How to Partition a Hard Drive – 3 Ways

Many users are faced with the need to partition a disk (HDD or SSD) into partitions for more convenient work in the Windows operating system. A computer’s hard disk drive (HDD) or solid state drive (SDD) creates several partitions that contain the system and separate user data.

You can partition a hard disk into sections using the Windows operating system or using third-party software.

Do I need to partition the disk?

Whether to partition a hard drive into sections, each user decides for himself. In some cases, for example, new laptops may already have additional partitions created by the device manufacturer.

Dividing a disk into partitions is not a mandatory operation at all. Many computers run on a single system partition that takes up the entire physical hard drive.

Usually, there are several service partitions on the hard disk that are necessary for booting or restoring the system. On systems with UEFI BIOS, there are several such partitions, and on PCs with Legacy BIOS, there is 1 partition with MBR (Master Boot Record).

In addition to service partitions, the device may contain a Recovery partition created by the laptop manufacturer. We do not consider these additional service sections in this article.

It is up to you to decide whether to partition a disk into partitions after considering the current situation on your PC. Check out the pros of creating an additional partition on your computer’s hard drive.

You can partition a hard disk into partitions in Windows in the following cases:

• To separate the operating system and installed software from other user data.
• For more efficient work on the PC and for faster system maintenance.

Often, users separate the operating system from their other data: music, videos, photos, documents, etc. Windows with programs is located on one system partition of the disk, and the rest of the data is located on another partition. Usually, these are local drives: “C” for the system and “D” for all other data.

If, as a result of failures and malfunctions on the computer, the user reinstalls the operating system, then all information from the system partition will be deleted, and the data located on another partition of the hard disk will be preserved.

If you do not clean up your computer , it will be much more productive to work, because it is easier for the user to find the necessary files located on certain sections than in a situation where all the information is mixed in one place. System maintenance programs will be faster to do their job on the system partition without unnecessary data, because the disk size will be smaller.

In addition, viruses are more likely to infect the C drive, so the data on the D drive is more likely to avoid being infected by malicious software.

Based on the foregoing, decide for yourself whether you need to partition your hard drive or not. You can not change anything and continue to use the hard drive without creating new partitions on it, especially if your PC has a small hard drive installed.

How to Partition a Hard Drive

There are several ways to redistribute space on your computer’s hard drive:

• Partition a hard drive using Windows.
• Creating a new partition on a disk using third-party software.
• Creating the necessary partitions during the installation of the Windows operating system on a computer.

These methods are used depending on the current situation on a particular computer.

It is not always possible to create a new partition using the tools of the Windows operating system. In this situation, you can use the help of third-party programs designed to work with computer disks: Acronis Disk Director, AOMEI Partition Assistant, EaseUS Partition Master, Paragon Hard Disk Manager, MiniTool Partition Wizard, etc.

There is another pretty good option: partitioning the disk into partitions during the installation of Windows on the computer.

The system partition should be with a minimum size of approximately 80-120 GB. Here is the operating system, installed programs, there must be free space on the disk needed to store temporary files. The rest of the hard disk space can be given to another partition, in which you save all other data.

How to Partition a Disk in Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7

First, let’s see how to partition a hard drive in Windows 10, Windows 8.1, (Windows 8), Windows 7 using the tools built into the operating system.

The situation on the computer is as follows: on one physical disk there is a system partition and several service partitions that are not displayed in Explorer. We will create an additional partition to store user files.

To work with the computer’s disk system, we need a built-in tool: the Disk Management utility. There are several ways to open Disk Management.

1 way for all Windows OS:

1. Press the “Win” + “R” keys on your keyboard.
2. In the “Run” dialog box, enter the command: “diskmgmt.msc” (without quotes), and then press the “Enter” key.

Method 2 for Windows 10:

1. Right click on the start menu.
2. In the open menu, click on “Disk Management”.

The Disk Management window displays all disks (volumes, partitions) of the computer. On the hard disk, some of the partitions are service (they do not have letters), the Windows operating system is installed on the “C:” drive.

