How to Move Partition Volume

by Lance, Updated on: February 24, 2020

This article introduces how to move partitions on Windows 10/8/7/Vista/XP and Server 2019/2016/2012/2008/2003, move single/all partition volume easily.

To better use hard disk space, you should do some modification and management in certain time. Microsoft provides DiskPart command prompt and GUI Disk Management to do some basic operations such as create, delete, format partition and change drive letter. With 3rd-party software you can do much more operations such as resize, move, hide, set Active, label, copy, defrag, convert disk partition. In this article I'll show you how to move partition location inside a hard disk or to another disk.

How to move partition to the left/right on a hard disk

In daily usage, there's no need to move partition location. If the partitions on a disk is in disorder such as C, E, D, you can fix this issue by changing drive letters one by one to C, D, E.

The main reason why many people want to move partition is because that they cannot extend system partition after shrinking another one. Both Disk Management and diskpart command tools can only merge Unallocated space to the left contiguous partition. After moving partition D to the right, Unallocated space will be next to C drive, then Extend Volume will be enabled. To accomplish this task, you have to run third party software.

Steps to move partition D to the right on Windows PC and server:

  1. Download NIUBI Partition Editor, right click D: drive and select "Resize/Move Volume".
  2. Drag the middle position towards right in the pop-up window.
  3. Click Apply on top left to execute.

Then Unallocated space will be moved from right side of D to the left. To add Unallocated space to C drive: right click it and select "Resize/Move Volume" again, drag right border towards right in the pop-up window.

Video guide

If you want to merge Unallocated space to the right contiguous partition E, you can merge directly without moving partition or Unallocated space. However, if there's another nonadjacent drive F and you want to merge Unallocated space to it, you have to move partition E to the left firstly.

How to merge Unallocated space to E drive:

Expand E

How to move partition E to the left side:

Move E

How to move single partition to another hard disk

If you want to extend a data partition (such as D:) but there's not enough free space in other volumes on the same disk, then you can move this partition to another disk. Follow the steps to move single partition to another disk:

  1. (Optional) Shrink a volume on the other disk to get Unallocated space (equal or larger than the used space of drive D).
  2. Right click partition (D:) and select Copy Volume, select the Unallocated space in pop-up window.
  3. Edit the size, location and type of the target partition and click Finish.
  4. Right click partition D and select Change Drive Letter, change it to any other one.
  5. Change the drive letter of target partition to D.

After clicking Apply to take effect, all programs in original D drive will run from the new partition, then you can delete original D drive.

Video guide

How to move all partitions to another hard disk

If your system disk is small or if you want to move Operating System and programs from traditional HDD to SSD, follow the steps below to move all partitions to another disk:

  1. (Optional) Delete all partitions in the target disk (Remember to back up or transfer valuable files).
  2. Right click original disk (in the front) and select Clone Disk.
  3. Select the target disk and click Next.
  4. Edit the size and location of the target partitions and click Next. (Start from the last partition one by one)
  5. Click Apply to take effect.

Video guide

Besides moving partitions, NIUBI Partition Editor helps shrink, extend, merge, convert, hide, defrag, wipe, scan bad sectors and much more. To Windows 10/8/7/Vista/XP home computer users, there's free edition, which is 100% clean without any bundles.

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