The volume you have selected may not be extended - Resolution with screenshots

Situation: when attempting to extend a hard drive on Windows using diskpart command, you may receive this message: "The volume you have selected may not be extended".

Case 1: If this is Windows Server 2003, you may want to install Microsoft KB841650. Please refer to this page:

Case 2: The Windows XP on Dell computer has a 256GB hard disks. The C drive uses 128GB. The client wants to extend the C drive t use all unallocated spaces. When he processes, he gets the following message:

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator.PAYROLL>diskpart

Microsoft DiskPart version 5.2.3790.3959
Copyright (C) 1999-2001 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: COMM02

DISKPART> list volume

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
Volume 0 C NTFS Partition 128 GB Healthy System
Volume 1 E New Volume NTFS Partition 105 GB Healthy

DISKPART> select volume 0

Volume 0 is the selected volume.

DISKPART> extend

The volume you have selected may not be extended.
Please select another volume and try again.

Troubleshooting: We find all Dell computer with the same BISO has the same problem that can't read disk larger than 258GB. Upgrading the BISO fixes the problem.

Case 3: We can only extend the drive in contiguous unallocated disk space. For example, in Disk 0, you have C, D and Unallocated spaces.  You can extend D drive but C drive. If you want to extend C drive, you need to delete the D: drive to spare the unallocated disk space. Note: If the D drive has data or/and programs, you may be able to use robocopy to move them to a different drive. Please refer to this post: Will Programs work after rename the drive letter .

Case 4: The client has three hard disks on his computer. The first is C drive and other two are spare.  He wonders if he can extend one drive using diskpart. The answer is no. You can only extend volumes on the same disk. Since he has 3 hard disks, he may create RAID 5 or strip the disks.

Case 5: We have a case. We can't use diskpart to extend C drive as shown below. We extend the C drive by using third party software called.

Case 6: Quoted from

You cannot extend a Windows 2003 OS partition when it's running. You should either use a third party or reboot the machine, boot on WINPE and extend the volume offline.

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