In this short article I step by step I'll tell you with pictures, how to partition a hard drive in Windows 10. Finding programs on the Internet that can do this will not be difficult. However, in my opinion, there is no need to use often dubious third-party programs when the Windows 10 operating system itself has a built-in ability to divide the hard drive into several partitions. That is, we will consider how to partition a hard drive using built-in tools in Windows 10 itself.
This method is suitable not only for Windows 10, but also for “seven” and “eight”.
Attention! It is highly advisable to perform defragmentation before dividing an existing hard disk partition. This will free up more space for the new partition.
Step 1. Open the built-in Disk Management utility
In order to divide your hard drive into several partitions, you need to open the built-in Disk Management utility. There are two ways to do this. Option #1 is only suitable for Windows 10, Option No. 2 - for almost all previous versions of this operating system.
Option #1
In Windows 10, RIGHT-click on the menu “ Start" and select item 7 " Disk management».
Option No. 2
In the search bar of the Start menu, type “Control Panel” (number 1), and then open it with a mouse click (number 2).
In the window that opens, select and click on the “System and Security” item.
A new window opens. In it we go down and in the “Administration” item, click on the sub-item “Creating and formatting a hard drive”.
We are presented with the Disk Management utility itself.
Step 2: Shrink the volume and free up space to create a new partition in Windows 10
In order to create a new hard disk partition in the Disk Management utility, you first need to “pinch off” the space for it from an existing partition.
In the picture I presented, there are already two partitions C and D on the hard drive. Let's assume that I want to create a third partition. To do this, I select partition D, which has more free space, and right-click on its name with the right mouse button.
Note! In the Windows operating system, a single physical hard drive can contain no more than 4 sections, including system ones (for example, Recovery Partition).
An explorer window appears, in which I select “Shrink Volume”.
It’s worth going into a little more detail about why exactly compress. The fact is that in order to create a new partition, you first need to find free space for it somewhere. We get it by compressing the space on an existing volume. Section D in my case is a donor for creating a new section.
After this, the message “The volume is being polled to determine the available space for compression. Wait...". Polling a volume can last from several seconds to several tens of minutes. Here you will have to wait for some time.
When the system finishes polling the volume, a window will appear where in the “Size of compressed volume” column you can specify how much space you want to pinch off from your donor disk to create free space for now.
It will not be possible to take more space for a new partition than indicated. In my case, the ceiling is 78880 MB - a little more than 77 GB.
I'll put 51200 MB. This is exactly 50 gigabytes for the new partition. They can be used, for example, to install Windows 10 on a new partition next to the existing Windows 7.
After you click "Compress" for some time, you will not see any result. The only thing that will tell you that the compression process is in progress is a spinning blue circle that appears when you hover over the utility window.
You will know that compression has occurred when a black bar with unallocated space appears at the bottom of the utility window (for me it’s 50 GB).
So we have freed up space to create a new partition on the hard drive in Windows 10. Now we’ll figure out how to organize the unallocated space and turn it into a full-fledged partition of our hard drive.
Step 3. Create a hard disk partition from unallocated space
In order to turn our unallocated space into a full-fledged hard drive partition, you need to click on the “Unallocated” inscription with the right mouse button and select “Create a simple volume”.
The “Create Simple Volume Wizard” will open. Click the “Next” button there. A window appears in which we can specify the size of our volume (hard disk partition). Here we can change nothing and click next.
We can change it if we want, for example, to create two new partitions from the freed unallocated space.
After this, we have the opportunity to choose the Latin letter for our hard drive partition that will be used to designate it. I already have two drives C and D, I will call the third one F. Select and click “Next”.
In the next step, we will be asked to format our new partition. I'm leaving everything here as default.
After that, wait for “Done”.
Then a few more seconds or minutes our section is formatted and that’s it. A new hard drive partition has been created in Windows 10.
As you can see, I wanted to create a partition of exactly 50GB, but I ended up with 49.9 gigabytes. A small amount of compressed space was taken by Windows for system needs.
