and the unallocated space, but you can't directly merge C drive with either D or E drive because they're not adjacent.

2 Ways to Merge Non-adjacent Partitions in Windows 11/10

There are two methods available for users to merge unallocated space, one is to use Disk Management, and the other is to apply a third-party tool - Qiling Partition Master. Both the two methods are easy to operate, you can choose the one that suits you the best.

Here is a comparison table that can help you to decide which tool suits your needs the most:

Comparison	Qiling Partition Master	Disk Management
Data Safety	Merge contiguous partitions: data retains Merge non-contiguous partitions: partial data loss	Merge contiguous/non-contiguous partitions: either case would cause a total data loss
Unallocated Space Location	No requirements	Placing on the right side of the target partition

Comparison

Qiling Partition Master

Disk Management

Data Safety

Merge contiguous partitions: data retains

Merge non-contiguous partitions: partial data loss

Merge contiguous/non-contiguous partitions: either case would cause a total data loss

Unallocated Space Location

No requirements

Placing on the right side of the target partition

How to Extend Non-adjacent Partitions with Disk Management

Windows Disk Management features with the manners of formatting, creating a new simple volume, extending/shrinking a volume, deleting a volume, and changing a drive letter and paths. If you want to merge non-adjacent partitions with Disk Management, you need to delete one drive first. Let's take the above drawing as an example.

1. To get the result of C+D, you must delete the D drive and turn it into unallocated space.

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 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 11/10 with Qiling Partition Software

Third-party partition manager software - Qiling Partition Master is designed to make up for some shortcomings of the Disk Management. It goes 100% compatible with all Windows platforms and provides customers with additional disk management features. The highlights that make it a must-in-demand product mainly include "Migrate OS", "resize/move", "Wipe", "Hide", "Convert between MBR/GPT or Basic/Dynamic", etc. 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.

For users who want to merge non-adjacent partitions, there are three common conditions. You can apply Qiling Partition Master in all cases. Download and launch the software on your computer. We will introduce the detailed steps one by one.

Free Download

#1 Case: Merge Two Non-adjacent Partitions with Unallocated Space

If you want to merge C drive and D drive, please do following step.

Step 1. Backup D drive with "File backup" option

Step 2. Delete D drive

Step 3. Extend C drive

To start extending C drive, you should first select C drive that want to adjust its size and select "Resize/Move" in the "Disk management" page.

To extend the C drive, drag your mouse into the unallocated space and click "Proceed" to start resize the partition.

Step 4. Restore D drive to C drive with "file recovery"

#2 Case: Only Merge the Free Space of the Resource Partition

If you want to merge C drive and the free space of E drive

Step 1. shrink E drive

Select the E drive that want to adjust its size and select "Resize/Move" in the "Disk management" page.

To shrink the E drive, simply drag one of its head to free up unallocated space and click "Proceed" to start resize the partition.

Step 2. Extend C drive

To start extending C drive, you should first select C drive that want to adjust its size and select "Resize/Move" in the "Disk management" page.

To extend the C drive, drag your mouse into the unallocated space and click "Proceed" to start resize the partition.

you can refer to this page: Combine Partitions in Windows 11/10.

Now download the software and follow the guide below to merge non-adjacent partitions.

Free Download

What else can Qiling Partition Master do for you?

After a long scroll of this tutorial, you may find that Qiling Partition Master tends to take care of data more tenderly, as well tries to simplify the complete process more intelligently. Other than merging non-adjacent partitions in Windows 11/10 as instructed, it seems that people still concern about the following questions. How is Qiling going to solve those questions?

Free Download

How do I merge unallocated partitions to C drive?

To merge unallocated space to the C drive, you don't need to place the unallocated space next to the C drive like the traditional way. You can click on the C drive and choose "Resize/Move", drag the mouse pointer until all space being merged into the C drive. Click "Proceed".

Can I combine two unallocated spaces?

For Qiling Partition Master, it's quite easy to combine two unallocated spaces to form a big one. You can directly use the feature of "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:

1. Convert to Dynamic disk if the current hard drive status is Basic. (The information is visible in the software interface)

2. Locate the drive on one disk and merge it with the other.