Moving partitions without paying a fee? (W11)

[fastfishy2]

I cloned my 512gb SSD onto a 2tb SSD to use as my boot drive and it's all gone off without a hitch, however, I can't merge my existing storage space (C:) with the huge amount of unallocated extra space and I don't want to keep them as separate partitions. Windows has, per this picture, put a couple of small partitions between them which I can't seem to move, and won't let me expand (C:) if they aren't sitting next to one another.

 

I tried EaseUS for moving the partitions and, while it can do it, they want me to pay for the privilege. Given that I'm only doing this once, I refuse to do so.

 

Are there any decent free (and safe) software that I can use for this purpose? 

[fastfishy2]

UPDATE: NIUBI Partition Manager was able to do it for free.

[BuggedCookie]

Oh my-

The reason this is happening it's because the unallocated part isn't besides your (OS) C drive


There's no 100% safe options as anything could happens but I would say that usually extending should (in theory) be safe, but again, anything could happens.


I would say that GParted works pretty well but it's Linux only, you could always create a bootable usb with something like Linux Mint since it's easy too use and usually very visual (and GParted comes preinstalled with it)

For that you would need a minimum 4Gb USB, then make it bootable using something like Rufus or Balena Etcher
Then boot on that USB, go for Linux Mint then use GParted (carefully) to move your partitions around
There's tons of tutorial for all of that

I also think you might be able to do it with diskpart? (Diskpart is from windows itself no need for installation) I'm not sure but it's via command line and you must know how to do it correctly, and again I'm not just if it's doable via diskpart


The best solution for you I think is this post:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/cant-merge-unallocated-space/316497b2-9ff7-4ea1-97ef-1d553911c033


I would say use the AOMEI Partition assistant (recommended from the post on top), which is a very visual and easy to use tool

I never tried it but it seems legit and pretty good and visual !

[Thomas53]

You can use GParted with Windows with no problems. While its a Linux application, if you go to their website you can download a Bootable ISO or you can do a Live Boot with most Linux Distros and then go into GParted and go from there.

 

I strongly recommend that you go to GParted's website itself to get the download itself and read up on the process, although it's fairly easy.

[ewitte]

You likely don't need that "RESTORE" partition either.  Just keep the old drive until your done with all this in case you need to clone again.