Raid 0 question, combining separate volumes on the same partition.

nofxthepirate · July 19, 2016

I have an Asus G750JH-DB71 which I have owned now for over 2 years. These are the specs in case it is relevant, or just for fun: https://www.amazon.com/G750JH-17-Inch-Gaming-Laptop-VERSION/dp/B00EZ8BJNK

Here is a reference screenshot for the next part because I feel I might be explaining it badly (things can get confusing when you're talking about physical and virtual drives or just don't know the proper terms):

My laptop has two 128 GB SSDs configured in RAID 0 as a boot drive with my OS installed on it. Asus did it, I don't know much of anything about RAID 0 besides the very basics of how it works. The laptop also has a 1 TB HDD for storage. When I got the laptop the HDD was split into 2 volumes of 465 GB each which I combined into one volume (D Drive in the reference picture). I was okay with doing this at the time because both volumes were empty and I knew it was one physical drive anyway. I never really payed attention to how the Raid 0 disk was set up because it was split into several volumes including a recovery partition and I didn't want to mess anything up. I only use it for the OS and basic programs and never though I'd need the space anyway. However, there has always been a 122 GB drive that was completely unused (F Drive on the reference picture). It says 100% available but in the properties it says 145 MB used. I don't really know why it says that, but there's definitely no files in it. Now 2 years later I have 4 GB left on the main drive (C Drive on the reference picture) and noticed the 120 GB drive is part of the same partition as the one my OS is on but it isn't next to it on the disk management interface.

My question is this (AKA TL;DR): Can I delete the empty 120 GB volume and extend the main drive (the 95.05 GB one) to include it without risking my OS or any of the programs there? It isn't worth the risk to me if there is any; however, if I can easily double the storage space on the full drive instead of moving or deleting the data then I'd rather do that. If this is safe to do, do I need to do it in a different way than (what I assume is) the standard way? (deleting the unused volume and then extending the boot volume to include the now unallocated space)

Electronics Wizardy · July 19, 2016

12 minutes ago, nofxthepirate said:

Can I delete the empty 120 GB volume and extend the main drive (the 95.05 GB one) to include it without risking my OS or any of the programs there?

Yes this should be fine. Make sure you have backups, but i have done this many times with no issues.

nofxthepirate · July 19, 2016

Thanks for the quick response. Now I have a new problem. I tried it and it won't let me extend the C drive to include the F drive (which is now unallocated) because there is the 350 MB recovery partition in the way. Is there a way around that?