C drive is the place where most people install their operating system. Unless you are an expert in computer systems or a curious person who tries out different things, your Windows 10 might be also installed in the C drive of your hard disk. By default, Windows chooses the C drive to install its files and checks if there is enough space for the base operating system to operate properly without running out of space for its temporary files, important configurations, setup files, etc.
According to Microsoft, the minimum space required to install the 32-bit Windows 10 is 16 GB while the 64-bit requires 32 GB. Windows can run on your device given that you have these minimum hard drive requirements. But as soon as you start installing programs, you will realize that you need more space. If you do not have additional space available, you will have to keep using the basic features Windows provides. Or, install them on other disk partitions which might make things messy.
So, what can we do at this point? Is there a way to increase the space available on the C drive so that you can install more programs on the same drive as the Windows installation? Well, there is. But we should warn you that you should be extremely careful while following the steps mentioned below. If not, you will end up with a broken Windows installation or completely erase the operating system from the hard drive.
In order to extend the volume, you should have some “Unallocated” space available on your hard drive. You can create unallocated space by deleting or shrinking other volumes. Note that, deleting other volumes will cause entire data to be lost on that specific volume and shrinking may result in data corruption sometimes. So take proper data backups before performing these actions.
Steps to Increase C Drive Space
Under any circumstances, do not try to perform any other operations such as deleting, formatting, changing the drive letter, etc. on the C drive. If you do, your device may not boot.
- Search for Disk Management in the start menu search box.
- Click on the option Create and format hard disk partitions.
- It will open the Disk Management screen where you can create, extend, delete, or manage the partitions on your hard drive.
- Right-click on the C:\ drive and choose Extend Volume option.
- In the Extend Volume Wizard, click on the Next button.
- The available Unallocated size will be displayed on the left side.
- Click on the Unallocated space on the left and then click the Add button to move it to the right side.
- At the bottom, Choose the amount of space that you want to extend (in MBs).
- Click Next. Windows will start extending the drive.
- Once the process is completed, click on the Finish button.
You will see that your C drive is now extended with the newly added size of your choice.
Keep in mind that in certain situations like the unallocated space is on the left side of the C drive due to some reason, the extend option may be greyed out. The unallocated space should be on the right side of the partition you want to extend. If you know that the partition doesn’t contain anything, you can delete it to make it unallocated.