Dividing a disk into partitions windows 10 program. How to partition a hard drive into partitions using a Windows utility and special programs? What to do if the disk is not formatted and you cannot create a system partition on unused space
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Read how to partition an HDD or SSD disk using the built-in tools in Windows 10. Detailed step by step instructions. The hard drive is one of the main elements of modern computers, allowing you to record, process and store all user information and computer management systems. For the convenience of the user, the space on internal hard drives is segmented (“partitioned” into sections). Partitioning is usually used to separate files operating system from other user files.
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Hard disk partitions
Perhaps your inner HDD already has two or three sections. The computer specialist initially did all the partitioning work for you. But there are times when you need to reconfigure an existing partition or split it into two or more partitions. As it may seem at first glance, this is a very complicated process, but it is not so. And although the procedure for partitioning a hard disk requires special care and caution, it is still simple enough that any responsible user can perform it. It also doesn't require installation. third party applications which makes it more convenient to use.
Device Manager has a built-in feature called "Disk Management", which allows you to partition a disk, and is quite easy to use. If you are using a Windows 10 Creators Update or higher version of the operating system, then you can apply the function "Disk Management" to partition a USB drive or SD card. However, in this article, we will only talk about the method of partitioning a hard drive.
Thus, using our algorithm, you can separate both internal and external hard disk. If you have a solid state hard drive (SSD) installed, it can also be partitioned in the same way.
Prerequisites
To partition a hard drive Windows 10 you must have administrator rights and have access to the hard drive connected to your operating system. If you are planning to partition an external hard drive, make sure it is conveniently placed on a surface that will prevent it from being accidentally disconnected during the partitioning process.
Concepts of understanding
The hard drive is a mechanical element. To understand the principle of partitioning a hard drive, let's draw an analogy with an apartment. Imagine an apartment in front of you - a studio, when all the space around is one large room and an adjacent bathroom. This is a blank hard drive when not yet partitioned, which is one large amount of storage space with one small partition for the recovery drive.
Suppose now you decide to turn this one-room apartment - studio into a regular apartment, that is, add additional rooms. In essence, what you have decided to do is divide your apartment into different parts, by analogy, divide your hard drive into sections. When you start laying down walls to divide up the studio space, you have complete freedom of choice to decide where the first wall will be, i.e. how big or small your first partition will be. Once you have successfully partitioned your hard drive into two partitions, your ability to partition your hard drive is reduced. And you need to be careful when you divide the next section.
Be aware that there is a limit to the number of partitions you can create. If your hard drive has a way to store disk partition information "MBR", you can create up to four partitions and no more. If the way your disk information is stored is GPT, then you can create an infinite number of partitions.
Check the way disk partition information is stored
To determine how information about disk partitions is stored, follow these steps. On the desktop, click right click mouse on label "This computer" "Device Manager".
In the dialog box that opens, check the box « Disk devices» . You will see a list hard drives installed on your computer. Check desired disk and right-click on it, in the menu that appears, select the link "Properties".
In the dialog box " Properties" In chapter "Toma" press the button "Fill in".
All available information about your disk will be listed in the section "Disk Information". Look at the line to find out what method of storing information about disk partitions is used on your disk.
Partitioning a hard drive
To get started, right-click on the shortcut on the desktop "This computer" and select link from the pop-up menu "Control".
A dialog box will open in front of you. "Computer Management". In the side menu on the left side of the screen, select a section "Disk Management".
In the middle pane of the dialog box, you will see a list of all partitions on the selected hard drive. In our case, we will create a section in an existing section. "E". If you have a disk without partitions, then follow the same algorithm for it. Click on your unpartitioned drive (in our case, the partition "E") right click and select link . Computer Management Service Windows 10 will check what is the maximum amount of disk space you can use to create a new partition. It does this to ensure that none of your files are lost after the split is complete. The newly created partition will not contain any files.
For example, if you have a 1 TB hard drive with 800 GB of saved files, then you cannot and should not attempt to partition 500 GB each. Computer Management Service Windows will not be able to shrink the volume beyond the location of non-removable files. Therefore, after receiving the results of the available space for compression, select the size of the future partition, taking into account the proposed options. It's best if you don't have saved files on disk, although this is not always the case (as in our case).
Be careful when choosing the partition size - this is really the only tricky part. Make sure that the size of the new partition does not exceed the sizes specified in the line "Available space for compression (MB)". Further, the whole process is no longer difficult, click the button "Squeeze" to run it.
Then grant Computer Management permission to assign new section, that is, assign the section letter designation. And also answer the question of the service about the need to format the newly created partition. It is better to format immediately in order to fully prepare the partition for work. When completed, the new section will appear in the middle menu bar "Computer Management" next to existing sections.
If the new partition appears as a space "RAW", right-click on it, and select Format from the context menu. This completes the hard disk partitioning procedure. If you like you can share disk space your hard drive to the number of partitions you need. However, remember that the number of partitions you can create depends on how you store information on your hard drive (no more than four partitions for "MBR" and an unlimited number of sections for GPT).
If you are installing Windows and plan to divide the hard drive into partitions, then right decision will use the standard service Windows for disk management. It greatly simplifies the process of creating, splitting and formatting partitions in Windows.
