Extending disks is a great way to extend hard drive space on virtual machines where you usually don’t want to over-allocate your precious disk space, even more true with today’s AI-inflated prices on mechanical and SSD hard drives.
If you extended your Disk in a hypervisor and try to use Disk Management to extend the disk and happen to have a Recovery Partition (pic below) you will discover that you can’t extend your partition. You can’t extend your partition when unallocated disk space and your partition have a Recovery Partition squeezed in – in the “middle” (pic below).
If you try to remove the Recovery Partition in Disk Management you will soon discover that you can’t.
Use DISKPART
Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) is a good program but we can’t do everything there. The tool to use is DISKPART, a program that’s been with us since Windows 2000.
In my guide below I do everything in diskpart but after the deletion of the recovery partition (step #7) you could exit diskpart and extend the partition in Disk Management.
Commands I use are highlighted and my comments are behind #number.
#1. Run Command Prompt (cmd) as administrator
#2. Run DISKPART from cmd - type diskpart and press enter
Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.20348.5139]
(c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
C:\Windows\system32>diskpart
Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.20348.1
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: GILLTEST
#3. In DISKPART type "list disk" to show all disks
DISKPART> list disk
Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 130 GB 30 GB
Disk 1 Online 260 GB 1024 KB
#4. Select your disk with "select disk number", in this case "select disk 0"
DISKPART> select disk 0
Disk 0 is now the selected disk.
#5. List partitions with "list part"
DISKPART> list part
Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Primary 100 MB 1024 KB
Partition 2 Primary 99 GB 101 MB
Partition 3 Recovery 523 MB 99 GB
#6. Select Recovery Partition, in this case Partition 3 but can be any number, so be sure to select correct partition. - "select partition 3"
DISKPART> select partition 3
Partition 3 is now the selected partition.
#7. Delete selected partition with "delete partition override"
DISKPART> delete partition override
DiskPart successfully deleted the selected partition.
#8. Here I just double check that everything is correct and list partitions so I know which one I want to extend - "list partition"
DISKPART> list partition
Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Primary 100 MB 1024 KB
Partition 2 Primary 99 GB 101 MB
#9. Select the partition you want to extend
DISKPART> select partition 2
Partition 2 is now the selected partition.
#10. Extend selected partiton with "extend", this command will use all available space available on the selected disk
DISKPART> extend
DiskPart successfully extended the volume.
#11. list partition and you will see the new size of your partition
DISKPART> list partition
Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Primary 100 MB 1024 KB
* Partition 2 Primary 129 GB 101 MB
#12. Exit DISKPART with the command exit
DISKPART> exit
Leaving DiskPart...
C:\Windows\system32>
#-------------------------------------------------
#Everything again but without my comments
#-------------------------------------------------
Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.20348.5139]
(c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
C:\Windows\system32>diskpart
Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.20348.1
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: GILLTEST
DISKPART> list disk
Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 130 GB 30 GB
Disk 1 Online 260 GB 1024 KB
DISKPART> select disk 0
Disk 0 is now the selected disk.
DISKPART> list part
Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Primary 100 MB 1024 KB
Partition 2 Primary 99 GB 101 MB
Partition 3 Recovery 523 MB 99 GB
DISKPART> select partition 3
Partition 3 is now the selected partition.
DISKPART> delete partition override
DiskPart successfully deleted the selected partition.
DISKPART> list partition
Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Primary 100 MB 1024 KB
Partition 2 Primary 99 GB 101 MB
DISKPART> select partition 2
Partition 2 is now the selected partition.
DISKPART> extend
DiskPart successfully extended the volume.
DISKPART> list partition
Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Primary 100 MB 1024 KB
* Partition 2 Primary 129 GB 101 MB
DISKPART> exit
Leaving DiskPart...
C:\Windows\system32>
