The first thing to do after installing a hard drive is to partition it. You have to partition a hard drive, and then format it, before you can use it to store data.
To partition a hard drive in Windows means to section off a part of it and make that part available to the operating system. Most of the time, the 'part' of the hard drive is the entire usable space, but creating multiple partitions on a hard drive is also possible so that you can store backup files in one partition, movies in another, etc.
Don't worry if this sounds like more than you thought — partitioning a hard drive in Windows isn't hard and usually only takes a few minutes to do.
Follow the easy steps below to partition a hard drive in Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, or Windows XP:
How to Partition a Hard Drive in Windows
Manually partitioning (as well as formatting) a hard drive is not necessary if your end goal is to install Windows onto the drive. Both of those processes are included as part of the installation procedure, meaning you don't need to prepare the drive yourself. See How to Clean Install Windows for more help.
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Open Disk Management, the tool included in all versions of Windows that lets you partition drives, among a number of other things.In Windows 10 and Windows 8/8.1, the Power User Menu is the easiest way to start Disk Management. You can also start Disk Management via command-line in any version of Windows but the Computer Management method is probably best for most people.See What Version of Windows Do I Have? if you're not sure.
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When Disk Management opens, you should see an Initialize Disk window with the message 'You must initialize a disk before Logical Disk Manager can access it.'Don't worry if this window doesn't appear. There are legitimate reasons you may not see it — we'll know soon if there's a problem or not. Skip on to Step 4 if you don't see this.In Windows XP, you'll see an Initialize and Convert Disk Wizard screen instead. Follow that wizard, making sure to not select the option to 'convert' the disk, unless you're sure you need to. Skip to Step 4 when done.
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On this screen, you're asked to choose a partition style for the new hard drive. Choose GPT if the new hard drive you installed is 2 TB or larger. Choose MBR if it's smaller than 2 TB.See our guide on How to Check Free Hard Drive Space in Windows to learn how you can find out how big your hard drive is so that you pick the right partition style.
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Locate the hard drive you want to partition from the drive map at the bottom of the Disk Management window.You might need to maximize the Disk Management or Computer Management window to see all the drives on the bottom. An unpartitioned drive will not show up in the drive list at the top of the window.If the hard drive is new, it will probably be on a dedicated row labeled Disk 1 (or 2, etc.) and will say Unallocated. If the space you want to partition is part of an existing drive, you'll see Unallocated next to existing partitions on that drive.If you don't see the drive you want to partition, you may have installed it incorrectly. Turn off your computer and double-check that the hard drive is properly installed.
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Once you've found the space you want to partition, tap-and-hold or right-click anywhere on it, and choose New Simple Volume.In Windows XP, the option is called New Partition.
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Choose Next > on the New Simple Volume Wizard window that appeared.In Windows XP, a Select Partition Type screen appears next, where you should choose Primary partition. The Extended partition option is useful only if you're creating five or more partitions on a single physical hard drive. Select Next > after making the selection.
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Choose Next > on the Specify Volume Size step to confirm the size of the drive you're creating.The default size that you see in the Simple volume size in MB: field should equal the amount shown in the Maximum disk space in MB: field. This means that you're creating a partition that equals the total available space on the physical hard drive.You're welcome to create multiple partitions, that will eventually become multiple, independent drives in Windows. To do so, calculate how many and how large you want those drives to be and repeat these steps to create those partitions. For example, if the drive is 61437 MB and you want to partitions, specify an initial size of 30718 to partition only half the drive, and then repeat the partitioning again for the rest of the Unallocated space.
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Select Next > on the Assign Drive Letter or Path step, assuming the default drive letter you see is OK with you.Windows automatically assigns the first available drive letter, skipping A & B, which on most computers will be D or E. You're welcome to set the Assign the following drive letter option to anything that's available.You're also welcome to change the letter assigned to this hard drive later on if you want. See How to Change Drive Letters in Windows for help doing that.
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Choose Do not format this volume on the Format Partition step, and then select Next >.If you know what you're doing, feel free to format the drive as part of this process. However, since this tutorial focuses on partitioning a hard drive in Windows, we've left the formatting to another tutorial, linked in the last step below.
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Verify your choices on the Completing the New Simple Volume Wizard screen, which should look something like this:
- Volume Type: Simple Volume
- Disk selected: Disk 1
- Volume size: 61437 MB
- Drive letter or path: F:
- File system: None
- Allocation unit size: Default
Because your computer and hard drive are unlikely exactly like mine, expect your Disk selected, Volume size, and Drive letter or path values to be different that what you see here. File system: None just means that you've decided not to also format the drive right now. -
Choose Finish and Windows will partition the drive, a process that will only take a few seconds on most computers.You might notice that your cursor is busy during this time. Once you see the new drive letter (F: in our example) appear in the listing at the top of Disk Management, then you know the partitioning process is complete.
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Next, Windows will try to open the new drive automatically. However, since it's not yet formatted and can't be used, you'll see this message instead: 'You need to format the disk in drive F: before you can use it. Do you want to format it?'This only happens in Windows 10, Windows 8, and Windows 7. You won't see this in Windows Vista or Windows XP and that's perfectly fine. Just skip to the last step below if you're using one of those versions of Windows.