Now on this section, for example, you can install Windows 10 next to Windows 7 .
If for some reason you need to merge hard drive partitions back together in Windows 10, then I also have an article on this topic with step-by-step instructions and pictures: How to merge hard drive partitions in Windows 10 .
P.S.: Unfortunately, the above method in some fairly few cases causes certain difficulties for Windows 10 users. The scale of the problems that arise became clear to me thanks to the comments located below on this page. Apparently, sometimes the Microsoft operating system “plays it safe” and does not allow us to separate the free space we need from the existing hard drive partition. In some cases, dividing a volume into two is not possible at all due to supposed lack of space. Also, the Disk Management utility built into the OS may sometimes not allow you to merge some partitions of one hard drive. It was to solve these problems that I began to look for another option that would allow me to manage the hard drive in Windows 10 using third-party, but most reliable and safe developments. Found. For those who have encountered such problems, I wrote an article “
The new operating system from Microsoft, which went through a high-profile release stage, caused conflicting reviews from users. This is not surprising - the company from Redmond has been a monopolist in the home computer software market for about two decades, and as its popularity grows, the amount of criticism naturally increases. Whether we like it or not, Windows 10 will eventually become the new dominant operating system on the market, so it makes sense to adapt to it now.
One of the popular aspects of working with any operating system is disk management - both professionals and ordinary users should acquire knowledge here - the need to share a hard drive arises for everyone. Fortunately, Microsoft has restrained its ardor in its desire to stuff its new OS with a lot of innovations, abandoning its own successful solutions. In many ways, this was manifested in the management of such an element as a hard drive - a well-organized interface was borrowed from the previous version - 8.1. In Windows 7, which currently ranks first in popularity, memory management is similar to version 10, so this article will be useful to a much larger circle of users.
Only supporters of third-party software can object, but, as practice shows, its use (as well as the purchase of a license) is not justified for the average user, and for most of them the share of used capabilities remains extremely low - the need to share a hard drive rarely arises.
Opening Disk Utility
To start working with media (it doesn’t matter whether you want to split, redistribute or delete a volume), you need to open the built-in program, the name of which in the 10th edition of the OS has not changed since the days of “seven” - “Disk Management”. To do this, you need to do the following manipulations:
- In the search bar of the Start menu, look for Control Panel;
- Click on the “Administration” item;
- In the window that appears, select the “Computer Management” shortcut;
- Then select “Disk Management”.
Below are slides showing the above steps.
Creating a new volume on free space
The screenshot shows the open program window and the list of sections available for modification. To create a new one, you need to click on the disk icon and select “Shrink Volume” from the drop-down list. In our case, it is only possible to compress the “drive D:” volume - there is more space on it, and it is not recommended to perform such manipulations with the system partition.
Why Shrink Volume? Disk space is limited; you won’t be able to take it out of thin air. Since our hard drive is completely divided between existing disks, the only option is to share the memory for the partition. Another method suggests using the free space in the unallocated area (it is also displayed in this list), or formatting one of the partitions, deleting it and using the resulting unallocated area to create two new ones of an acceptable size for you. It is worth noting that in the latter case, all data stored on this volume will be lost, so the method presented in the screenshot in this regard is the most convenient and fastest.
After activating the “Shrink Volume” option, a window will open in which the system will ask you to be patient and wait a few minutes. After this time, information about the maximum volume for the new volume will be displayed on the screen - in our case it is slightly less than 77 GB. The user will be asked to independently select the size of the new partition, which will be within the previously specified 77 GB. We choose 51200 MB - that's exactly 50 GB.
The space can be used for convenient cataloging of your data or for parallel installation of another operating system.
After setting the value, click the “Compress” button and wait. The waiting time can vary greatly - on SSD drives the process will take a few minutes, on older machines - a couple of times longer (since the hard drive is significantly slower in operating speed). Once the process is complete, you will see noticeable improvements in the chart below - among the blue bars indicating existing disks, a black one labeled “Unallocated” will appear.
