Partitions were created when installing Operating System or by server manufacturer, but you need to repartition hard drive after running the server for a period of time. The typical example is that C drive is getting full. To help solve this problem, Microsoft provides Extend Volume function in native Disk Management from Server 2008. Windows Server 2016 inherited the same function without any improvement. Many server administrators feedback that they cannot extend volume in Server 2016 with Disk Management, because Extend Volume is greyed out. This article introduces the reasons why you are unable to extend volume in Windows Server 2016 Disk Management and how to solve this problem easily.
1. Why cannot extend volume in Server 2016 after shrinking another one
A 500GB disk can't be increased to 1TB (except virtual disk), so before extending a partition, you must delete or shrink another one to get Unallocated space. Disk Management has Shrink Volume function to decrease partition size and make Unallocated space. Many people shrunk partition D (or E) successfully, but they found that they cannot extend C drive in Windows 2016 server.
This is because:
- Extend Volume function can only add Unallocated space to the left contiguous partition.
- Shrink Volume can only make Unallocated space on the right.
As you see in the screenshot, after shrunk D: drive, I got 20GB Unallocated space on the right of D. This space is non-adjacent to C drive and is on the left of E, so Extend Volume is disabled to both partitions.
This is the most common reason why you cannot extend volume in Windows Server 2016 Disk Management. To solve this problem, if you want to extend system C drive, you need to move Unallocated space behind C drive in advance.
Steps when you cannot extend volume in Windows Server 2016 after shrinking:
- Download NIUBI Partition Editor, right click D: drive and select "Resize/Move Volume", drag the middle of D towards right in the pop-up window. Then Unallocated space will be moved next to C: drive.
- Right click C: drive and select "Resize/Move Volume" again, drag right border towards right to combine this Unallocated space.
- Click Apply on top left to execute.
NIUBI Partition Editor is designed to work in virtual mode, real disk partition won't be modified until you click Apply to confirm. If you did something wrong, simply click "Undo" to cancel. The pending operations that marked as 
can be done without rebooting server.
Watch the video how to operate:
2. Why cannot extend partition in Windows Server 2016 after deleting
Because Disk Management is unable to extend partition C after shrinking D, some people tried to delete D instead, but Extend Volume is still disabled. There are 2 common reasons why you are unable to extend volume in Windows Server 2016 via Disk Management after deleting.
① Extend Volume function only supports extending NTFS and RAW (no file system) partition, FAT32 and any other types of partition can't be extended even if there is adjacent Unallocated space on the right side.
② The partitions to be deleted and extended are different. On MBR disk, Free space that deleted from a Logical drive can't be extended to any Primary partition. Unallocated space can't be extended to any Logical drives.
When you are unable to extend volume in Windows Server 2016 because of non-supported FAT32 partition or the restriction between Primary and Logical partition, simply drag and drop to resize partition with NIUBI Partition Editor. Follow the steps in the video:
3. Why cannot extend volume past 2TB in Windows Server 2016
To a server, it is very common to use 2TB to 4TB single disk or over 10TB RAID array. If you initialized a disk as MBR, only 2TB disk space can be used. The remaining space is shown as Unallocated, it can't be used to create new volume or extend other partition.
As the screen shot shows, drive H is NTFS and there is contiguous Unallocated space on the right, but Disk Management still cannot extend this partition.
When you cannot extend partition past 2TB in Windows Server 2016: convert disk from MBR to GPT in advance, then you can extend partition with Unallocated space easily. Watch the video how to do this:
In Summary
When you cannot extend volume in Windows Server 2016 Disk Management, find out the reason according to your own disk partition structure, then follow the corresponding solution above. Besides shrinking, moving and extending partitions, NIUBI Partition Editor helps you merge, copy, convert, defrag, wipe, hide partition, scan bad sectors and much more. It is much faster than other tools because of its advanced file-moving algorithm. The most important, it has unique 1-Second Rollback, Virtual Mode and Cancel-at-will technologies to protect your system and data.
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