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Tap or click Cancel and then proceed to Step 14 below.If you're familiar with the concepts involved with formatting a hard drive, feel free to choose Format disk instead. You can use our tutorial linked in the next step as a general guide if you need to.
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Continue to our How to Format a Hard Drive in Windows tutorial for instructions on formatting this partitioned drive so you can use it.
Advanced Partitioning
Windows doesn't allow for anything but very basic partition management after you create one, but a number of software programs exist that can help if you need them.
See our Free Disk Partition Management Software for Windows list for updated reviews on these tools and more information on what exactly you can do with them.
Can I Merge Unallocated Space to System Partition in Windows 10
I use a 2TB Seagate hard drive as the internal memory of my computer. I have partitioned the disk into four partitions: C drive is for the OS, D drive is for my applications, and the other two partitions are for my files. But now I find the C drive is running in low disk space while D drive has much-unallocated space. So I was wondering how I can merge unallocated space to the system partition. Is there any way I can do this? My computer runs Windows 10. Please help!
Usually, when you encountered Windows C drive full problem in Windows 10, you can merge unallocated space to system partition to extend C drive. Then the problem will be solved easily. For example, if there is much free space on your D drive, you can shrink it and merge the newly unallocated space into C drive. It is an easy and safe way to increase C drive space. You don’t need to worry that it will let you lose any file paths for the programs on D drive or mess up the Windows 10 OS on the system partition.
Steps to Merge Unallocated Space to System Partition in Windows 10
Now you might think what tool can you trust to do the task. Here we recommend EaseUS partition software. The program works well to resize a partition. It has helped numerous users deal with disk partitioning job, especially low disk space problem. With its help, moving unallocated space to system partition in Windows 10 should not be a problem.
Step 1: Launch EaseUS Partition Master
Step 2: Add space to the System C drive
1. Shrink partition and leave unallocated space for extending C: drive:
- Right-click on a partition next to the C: drive and select 'Resize/Move'.
- Drag the end of the partition that is next to the C: drive and shrink it, leaving unallocated space next to the system C: drive, and click 'OK'.
2. Right-click on the System C: drive and select 'Resize/Move'.
To add space to the C: drive, drag the system partition end into the unallocated space.
Step 3: Confirm to extend system C drive
Click the 'Execute Operation' button, it will list the pending operations, and click 'Apply' to execute the changes and extend the C drive.
I just bought a new laptop with windows 8.1, and as soon as I turned it on, it said the upgrade to Windows 10 was available and asked if I wanted to upgrade now or later. I said yes, upgraded, and once complete, I opened file explorer to discover my new 750GB hard drive said I only had '17.2GB free of 89.5GB' Whaaaat?
Looked at system info: hard drive size is 698GB (sounds about right) with partitions #0 to #4,(all total not even close to 698G)
Looked at Disk Management to see the 4 partitions PLUS 1 unallocated partition that is 607GB. AHA!!
Tried to extend (C:) drive to include the unallocated space, won't let me extend (grayed out)
I then converted the unallocated partition into a useable partition, but it's still separate partition. How do I merge it into the original (C:) drive? I'd prefer my 750G hard drive NOT to be partitioned....Unlike Trump, I don't like WALLS.
I read somewhere online that you cant extend a partition unless there is empty space next to it. In the disk management window, the partitions are:
Recovery EFI Windows (C:) Recovery unallocated
(I'm assuming there's 2 recovery partitions because of the original windows 8, & the upgraded windows 10)
Then I made a recovery drive on a USB, thinking I could just delete the recovery partition all together, only to find I can't seem to do that either.
Any advice?
I am facing a problem of low space in C drive where my Windows XP is installed. I have tried disk cleanup and other ways.
I would prefer to assign the free space of other partitions to the C partition because I have plenty of space in the D, E and F partitions, about 60 to 70 GB.
I don’t want to format the drive.
Does anybody know how to assign space to C drive?
slhck
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PriteshPritesh
3 Answers
You could use a partition editing utility like gparted to do this. It will allow you to make your d,e or f partitions smaller and give that space to c.
Would be wise to ensure you have a good backup first, but I've used gparted many times for many years and never had an issue with this sort of task.
Chris_KChris_K
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As well as the gparted option (or similar software to resize partitions) you could use Windows' dynamic spanned volumes to merge one of the other partitions into C:. For instance to get rid of F: and merge the space it uses into C:
- open disk management (right-click 'my computer', choose 'manage', and the disk manager should be available in the control panel app that comes up)
- convert the disk to a dynamic volume if it isn't one already (right-click the drive and it should be an option on that menu)
- move all the stuff off F: to somewhere else
- delete F:
- right-click C: and select 'expand volume'
- select what space you want to add (it will default to adding all the currently free space, i.e. the space that was taken up by F: until recently)
If you want to keep F: but just make it smaller then alter the above a little:
- in step 6 just select some of the space that is now free instead of all of it
- add step 7: recreate F: using the free space that is left and move the files that you moved off F: in step 3 back onto this new F: partition
This technique has the advantage of not using any 3rd party tools as it is all built into Windows - while gparted is a very reliable tool generally I have experienced trouble with Windows not liking having had its system volume resized (I've had it work fine, but sometimes Windows won't boot afterwards despite the filesystem being valid as other Windows installs can read from the partition without issue).
