How to Resize Partition in Windows 8, 8.1 without Losing Data?

Need to resize system partition in Windows 8

“My Dell laptop has 30GB in C drive, but it only has little free space now and I always receive low disk space warning. I wonder how to enlarge Windows 8 system (C) partition without reinstalling the operating system? My D drive has more than 50GB of free space, so I decide to allocate some space to the system drive from drive D. How can achieve that? Any help is appreciated!”

As the above user, most of you resize disk partition on Windows 8 or 8.1 with the purpose of extending system drive especially when the c drive is running out of disk space and pops out “low disk space” warning. In addition, if there is only one partition (C drive) on your Windows 8, you have to install Win 8 operating system and other personal data on the same partition. Thus, you may also want to change partition size in Windows 8 to create more than one partition to manage different types of data.

Resize partition via Windows 8 Disk Management

No matter you want to shrink or extend the partition in Windows 8 or Windows 8.1, you can make use of Windows 8 Disk Management.

Step 1. Right-click “Computer” on Windows 8 desktop. Then, you can click “Manage” and click “Disk Management”.

Step 2. In Disk Management, you will see all partitions on the computer. To get some free space for extending the partition, right-click the partition with enough unused space and choose “Shrink Partition”.

Step 3. Enter the amount of space you want to shrink and click the “Shrink” button.

Step 4. You can get some unallocated space when the shrinking is completed. With the unallocated space, you can create a new partition.

Please Note:
① The unallocated space from shrinking another partition can only be merged into the partition on its adjacent left side (namely, the donor partition). If the partition you want to extend is not contiguous to the unallocated space, you have to delete the partition between the unallocated space and the target partition.
② Disk Management cannot move partition to another location.
③“Extend Volume” and "Shrink Volume" can only extend partition formatted with the NTFS file system. FAT32 and other types of partitions can't be extended even if there's right contiguous unallocated space.

Due to the limitations of Disk Management, users usually fail to resize the partition finally. Because deleting the partition will remove everything on the target partition, so it is not a good idea to delete partitions between the unallocated space and the to-be-extended partition.

Freeware to resize partition Windows 8/8.1 without data loss 

If you fail to resize partition, especially extending system drive via Windows 8 Disk Management, you can switch to a free partition manager-AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. This freeware is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 10/8.1/8/7 and Windows XP/Vista. It is more versatile and powerful than Disk Management, being able to:

★Merge nonadjacent unallocated space into the target partition to extend it;

★Resize (shrinking and extending) both NTFS and FAT32 partition;

★Move partition to change the location of unallocated space.

To extend partition in Windows 8 or 8.1, the “Merge Partition” feature is highly recommended because it can directly add unallocated space (no matter where it is located on the disk) into the destination partition. Specific steps are listed below. The demonstration is based on the condition where there is unallocated space available. If there is no such space in your situation, you need to get one by shrinking partition first of all.

Step 1. Download, install and launch this free partition manager. Right-click the partition you wish to extend and choose “Advanced” and select “Merge Partition”.

Step 2. In this window, tick the unallocated space and click “OK”.

Step 3. Back to the main interface, click “Apply” to commit the pending operation.

See, three steps can help extend the system drive without formatting or losing data. Besides, you can also first use the “Resize/Move Partition” feature to make the unallocated space next to the target partition, and then extend volume.

If you upgrade to AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional, you can more easily to resize partition in Windows 8 or Windows 8.1. Its “Allocate Free Space” can directly assign some free space from one partition to another (only 3 steps, quite easy) while keeping data safe. In addition, its “Extend Partition Wizard” can extend NTFS system drive without rebooting.

Summary

So, now you are sure to know how to resize partition Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 without losing data. You can easily extend system partition without formatting or reinstalling OS with AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. If you want to resize partition in Windows Server 2019/2016/2012/2008/20003, you can try AOMEI Partition Assistant Server.