Creating a section
After compressing the free memory on your hard drive, it's time to start creating a new partition. In Windows 10, control is carried out by right-clicking on the unallocated area and activating the “Create simple volume” item.
The “Create a Simple Volume Wizard” will be called, with the help of which the user will be offered to manage the volume size. By default, the disk set value will be equal to the size of the free space - it should be changed only if you plan to create more than one disk. You will also be asked to select a volume name and label, after which partition formatting options will open. It is recommended to use the default values set in Windows and click “Format”. Now you have a new volume at your disposal.
Greetings to all of you in the next issue! The conditional division of a hard drive into two partitions C and D is something that almost every user is used to, especially experienced users. The first disk is intended primarily for recording the OS and programs with which the user works.
The second one is intended primarily for storing various files. This partitioning of the device is very convenient, since if it is necessary to reinstall the OS, only the data from drive C is erased from the computer. In the material, we will pay attention to the question of how to split the hard drive into an even larger number of partitions, which will allow you to distribute and organize your files, as well as improve their safety.
Features of dividing a hard drive into partitions in Windows 10
So, in what cases might it be necessary to partition a hard drive?
The first time you may need to partition a hard drive is when purchasing a new device. When you buy a computer, the hard drive on it usually has one common partition. Recording the OS on one partition of the hard drive is neither rational nor safe, so it is recommended that immediately after purchasing a computer, divide the hard drive into partitions.
The second case when partitioning a hard drive may be necessary is the need to organize files stored on the computer: music, documents, photos. If all this data is stored in specific sections of the hard drive, and not in folders, then their security will increase.
It is important to know ! In the material we will look at how to partition a hard drive into partitions in various ways. There are enough of these methods, so let’s analyze each option and then choose the most optimal one..
Partitioning a hard drive using Windows 10 tools
Initially, we will pay attention to the question of how to divide a hard drive into partitions when there is already a working OS with two disks C and D. Let's add another partition to these disks, in which important photos will be stored. To break a hard drive you will not need to use third-party software, so the algorithm of actions will be as follows:
The process begins with the user needing to click on the Windows icon on the desktop and then right-click, causing a pop-up window to appear. In this window, select “Disk Management” as shown below.
This is the easiest way to call this option, but you can do this using the “Run” command by holding down two “Win + R” buttons at the same time, and then enter the command in English in the window that opens: diskmgmt.msc.
After this, information about all available partitions on the computer will appear in the window that opens. Here you can find out the size of each partition, system type, load. In the lower part, in the form of rectangles, you can estimate the ratio of the sizes of each section.
Before you start partitioning, you need to free up some space. To do this, you can use partition D. It is this disk that we will divide into two partitions. In order to shrink disk D, you need to right-click on it, and then select the “Shrink Volume...” command, as shown below.
After selecting this command, a window will open where you should carefully specify the volume of the partition to be compressed. The information in this window is indicated in MB. In this case, we will compress up to 10 GB by writing the value 10,000 MB in the “Size of compressed space” cell.
After this, the compression procedure begins, but no process progress bar will appear. The compression procedure takes about 3-5 minutes, so you need to wait a little.
Let's start creating a new section. To do this, right-click on the space that appears and select “Create simple volume”.
A simple volume creation wizard window will appear, where you need to agree to the system by clicking the “Next” button. The Volume Creation Wizard will ask you to specify the volume that will be allocated for the new partition. You can specify the entire volume, which is indicated above under the name “Maximum size”. The main thing is that the specified value does not exceed this value.
Now the system will definitely ask you to indicate the name of the future volume in the form of a letter. According to the alphabet, this will be the letter F, but the user can specify any letter.
After this, you will need to specify the file system type. Of course, the file system will be NTFS, and in the “Volume Label” section you simply need to enter the volume name.
As you can see, the procedure is quite simple, but it is necessary to take into account the fact that you should not compress the disk to the limit. This will affect its functioning for the worse.
