How to Extend the Primary Boot C Drive Partition - Extend Option Grayed Out [duplicate]

Question

I see the "Extend Partition" option is grayed out in the Disk Management tool and as far as I can understand I need to move my data to another drive and change the drive letters.

This is something I cannot do right now as I don't have an additional disk at hand and the remaining disk space on the free partition is less than the drive I need to copy.

After installing the demo version of third-party tools I noticed this operation is possible but I didn't purchase the full version as I thought that if they can do it without moving this data, I might be able to also.

This is what I am asking. What needs to be done in order to accomplish this task?

And because a picture is worth a thousand words I will post the technical details here:

OS Version: Windows 10

Answer 1

There are free tools that should do this, one is Easus Partition Master free: https://www.easeus.com/partition-manager/epm-free.html

Resize/move partition EaseUS Partition Master helps to resize/move partitions to make full use of disk space especially extend system drive (C drive) to settle low disk space problem

Follow steps below to resize/move partition:

1. Right click the partition and select Resize/Move partition
2. On a disk map, current size of the partition is displayed on the top of the dialog box
3. Resize the partition from the left or right side to a desired new size 4 And then click OK

(You can find the full user guide here: https://www.easeus.com/tutorial/epm-free-user-guide.html)

I've used this on different Windows OSes to resize partitions with success and while I've never lost data with the Easus tool, any modification to your disk like this can result in data loss or corruption. You should back up Windows before doing this.
I think this is outside the original question, but here's a link for backing up Windows 10: https://www.faqforge.com/windows/windows-10/take-full-backup-windows-10-on-an-external-hard-drive/ You will need an external hard drive or writeable DVD drive to use this procedure.

1. Type 'Control Panel' in the search bar and then press .

2. In System and Security, click "Save backup copies of your files with File History".

3. Click on "System Image Backup" in the bottom left corner of the window.

4. Click on the button "Create a system image".

5. Choose your hard drive and click Next.

6. Click "Start backup" to start the backup process.

The backup wizard could take from 10 minutes to several hours, depending on the amount of data that needs to be backed up and the speed of the hard disk.