What should I do if I have a C and D drive on my laptop and am running out of space on C?

Sometimes computers have two drive partitions for factory install of software or the computer was set-up that way by mistake. It is not uncommon for our users to run into this issue with Windows 10. Especially if they had previously upgraded from Windows 8.1 or an earlier version.  It is also possible your computer has two separate physical drives. In that case the steps below won’t work. If however your drive is one physical drive that is partitioned into multiple this should do the trick. BEFORE you do this you will want to back-up any data that you may need from D: first. If you want to expert help to make sure this is done right give us a call at 800-935-6704 and one of our friendly technicians will take care of it for you.

1. Open the Disk Management tool using one of these methods:
   1. Press the Windows + R keys on your keyboard and type “diskmgmt.msc” into the Run window. Click the OK button to launch the Disk Management tool.
   2. Press the Windows + X keys on your keyboard and choose the “Disk Management” option from the context menu.
   3. Open the File Explorer and right-click on “This PC,” then navigate to Manage → Computer Management → Storage → Disk Management.
2. Locate the volumes you want to combine and select one of them which you will delete. For example, when merging the C: and D: partitions, you want to delete whichever doesn’t have Windows 10’s system files on it.
3. Right-click on the partition you’re deleting and click “Delete Volume.”

Warning: The data from this partition will be deleted. Once again, make sure to create a backup of your files if you want to keep them.

1. After the volume is deleted, right-click on your system partition and select “Extend Volume.”
2. Follow the on-screen instructions and merge the two partitions together by using the now unallocated space.