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I installed Windows 7 ultimate, and I installed it on C partition, but I left a huge amount of unallocated space (490Gb). Now, I want to create simple storage partition, but I cannot do it with Disk Management.

HP Probook is my laptop. And sorry for not having normal screenshots.

Here's the issue:

1) This is how MyComputer looks like. The HP partitions was there by default:

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2) This is my Disk Partition Management. You can see how I have as certain amount of unallocated space.

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3) I use right click > New volume > and then in the Wizard I choose the following:

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4) This is the final step of the wizard, everything looks fine:

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5) And then, it pops out this dialog box: I press Yes:

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6) After I press Yes, it gives me an error: No matter what size I choose, I tried maximum amount, I tried 15Gb, 300Gb... always the same:

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What should I do? But, can I do it somewhere without installing 3rd party software.

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  • You will need to use a third-party tool to do this. How did you create unalloacate space in the middle of the drive anyways? Why don't you just extend the system partition?
    – Ramhound
    Commented Mar 26, 2014 at 13:16
  • What tool should I use for this? I don't want to extend the system partition because I want to have two - one for OS and one for the storage. If something goes wrong sometimes, just not to loose data.
    – user3244442
    Commented Mar 26, 2014 at 13:26
  • You do understand all 4 partitins is one single hdd right? If somethign goes wrong your data is gone regardless if the data is on its own partition or not.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Mar 26, 2014 at 13:29
  • Yes. You got a point, but I got used to two partitions. And if this isn't feasible, then I should do it like you said. So you tell me it is better to have one partition than two?
    – user3244442
    Commented Mar 26, 2014 at 13:32
  • 1
    The problem you have isn't a trivial problem.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Mar 26, 2014 at 13:55

1 Answer 1

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Ramhound is confusing you. There's in fact nothing strange about having unallocated space where you have it. And a third-party tool won't do you any good here.

You've hit the limit — 4 — on the number of primary partitions that can exist in an MBR-style partition table. Your primary partitions are:

  1. Your Poor Man's system volume, which you've confusingly labelled "BOOT". (Disk Manager says "System" underneath, notice.)
  2. An OEM recovery partition.
  3. Your Windows boot volume, which Ramhound is confusingly calling your system volume. (Disk Manager says "Boot" underneath, notice.)
  4. An OEM tools partition, in this case the infamous "HP TOOLS" partition.

Your choices are:

  1. Install a second hard disc, if possible.
  2. Delete one of the primary partitions. The boot and system volumes are necessary. That leaves choosing between a recovery partition that some people favour keeping because one might lose recovery discs and a tools partition that some people favour keeping because one can at least make removable recovery discs.
  3. … and make a primary partition for your data partition.
  4. … and make an extended partition and create your data partition as a secondary partition within that data partition.
  5. Switch to the EFI partitioning scheme, which has a far higher (default) limit and none of the primary/secondary partition nonsense. You'll have to reconfigure the machine to bootstrap in the EFI way and reinstall Windows. There are third party utilities that can convert from the MBR partitioning scheme to the EFI partitioning scheme non-destructively. In their absence, you will also have to backup all of your partitions, create a fresh EFI partition table, re-create the partitions, and restore from backups. Even with them, you'll have to change your Poor Man's system partition into a proper system partition, which involves moving the system BCD Store to its expected location on the latter (from its different location on the former) and reformatting the volume as FAT.

What Disk Manager is doing here, by the way, is trying to convert your disc from "Basic" to "Dynamic". It's failing because the conversion process needs space set aside for the various logical volume management data structures. You don't have the free space to put an LDM Metadata volume at the end of your disc. So conversion to a "Dynamic" disc fails.

Further reading

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  • Thank you very very much. This is the answer which I will forward to some of my friends always having problems with this. I deleted HP TOOL partition, and everything is wonderful. Hope I won't need it sometime :D
    – user3244442
    Commented Mar 26, 2014 at 14:54

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