Of course the disadvantage of this method is that by converting to a 'dynamic disk' you potentially lose compatibility with other software you might want to use in future. Installing Linux on the same drive for dual-booting is one thing that won't work (see Ubuntu 9.10+Windows 7 dual boot, dynamic disks for instance). Also, dynamic disks are not available in the 'home' editions of Windows (well, the feature isn't present under XP Home - that may have changed in Vista or 7), and by having one volume spread between two ends of your drive (rather than one continuous block) things will be a little less deficienct as the drive heads will be moving further then they otherwise would at times.
One last point: if you add an extra disk, also set as a dynamic disk, you can extend C: onto the space on that instead of resizing existing partitions (in fact you could expand all your partitions into space on the second drive if you wanted). This is not generally recommended though as it is just a JBOD arrangement so you get all the problems of RAID0 (if one drive dies, all your C: is likely to be lost) without the speed improvement it can offer.
Oh, and a final last point: even though this is almost certainly a safe operation, it is still a good idea to make sure your backups are up-to-date before proceeding if only for the sake of healthy paranoia, because if something does go wrong it could badly corrupt the entire filesystem you are working on.
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David SpillettDavid Spillett
I have tried MiniTool Partition Wizard which is working fine and I have successfully extended my C drive using the software here.
slhck
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PriteshPritesh
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Hard drive partitions sound pretty intimidating. Just say the phrase, “Extending a Hard Drive Partition”, and you get visions of heavy-duty, under-the-hood work that requires a blowtorch and welding visor.
But it’s really not that scary and actually extremely useful. It means you can take chunks of memory out of hard drive partitions you’re not using much and put them where you really need that memory to go. I did this recently when the Windows OS partition on a computer I was working on was so full that I couldn’t install updates, and it fixed things up straight away!
Here’s how to do it.
Utilising Unallocated Space
First of all, you’ll want to assess your disk space situation by having a look in “Windows Disk Management.” To do this, click the Start button, type
disk
, then click “Create and format hard disk partitions.”
In the Disk Management window, you’ll see information about all your hard drives, their partitions, and how much space you have on each.
The picture shows you my Disk Management situation (and reminds me that I really need to get another hard drive). We’ll be focusing on Disk 1 where you can see that I have a large partition (F:) along with a smaller one (D:) and about 3GB of unallocated space.
We’re going to extend volume “D” from around 2GB to 20GB.
If the partition you want to extend isn’t the one on which you’ve installed Windows, then the process is simple. First, let’s pour all that unallocated space into “D.” To do this, right-click the volume you want to extend – “New Volume (D:)” in my case – and click “Extend Volume.”
Click through the wizard until you get to the “Select Disks” screen, then in the “Select the amount of space in MB” box, type how much space you want to add to the partition, bearing in mind the maximum available. Seeing as I have about 3GB of unallocated space on that hard drive, I’m going to put it all into the partition I want to extend.
Click “Next,” then “Finish”, and after a moment you should be back in the Disk Management window, now showing your newly expanded partition.
Moving Space from One Partition to Another
But what if you don’t have unallocated space and need to steal some storage space from another partition? No problem. You just need to shrink the volume where you want to grab some storage space, then put the newly unallocated memory into the partition you’re extending.
Right-click the volume you want to shrink (for me, that’s the sizeable “F:” volume), and click “Shrink Volume.” Enter the amount of space you want to add to your partition (15GB in my case), then click “Shrink.” You’ll return to the Disk Management screen and see a big black block of unallocated space.
Next, follow the steps under my previous heading (Utilising Unallocated Space) to add that unallocated space to the partition you’re extending.
Option to “Extend Volume” Greyed Out
If the volume you want to extend is the one on where you installed Windows, there’s a chance that you won’t be able to extend it using Disk Management because the volume is busy.
To help you through this, try the free version of MiniTool Partition Wizard. If the volume you want to extend is busy, it’ll reboot your PC, then extend it before Windows boots up.
It’s pretty simple to use. Once you’ve installed Partition Wizard and opened it, right-click the volume you want to extend, click “Extend,” choose how much space you want to add, then click “Apply” at the top left. It’ll either do it straight away or prompt you to reboot your PC so it can extend it outside of Windows.
Conclusion
Allocate Space On Hard Drive
It’s surprisingly easy to tinker around with hard drive partitions and reallocate space from one to another. Don’t be afraid to do it, but also don’t go overboard. Creating too many partitions could change your hard drive (with your permission) from a basic disk to a dynamic disk which will cause problems if the hard drive in question is the one on where Windows is installed.
Hard Drive Space Needed
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