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It can be confusing when you buy a new storage drive and install it on your computer, only to find that it does not show up in the operating system. Or, maybe you have a large hard drive that you want to split an allocated drive into multiple volumes in order to keep things neat and tidy or install a different operating system. Whatever the reason, there are many reasons why you might want to partition your storage drive in Windows.
But how exactly are you supposed to do this? Today we are going to show you how to partition your hard drive in Windows.
How to partition a drive from unallocated space in Windows
First, we are going to use the Windows Disk Management Tool to create a brand new partition from the unallocated space. Most of the time, this should only be done after purchasing a new hard drive or solid state drive, as you cannot use it until you manually allocate it. Partition.
First, you will need to head to the Disk Management Tool. In Windows 10 and earlier (for the purposes of this tutorial, we’re using Windows 10), you might find it in Windows search and Control Panel as “Create and Format Hard Drive Partitions.”
Once the program is open, you will be able to see it under the list of disks, where you will see the drive with its capacity listed as “unallocated space”. You’re going to want to fix this. Right click on the player and click on New single volume to configure the player. From there, the New Simple Volume wizard will open, which will walk you through the process of creating a volume on your drive.
If you want to use it like a normal reader, you probably don’t have to change anything. Set the size of the simple volume to maximum (it should already be maximum by default), assign it a drive letter (it really doesn’t matter much, so just give it whatever you want or leave it alone). the default), then check whether you want to format the drive first or not, although it is strongly recommended that you do so.
Choose the file system and volume name of the drive, click Next, and now you’re done. The drive should now appear as an allocated partition instead of unallocated space, and Windows should be able to see it and write files to it like it does with other drives on your PC.
How to partition a drive from existing allocated storage in Windows
If you want to split your disk in half and have two different partitions there, this is also something you can do, even if you previously allocated that space on your disk. The process for this, however, is a bit more complicated.
First, we’re going to have to shrink the already allocated partition. This will make the current drive partition smaller and free up space for the other partition in the process.
To do this, simply go to your trusty disk management tool, right click on your player, then click Reduce volume. Then you will need to shrink the volume enough to match the size you want for the second partition.
If, for example, I have a 4TB drive and want to split it into two different 2TB volumes, I would just reduce the current volume to 2TB.
The dialog box gives you numbers in megabytes, not gigabytes, so be sure to take that into account when calculating. 1 GB equals 1,000 MB, while 1 TB equals 1,000,000 MB. Once you have an approximate number, you can shrink the volume to any size you want by adding as much space as you want to remove. volume.
Once you have formatted the drive, you will now see a piece of “unallocated space” right next to your volume. This is the space you will be using for your new partition. Follow the steps we mentioned above to partition a drive from unallocated storage to create a new partition from that newly unallocated space, and you are good to go.
Why would I want to partition my disk?
There are many scenarios where knowing how to partition disks can come in handy, and there are a lot of pros and cons as well. As we mentioned above, to get a new hard drive or SSD and install it on your computer, you need to partition your drive before actually using it.
This is because all of these drives come with unallocated space instead of being pre-partitioned because they expect you to configure your drive yourself (since you have to install them anyway. inside your computer) or install an operating system on it. (Windows Setup can perform this process during installation).
USB drives, on the other hand, are usually pre-partitioned because you can just take them out of their packaging, plug them into your PC, and transfer files immediately because their goal is simplicity.
Another reason why you might want to partition your drive is that you might want two or more partitions in a single drive. The reasons for doing so may vary. Multiple partitions can let you run multiple operating systems: you can dual-boot Windows 10 and a distribution of Linux to get the best of both worlds, or you can dual-boot different Windows installations.
Another reason could be to organize your data better. Partitioning effectively provides you with multiple logical volumes and as a result, you will be able to organize your data on each partition in a much cleaner way. You can choose to use one for your essential operating system files, one for your personal data and one for your work, and so on. You can also choose to use a partition for data backups, although for the latter you would probably want to get a new, separate drive instead.
Let’s start with partitioning
Even if you don’t like having multiple partitions on your drive, we all need to be at least a little familiar with the concept of partitioning, as chances are we will have to at some point. If this is the first time you are setting up your player or have other uses for it, now you have the tools and knowledge you need.
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