Expand or add SSD C drive across disk spaces like an expert in 2024 (UTF-8)

Updated by

Tracy King 

Last updated on April 24, 2024

• Applies to: Resize SSD C drive across disks, expand SSD C drive to another disk; no data loss, no boot issues.
• Difficulty Level: Simple
• Supported Operating Systems: Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7, Vista, XP, and Windows Server systems.

Translating English to Chinese refers to the process of converting English text into Chinese, whether it be sentences, paragraphs, articles, or any other form of text. This is more than just a simple substitution of words; it involves considering context, cultural differences, and grammatical structures to ensure that the translation is accurate, fluent, and retains the meaning of the original text. With the assistance of AI, automated English to Chinese translation is now possible; however, human translation still plays a crucial role in ensuring quality and accuracy.

"Can I extend the SSD C drive across disks in Windows 11/10?"

Yes, you can successfully extend the system C drive to another disk as long as you have a second hard drive installed on your computer.

Are you looking for a guide that can help you extend C drive from another disk? On this page, we will show you the complete process to expand an SSD system drive to another drive without losing any data or causing boot issues.

Let's start there.

How to Extend C Drive from Another Disk in Windows

In previous tutorials, we have mainly shown you how to solve the above issues with the available or unallocated space on the same disk:

• Extend C Drive without Formatting
• Extend C Drive in Windows Server 2019/2016
• C Drive Out of Space
• Merge C and D Drives
• Merge Disk 0 to Disk 1 etc.

You can effectively resolve this issue by extending Drive C or increasing the system drive using unallocated or free space. If there's no unallocated space or free space on the target disk, you can even convert two disks to dynamic disks and merge them into one to address the problem.

However, you may need a solution to extend SSD C drive across disks when encountering the following situations:

• There is only one system partition on the SSD.
• There is no unallocated space left on the system SSD drive.
• There is not enough space on the SSD C drive.
• The SSD C drive becomes read-only, or your computer warns you of low disk space errors.

Next up, just translate this into American English: ""

So, how to extend C drive from another HDD or SSD? Follow this complete guide, and you can easily fix the issue of C drive full on SSD.

#1. Prepare or Add a Second Hard Drive to Your Computer

Note that if you have a second disk already set up on your computer, you can skip ahead to Part Two and continue from there.

However, if your computer has only one SSD set up as the System C: drive, you'll need to add and set up a second hard drive or SSD. Here's how:

Step 1: Purchase a new hard drive or SSD.

Note that your second hard drive or SSD should have equal to or greater storage space than your system SSD drive.

Step 2: Install the new hard drive or SSD in your computer and configure it.

Move the computer case and connect the new hard drive to the computer using SATA and power cables.

• Close the computer case, go to Disk Management, right-click on the new drive, and select "Initialize Disk."
• Configure the disk type to be the same as your source system SSD – either MBR or GPT.

#2. Download a reliable disk partition manager to extend SSD C drive across disks

After configuring the second drive on your computer, it's time to resort to reliable disk management software. AOMEI Partition Assistant is here to help with its newly-released feature – Extend C Drive.

With this feature, you can effectively extend your SSD C drive across disks and move important Windows programs and files to the second HDD or SSD to free up more space on the OS drive. Partition Master Tool safely creates a new partition on the new disk and configures the programs and system files to work as if they were in their original location.

To extend system drive C across disks, download and install this software directly on computers running Windows and Windows Server.

#3. How to Extend SSD Drive C Across Disks

Now you can move system programs and files to the second drive to free up space on your SSD C:.

Here are the steps you can follow:

Step 1: Launch AOMEI Partition Assistant, enter "Partition Management" interface, right-click on C drive and then choose "Migrate OS to SSD/HDD".

Step 2. Select the data you want to migrate, then click "Next" to continue.

Step 3: Select the target partition to move the OS and click "Start" to perform the task.

Once it's done, remember to restart your computer for the changes to take effect. After your PC boots up, you can open File Explorer and see that your C drive has been extended. You can also check in Disk Management and see that your SSD C drive now has more available space.

Tips to Optimize SSD and Computer Performance After Extending C Drive

After extending the C drive with a second hard disk, your computer should read and write data more quickly. Just be sure to take good care of your SSD and computer in general.

Here are some tips to follow for optimizing SSD and computer performance:

#1. 4K Alignment for SSD

To ensure your SSD is configured for the best performance, you can apply Partition Master to align SSD to 4K for securing the highest reading and writing speed.

Here are the steps to follow:

Step 1: Click on "Toolbox" and then choose "4K Alignment".

<Step 2> Select the disk to be aligned. Click the Start button.

This is the HTML code to embed a YouTube video. In a webpage, it will display a player 410 pixels wide and 700 pixels tall, allowing fullscreen playback with permissions for accelerometer, autoplay, clipboard-write, encrypted-media, gyroscope, and picture-in-picture. The video ID is "JRAoYrNzlgo".

#2. Take Good Care of the Expanded C Drive

When you see the C drive, you'll want to be careful with this drive as it contains system files and program files. You don't want to delete or remove any files from here.

On the contrary, you should be very careful every time you modify a directory. There's only one thing to remember:

If you want things to remain as they were, you should not make any changes to the new volume.

#3. Regularly clean up system junk files

Please note that while you are working or surfing the Internet on Windows, it creates some unnecessary junk files or large temporary files.

If your system C drive is full of large junk files that are of no use, we recommend you to clean them up regularly. A reliable Windows cleaning tool – CleanGenius would be great for you to try.

Step 1. Download and install Partition Master Suite on your computer. Click on the panel to “Download PC Cleaner.”

Step 2. Install the CleanGenius tool on your computer. First, go to the “Clean” tab and click on “Scan.”

Step 3: CleanGenius will immediately start scanning for all unnecessary files. Select the system junk files and invalid entries, then click “Clean” to clean your entire computer.

Step 4: When it's done, you'll see how many megabytes (MB) or gigabytes (GB) of data were cleared. Tap “Finish” to complete the process.

Conclusion: With powerful tools, you can extend the SSD C drive to another disk like a pro.

On this page, we explain why and when you may need to extend C drive across disks in Windows 11/10/8/7. To do this, you first need to add a second disk, configure it, and then use a reliable disk partition management tool to expand the C drive.

With the “Extend C drive” feature of the tool Partition Master, you can perform this task like a pro and extend C drive across disks.

Aside from that, you can use the partition tool to manage hard disk partitions, convert MBR to GPT without reinstalling Windows or vice versa, merge disks or partitions, and even migrate the operating system to HDD/SSD without reinstalling Windows.