Partitioning a disk using special applications
To divide your hard drive into partitions, you can use special applications. These applications include:
Acronic Disk Director;
Minitool Partition Wizard Free;
Aomei Partition Assistant.
There are other applications, but it is better to choose one of the proposed ones. Some of them are paid, but you can use an application with a demo version, which is Acronic Disk Director. Using this application as an example, we will look at how you can divide a disk into partitions.
Initially, you need to download the application by downloading it from the official website, and then install it on your computer. After installing the file, you will need to launch the application, after which the following window will appear.
After launching the application, you will need to right-click on the partition, and then select “Split Volume”, as shown in the screenshot above.
Using the application slider, you can resize the two new partitions.
In order for the changes to take effect, you will need to click the button called “Apply pending operations,” which is highlighted in the screenshot below with a red frame.
The changes made will be applied, and the selected section will be divided into two parts. If you are partitioning the system disk, you will simply need to restart the computer for the changes to take effect.
This application is quite easy to use, but its most important advantage is the presence of a Russian-language version.
Disk partitioning during Windows 10 installation
You can also partition a physical disk during a clean installation of the Windows 10 OS. This method is suitable primarily for that category of users who purchased a clean computer and are going to perform partitioning during the installation of the OS. If you carry out separation in this way when files are stored on the computer, then during the markup process all information will be erased. This is important to consider before choosing this option.
If the user has decided that this option is suitable for him, then the algorithm of actions will be as follows:
First, the Windows 10 OS installation process starts. How this is done can be read in more detail on the website. Let's start with the following window appearing during the installation process.
It is in this window that you can add as many sections as necessary. To perform partitioning, you must remove the existing disks. How this can be done is shown in the photo below.
After deleting all existing partitions, an entry called “Unallocated Disk Space” will appear. This entry can also be seen during OS installation if a new computer was purchased. To create a section, select “Create”.
In the next window you need to specify the size of the logical disk. Volumes should be indicated depending on the overall size of the hard drive. Since a 60 GB hard drive was selected for the example, we will create a C drive with a capacity of 40 GB, although Windows 10 requires at least 80 GB for normal operation.
After clicking the “Apply” button, a warning window will appear that additional partitions must be created to ensure correct operation. You just need to agree. After this, a window will appear with our created 40 GB partition. Now all that remains is to use the unallocated space, for which we use the “Create” button again.
The cell with the volume of the future volume will be automatically filled. After creating the disk, you will need to format it. To do this, select the appropriate disk, and then click on the “Format” item. We agree that the system warns about the loss of all data. If you do not format the disks, the system will experience failures and errors, so this procedure is mandatory.
After formatting the disks, you can continue further installation of the OS. After the installation is completed and Windows starts, you can see that the disks that were created during the installation phase actually appeared in the “This PC” folder.
In conclusion, it is worth noting that dividing a hard drive into volumes is not as difficult as it might initially seem. All that is needed to achieve the final goal is to decide on the methodology and study each step. The risk of errors is minimal, but it is better to practice on a computer where important information is not stored in one copy. It is believed that the most favorable way to partition a disk is to use third-party applications. At the same time, the specialist is told that the best way to partition a hard drive is to perform the procedure during OS installation.
Most users are accustomed to using two partitions on one hard drive, usually a drive called C and D. Many have become interested in the question of how to change the disk size in Windows 10 using the built-in system tools (during installation of Windows or after) and third-party free programs.
Use the Disk Management utility
- Open the utility by right-clicking on the Start menu and selecting Disk Management.
- In the search bar of the Start menu, type “Control Panel” and open it.
Select "System and Security".
In the window that opens, in the “Administration” item, click on the “Create and format a hard drive” sub-item.
Shrinking a volume, freeing up space to create a new partition in Windows 10
To create a new volume in the utility, you first need to get free space somewhere for this; it can be obtained by compressing space on an existing volume. In the Windows operating system, no more than 4 partitions can exist on one physical HDD, including system ones (for example, the Recovery Partition). Typically there are two local drives C and D.
