External hard drive with multiple pieces of unallocated space. How do I join them together?

windows-7 partitioning external-hard-drive

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Solution 1

What you need to do is format the drive as a GPT partition. What is happening is that you are being limited by the specifications of MBR. MBR < 2tb. Once you change the partitioning of the device you will be able to have one large drive. Get there by right clicking on the Disk 2 and change it from there. That way you don't need any third-party software.

Solution 2

Can you not click on where it says "Disk 2" and do some kind of reinitialization there?

If not, a quickish solution I'd use is just burn GParted to a CD and use it to fix up your partitioning accordingly.

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Ivarr08

With Ken Powers comes Ken Responsibility

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

Ivarr08 almost 2 years

I just got a 3TB external drive. When I first plugged it in, it showed up as a 2.7TB drive (as expected). Whenever I get a new external device I like to format it (and admittedly, I succeeded initially with the simple right click format from My Computer) but I wanted to try something different. So I went into Computer Management and deleted the partition on the hard drive and the following came up:

So that's strange. What started as a single partition now became two blocks of unallocated space. I can only partitions in the first block:

I am also not able to extend the first partition. I created the partition as large as Windows would allow me.

How can I join these two unallocated spaces back together again?

I am using Windows 7 Professional, if that means anything special.
James T Snell almost 13 years

KPthunder: If I knew a quick Windowsy solution, that'd probably end up being faster. But I never really learn such solutions for stuff like this cause I always end up finding a fast linuxy solution. GParted is AWESOME.
Ivarr08 almost 13 years

Yes, I like GParted as well. I just don't like shutting off my computer to use it. I'm about to go ahead and use GParted. If it's able to fix the disk I'll accept your answer.
James T Snell almost 13 years

It'll work, it's GParted!?!! Indeed rebooting is lame, but that's what you get for running Windows ;)
Ivarr08 almost 13 years

Well, it took a while (freaking graphics settings, man...) but it worked. I wonder what happened in the first place... When I started up Windows again it said that one of my USB devices had malfunctioned and wasn't recognized... but the drive appears to be working fine...
James T Snell almost 13 years

That's trippy dude. Maybe go look up maintenance utils by your drive's manufacturer and see if you can run some diagnostics to make sure everything's working okay... Or maybe your external enclosure is screwy?
Ivarr08 almost 13 years

Already used GParted but this will be good to know in the future. Thanks. I've changed the accepted answer (sorry, Doc, this guy needs some more reputation anyway).