Why Extend Volume Grayed out and How to Quickly Fix It

When your C drive is running out of space, extending the volume can expand the C drive by merging the unallocated space (gotten by deleting a partition). However, some people may encounter the “extend volume greyed out” issue.

Why is extend volume grayed out? The causes may be as follows:

• No unallocated space on the disk. There is no solution for this case, unless you delete a partition.
• No adjacent unallocated space. There is an entity (usually a partition) blocking the volume from merging the unallocated space.
• The unallocated space is on the left of the partition to be extended.
• The partition to be extended is not NTFS or RAW.
• This disk is an MBR disk, and the unallocated space is beyond the 2TB.

How to solve the Disk Management extend volume greyed out issue? You can try the following solutions.

Fix 1. Extend Partition with MiniTool Partition Wizard – Free and Best

MiniTool Partition Wizard is a free partition manager that can extend and move/resize partitions. This software can extend a partition regardless of the location of the unallocated space. In addition, this software supports extending NTFS and FAT32 partitions. If you can’t extend the C drive, try this software.

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Here is how to extend a partition using this software.

Step 1: Launch MiniTool Partition Wizard. Right-click the partition that needs extending and select the Extend function.

Step 2: On the pop-up window, expand the Take Free Space from menu and select the unallocated space. Then, drag the slide bar to the right end to take the entire unallocated space. After that, click OK.

Step 3: Click Apply to execute the operation.

Fix 2. Move the Space via MiniTool Partition Wizard

Disk Management Extend Volume requires the unallocated space to be adjacent and located to the right of the partition to be extended. If the unallocated space is not in a suitable location, you can change it by moving partitions. MiniTool Partition Wizard can help you. Here is the guide:

Step 1: Launch MiniTool Partition Wizard. Right-click the partition whose location should be changed and then select Move/Resize. In my case, the D drive should be moved so that the unallocated space can be adjacent to the C drive.

Step 2: On the pop-up window, drag the partition block to the right end and click OK.

Step 3: Preview the changes. The unallocated space is adjacent to the C drive. Then, click Apply.

Fix 3. Delete the Blocking Partition

If there is a blocking partition between the volume to be extended and the unallocated space, you can delete the blocking partition. Here is the guide:

Step 1: Back up the data of the blocking partition. If there is no important file, skip this step.

Step 2: Delete the blocking partition in Disk Management. Then, you can try extending the partition again to see if the issue is solved.

If you find that the unallocated space is adjacent and located to the right of the partition to be extended, but the Disk Management extend volume greyed out issue still occurs, there should be a hidden MSR partition (Microsoft Reserved Partition) blocking between the volume and the unallocated space.

The MSR partition won’t be displayed in Disk Management. You need to check and delete that using DiskPart commands.

1. Press Win + R, type “diskpart”, and press Enter to open it.
2. Type “list disk” and press Enter.
3. Type “select disk *” and press Enter. * is the number of the disk where you want to extend the partition.
4. Type “list partition” and press Enter. Check if the Reserved partition is listed after the partition to be extended. If so, go to the next step.
5. Type “select partition #” and press Enter. # is the number of the Reserved partition.
6. Type “delete partition override” and press Enter. The MSR partition will be force deleted. Then, you can extend the partition normally.

Fix 4. Convert the Partition to NTFS

If the partition to be extended is an FAT32 partition, you can convert it to NTFS without data loss using commands. Here is the guide:

1. Open Command Prompt with administrator privileges.
2. Type “convert x: /fs: ntfs” and press Enter. X is the drive letter of the FAT32 partition. You need to replace it accordingly.

Then, you can extend the partition in Disk Management.

Fix 5. Convert the Disk to GPT Without Data Loss

If the extend volume greyed out issue is due to the MBR 2TB limitation, converting the disk to GPT without data loss can solve it.

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Now It’s Your Turn

Now it is your turn to check out the exact reason that is responsible for Extend Volume grayed out in Disk Management. In the same time, you can have a try on this free partition manager to extend partition flexibly.

For any questions towards using MiniTool software, don’t hesitate to contact us via [email protected].