To create a third volume, you need to right-click on the partition that has more free space, in our case it is drive D. An explorer window will appear, click on the “Shrink volume” item to free up free space, change it to unallocated.
Partition D to create a new volume.
After this, the message “The volume is being polled to determine the available space for compression” will appear. Wait…". The process can last from several seconds to several tens of minutes.
When the system finishes polling the volume, a window will appear in the “Size of volume to be compressed” column, you need to indicate how much space needs to be separated from the donor disk to create free space for now. It will not be possible to allocate more space for a new partition than specified. In the example in the screenshot, the limit is 78880 MB, a little more than 77 GB.
You can specify any other number less than the one specified above, for example, by setting the value to 51200 MB, allocate exactly 50 gigabytes for the new volume. After selecting the “Compress” option, no result will be noticeable for some time. To check whether the compression process is in progress, you need to hover the cursor over the utility window; a spinning blue circle should appear. When a black strip with unallocated space appears at the bottom of the window, this will indicate that compression has occurred.
This frees up space to create a new volume on the HDD in Windows 10. Now the unallocated space needs to be turned into a full-fledged hard drive partition.
— Creating a hard disk partition from unallocated space
You need to right-click on the area labeled “Unallocated” and select “Create a simple volume.”
The “Create a Simple Volume Wizard” will open, click “Next”, in the next window you will need to specify the size of the new volume. You can leave the value unchanged, or, if you want to create two or more sections, specify a smaller value. Click "Next".
After this, select the Latin letter that will denote the disk, for example, F. Select the letter and click “Next”.
You will then be able to format the new partition if necessary.
Continue by clicking “Done”.
After a few seconds or minutes, the partition is formatted and a new Windows 10 hard drive partition will be created. When choosing the amount of memory you want to allocate for creating a new one, you must take into account that a small amount of compressed space will be taken by Windows for system needs.
So, when choosing 50 GB of memory, we got a volume of 49.9 GB in size.
Creating partitions when installing Windows 10
When installing Windows 10 on a computer from a flash drive or disk, you can divide the disks into volumes. For those who reinstall the operating system, please note that this will lead to the deletion of data from the system partition.
During Windows installation, after entering (or skipping) the activation key, select “Custom Installation”, after which you will be able to select a partition for installation; tools for setting up partitions are available.
In our case, drive C is partition 4.
To make two partitions from one HDD, you need to use the “Delete” button to create a partition; as a result, it will be converted into “Unallocated space on the disk” (step 4).
Then select an unallocated space, click the “Create” button, set the size of the future “Disk C”. After its creation, there will be free unallocated space that will need to be converted into a second disk partition in the same way.
After creating the second partition, it is recommended to select it and click “Format” (otherwise it may not appear in Explorer after installing Windows 10 and will have to be formatted and assigned a letter through “Disk Management”). Then select the volume that was created first, click “Next” to continue installing the operating system on drive C.
Programs for partitioning disks
In addition to the built-in Windows tools, there are many programs for working with disk partitions. Some of the best free programs are Aomei Partition Assistant Free and Minitool Partition Wizard Free.
First, you will need to download the Aomei Partition Assistant program from the official website, install it on your PC and run it. The application has a Russian language; we select a non-system drive, in our case it is “E”.
Right-click on it and click “Resize partition”.
The selected amount of memory will appear, in our case – 15 GB.
Right-click on the system local drive C and select “Resize partition” from the context menu.
Again, drag the slider to the right to the desired size, or set the required space for expansion in the “Unallocated space after” field. A warning will appear to make a Windows 10 system recovery image or a backup copy using third-party tools, click “Ok”. To save changes, click “Apply” in the upper left corner.
A message will appear that there will be several reboots, during which drive C will be merged with unallocated space, select “Go”. A message will appear that the program will work in PreOs mode, click “Yes”.
Windows 10 will begin to reboot.
When you boot for the first time, AOMEI Partition Assistant PreOS Mode will launch.
The process of completing the task will begin.