Fix: Extend Volume option is greyed out in Windows 11 / 10

While managing your disk space on your system, you may notice that the ‘Extend Volume’ option is greyed out in the option, meaning you can’t extend the volume of the particular drive. This usually occurs in the case of the system partition or the partition containing the Windows system files. There can be a ton of reasons behind this issue, but if you want to extend the volume follow these fixes. Even you can increase the volume using a few alternative solutions.

 

Fix 1 – Check the drive type

You have to make sure the drive you are trying to increase the size is of the correct format. It has to be a raw format or NTFS format. If the drive type is FAT32 or any other type, Windows can’t format it.

1. At first, press the Windows key+R keys together.

2. Then, type “diskmgmt.msc” and click on “OK“.

 

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3. When Disk Management opens up, you will view the list of drives.

4. After that, right-click on the problematic drive and tap on “Properties“.

 

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5. You will notice the format in the ‘File system:’.

If the format is FAT32 or something except NTFS, you can’t extend the portion.

 

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There is a way you can fix this issue. You have to format the drive in NTFS format and then only you can extend it using the Disk Management.

Follow these steps –

1. At first, open the Disk Management.

2. Then, right-click on the problematic drive and tap on “Format…” to format the drive.

 

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3. After that, set the ‘File system;’ to “NTFS” format.

4. Later, check the “Perform a quick format” box.

5. After that, click on “OK” to proceed with the formatting.

 

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Once you are done, now you can easily extend the volume of the drive as it is of the NTFS format.

This should solve your problem.

 

Fix 2 – Create free volume and extend target volume

You can delete/shrink additional volumes from your drive and use it to extend the volume of the desired partition.

Remove additional volume

1. At first, right-click on the Windows icon and tap on the “Disk Management” to access it.

 

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3. When Disk Management opens up, right-click on the empty partition and tap on “Delete volume” to remove the volume.

 

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This will create an unused partition on your system.

Shrinking additional volume

Otherwise, you can also shrink the volume of a large, unused partition on your system.

1. At first, right-click on the volume with large unused space and tap on “Shrink Volume…” to shrink the additional volume.

 

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2. Now, set the value of how much to shrink in MB.

[



Like if you want to shrink 20 GB. So, you want to put –

20*1024=20480 MB

]

3. After that, tap on “Shrink” to shrink the volume.

 

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After you shrink the volume, you will see that you have created free space.

Now, you can easily extend the volume from the Disk Management.

This should solve your issue.

Additional Tip –

The native Disk Management system is pretty obsolete in Windows. So, if you want to extend the volume of a FAT32 system, you have to use a free third-party tool.

Like, you can use the AOMEI Partition Manager.