Now let’s take a step-by-step look at how to partition a hard disk into Windows partitions using the built-in tool:

1. Right-click on the “C:” drive, in the context menu, click on the item “Compress volume …”.
2. After requesting space to compress, a window will open showing the available space to compress. Agree with the choice of the system, or set your own size, which should be less than the proposed one.
3. Click on the “Compress” button.
4. Unallocated space appeared in the Disk Management snap-in, from which you need to create a new partition (volume, local disk).
5. You need to right-click on the “Unallocated” area.
6. In the context menu that opens, click on “Create a simple volume …”.
7. In the first window of the New Simple Volume Wizard, click the Next button.
8. In the “Specify volume size” window, click the “Next” button.
9. In the Assign drive letter or path window, the first free letter of the English alphabet is automatically substituted. Click on the “Next” button.

If there are no other partitions on this PC (service partitions are not taken into account), then the letter “D” is assigned to the created local disk. You can select any other available letter to assign to the new section.

10. In the Format Partition window, click the Next button.

The default file system is NTFS. In the “Volume Label” item, you can assign a suitable name to this partition. By default, Windows assigns a name: “New Volume”. However, this operation can be performed at any other time directly from Explorer.

11. In the Completing the Create Simple Volume Wizard window, click the Finish button.

The new partition that we just created on the hard drive will appear in the Disk Management tool window.

How to Partition a Disk in MiniTool Partition Wizard

Using the system tool, it is not always possible to create a partition of the desired size. In this case, third-party applications designed to work with computer disks will come to our aid.

We will use the services of the MiniTool Partition Wizard program, in particular the free version of the application – MiniTool Partition Wizard Free, which has all the tools we need.

In the MiniTool Partition Wizard, do the following:

1. Select the drive where you want to create a new partition, in our case it is the local drive “C:”.
2. In the side menu, click on the “Movie/Resize Partition” option, located in the “Change Partition” section.
3. In the “Movie/Resize Partition” window that opens, move the slider to reduce the size of the “C:” drive. Set the desired size for the newly created partition.
4. Click on the “OK” button.
5. Unallocated space has appeared on the hard disk, which needs to be allocated.
6. Click on the side menu item “Create Partition” in the “Partition Management” section.
7. In the “Create New Partition” window, in the “Partition Label” item, enter the volume label. You can choose what suits you best: “Local disk”, “DATA”, etc.
8. To apply the changes, click on the “OK” button.
9. A new partition has appeared on the hard disk of the computer. Click on the “Apply” button located in the lower left corner of the sidebar.
10. In the warning window, click on the “Yes” button.
11. Another window will open in which you need to click on the “Restart Now” button.
12. When the PC restarts, the MiniTool Partition Wizard program will perform the work of creating partitions on the hard disk, taking place in two stages.

As a result, a new partition appeared on the computer.

How to Partition a Disk When Installing Windows

During a clean installation of the system or when reinstalling Windows, it is possible to partition the hard drive into partitions during the OS installation process on the computer. This method works the same in Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7.

The suggested actions are suitable in a situation where there was no system on the PC yet, or when you need to reinstall Windows with one system partition on your hard drive.

During Windows installation, during the partitioning process, all data that was on the hard disk partitions will be deleted. Take care in advance of their transfer to another storage location.

You need to do the following:

1. In the process of starting to install Windows on your computer, go to the window in which you need to select a location for installing the OS. In our case, there are two situations:

• If this PC has not yet had an operating system installed, then the entire volume of the hard disk is occupied by unallocated space.
• If the disk contains partitions from a previous operating system, delete them. Highlight the partition, and then click on the “Delete” button until one unallocated space remains.

2. As a result, we will have unallocated space on the entire disk. Click on the “Create” button.
3. Select the appropriate size for the system partition in megabytes (1 GB = 1024 MB), click on the “Apply” button.
4. In the window with a warning about creating additional service partitions intended for system files, click the OK button.

A partition has appeared on the hard disk into which we will install Windows, and several additional service partitions on a computer with GPT (UEFI), or one service partition on a PC with MBR (BIOS Legasy).

5. Highlight the unallocated space, click on the “Create” button.
6. In the next window, click on the “Apply” button.
7. Select only the created partition, click on the “Format” button.

This is necessary so that this partition immediately becomes displayed in Explorer, otherwise the partition will have to be formatted from disk management.

8. Confirm partition formatting.
9. Select the partition created for installing Windows, click on the “Next” button to continue installing the operating system on the computer.

Article Conclusions

In some situations, users need to partition a hard disk into partitions in Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7. The necessary partitioning work can be done using Windows system tools, third-party software, or during the OS installation process on a computer. As a result, another partition will appear on the computer, in addition to the system one, designed to store user data.