How Do I Extend a Volume without Converting to Dynamic on Windows?

Can’t extend a volume without converting to dynamic

"I have a large HDD where there’s a 500GB partition with all my data and 1TB of free unallocated space. However, when I now try to extend this volume to use all the unallocated space, Windows Disk management won’t let me do so unless I create a dynamic disk which I’m unwilling to. So, is there any way around this?"

Overview of the dynamic disk

The basic disk and the dynamic disks are 2 types of hard drive configurations and both of them support MBR and GPT partition tables. However, compared to the basic disk, the dynamic disk supports various volumes like simple volume, spanned volume, striped volume, mirrored volume, and RAID-5 volume that make your disk management much more flexible. Another big advantage of the dynamic volume is that when you want to extend it in Disk Management, the unallocated space doesn’t have to be right next to it.

However, there’re also shortcomings coming with the dynamic disk. For example, the dynamic disk doesn’t support multi-boot and some users respond that they fail to install Windows on a dynamic disk. What’s worse, once you convert a basic disk to a dynamic one, you cannot revert it back to a basic disk before deleting all volumes. Thus, this is the reason why some people don’t want a dynamic disk on their computers.

How to extend a basic disk without converting to dynamic?

When issues like C drive full happen, your computer can become literally slow and sluggish, and in this case, a basic volume extension becomes necessary. Many people choose to apply Windows built-in Disk Management to get it done as it provides a "Extend volume" option. However, sometimes, they might be prompted with a warning "The operation you selected will convert the selected basic disk(s) to dynamic disk(s)…" during a partition extension.

Then, why does the warning appear?

Generally speaking, in Disk Management, if you want to extend a volume, the unallocated space you want to extend with must be contiguous. Or else, the "Extend volume" option will usually be greyed out. But according to some users, due to the different versions of Windows OS, they don’t encounter the "greyed out" issue and instead, are prompted with the warning mentioned above because once you convert a basic disk to a dynamic one, you can extend a volume regardless of the position of the unallocated space.

As there’re some unacceptable shortcomings with the dynamic disk, many users are unwilling to perform the conversion but still wish to find a way to extend their partitions when the unallocated space is not adjacent. So, how to extend a volume without converting to dynamic on Windows 11, 10, 8, and 7? Luckily, under this circumstance, you can try AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard to merge a partition/volume with unallocated space without being concerned about whether they’re adjacent and converting to dynamic.

Download the freeware to extend a volume without creating a dynamic disk.

Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. Right-click on the partition you want to extend, choose “Advanced” and select “Merge Partition”.

Step 2. Select the unallocated space you want to extend the partition to and hit "OK".

Step 3. After returning to the home interface, hit "Apply" on the upper left to commit the operation.

After the disk merging is complete, check whether the partition’s storage space is added.

Other ways to fix insufficient space on a volume

There’re also some other fixes to the insufficient partition space issue. Here, I listed the top 2 of them.

Option 1. Allocate free space

By upgrading AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard to its professional edition, another more practical feature – free space allocation – is available. With it, you can add free space from one partition to another directly.

1. Right-click on the source drive and select "Allocate Free Space".

2. Preset the amount of free space you want to allocate and select the destination drive. After that, click on "OK".

3. Hit "Apply" to make the changes.

Option 2. Move apps to another drive

Usually, your partition gets full simply due to too many installed apps. In this case, you might as well consider moving them to another drive to free up space. People may first think of the copy-paste method first but in this method, important files like boot files may get lost during the operation which makes your app unbootable. With AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional’s new feature – app mover – you can accomplish this operation without any data loss and boot/load issues.

Conclusion

How to extend a volume without converting to dynamic? A powerful third-party user-friendly app – AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard - is introduced in the contents above and hopefully, after going through the step-by-step guide, you’re clear about how to get it done. More than partition extension, other features including NTFS to FAT32 conversion, partition moving, and disk defrag are supported as well by this software.