You can partition your hard drive into partitions in Windows 10. You can create four partitions on one disk, and each disk must have at least 15% free space. You can partition a disk into Windows 10 partitions using the tools built into the system. To partition your hard drive, Windows 10 will need to open Disk Management. Launch Disk Management, and to do this, hover over the Start button and right-click, select Disk Management from the menu that opens.
How to partition a disk in Windows 10
When the Disk Control Panel opens, partitions will be displayed at the top of it, and the disks with the partitions in them will be displayed at the bottom. You will need to hover over the disk and press the right mouse button. A menu will open in which select the item Shrink Volume.
How to Partition a Hard Drive on Windows 10 A window will open in which Compressible space size By default, you will be prompted to transfer all free disk space to create a new partition. In my case, I was asked to transfer 56877 MB, but I ordered to transfer only 20000 MB and pressed the button Compress.
How to partition disks in windows 10 At the bottom of the Disk Control Panel, you will see that the drive has been split into two partitions, but one partition is unallocated and therefore will not appear at the top of the window, nor in Explorer. In order for the second section to appear, you need to move the cursor over it and press the right mouse button, and select the item in the menu that opens. Create a simple volume.
To partition a hard disk into Windows 10 partitions, you will need to run the Create a Simple Volume Wizard The New Simple Volume Wizard window will open, click Next.
Partitioning a disk in Windows 10 In the next window, you can set the size of the created disk, but you do not change anything, but click the Next button.
How to partition a hard drive on Windows 10 In the next window, you will be prompted to assign a letter to the created partition. You can select a letter from the pop-up list and click Next.
How to Partition a Hard Drive on Windows 10 In the next window, you will need to choose which file system the partition will have. Choose file system from the pop-up list and click Next.
Finish partitioning a drive in Windows 10 In the next window, click the Finish button and the New Simple Volume Wizard will begin its work.
Partitioned hard disk Windows 10 At the end of the wizard, a new section window will immediately open, which you can close. After that, in the Disk Control Panel, you can see what you managed to partition Windows disk 10 as a new section will be displayed which will also be visible in Explorer.
New computers or laptops are sold with an operating system installed, but often with an unbroken logical HDD drives. Only System C is displayed in the File Explorer or My Computer menu. But even if the hard drive is divided into partitions, their number and capacity characteristics often do not meet the user's needs. You can set up comfortable work with equipment if you independently divide the HDD into logical partitions. Let's find out what needs to be done to partition a hard drive in Windows 10, and how to perform this procedure when reinstalling the operating system.
Built-in utility for partitioning a disk into partitions
The Windows 10 operating system gives users the ability to independently manage their disks using the built-in Disk Management feature. You can access it in several ways:Working with the built-in utility is simple. After downloading it, do the following: 
Formatting and creation process file structure on a new disk will take some time - from 1 min. up to 3-7 min. This is fine. The duration of the procedure depends on how long the user has been defragmenting and cleaning. In order for everything to go quickly and without errors, these activities are best done before splitting the space.
Using third party software
Can be used to divide a hard disk into partitions and functional software products. For example: Acronis Disk Director, MiniTool Partition Wizard, Paragon Partition Manager and more. Among all the products offered for beginners, AOMEI Partition Assistant software will be the most understandable and easy to use. It has a Russian-language interface, a system of commands and folders similar to Windows. But most importantly - software distributed free of charge on the network, installed on the hard drive of a computer and laptop in a standard way.After installing AOMEI, it is better to reboot the equipment. Then open the program and do the following: 
During the process, the computer or laptop will restart. It is not worth interfering with the operation of the program, otherwise the partition will fail with errors that can lead to data loss and even reinstallation of the OS. The completion of the procedure will be signaled by the main window of the program that appears on the screen with active disks, among which there will be a new one.
Important! In Windows 10 (starting from the seventh version of the family), only an administrator can perform any system actions - a user with Administrator rights. If they are not there, the program will start to run the process, but the space will not be broken.
Partitioning a disk into logical partitions when installing / reinstalling Windows
It is easier and safer to share HDD space at the time of operating system installation. The process is simple and will take no more than 25-35 minutes. After inserting the flash drive into the USB port (or installation disk) and assigning it to the BIOS "main", the download of files will begin. At the stage "Where do you want to install Windows" act like this:
Important! When separating local C, the above procedure is usually repeated 2-3 times. Depends on the required number of partitions. Each new object is assigned its own volume. As soon as the number of system objects required by the user is displayed in the central block of the installer, click "Next" to continue the installation.When choosing a method of partitioning into logical partitions, it is better to prefer the built-in functionality, especially for those users who are faced with the procedure for the first time. The OS utilities will perform the operation without errors because they are under the guidance of the OS itself. When using third-party tools, you need to carefully monitor the correctness of their installation, the sequence of actions, etc. And most importantly - do not interfere in the process, otherwise data loss (which may lead to the need to reinstall the OS) cannot be avoided.
We continue the series of articles dedicated to simple settings systems. In this article, we will answer questions on how to partition a hard drive in Windows 10, delete, merge or hide partitions. The standard Disk Management utility will help us with this.
Basics
We already wrote earlier about "" and "" for these purposes. In this article, we describe the standard functionality Windows systems 10 when handling logical and physical disks.
A physical disk (hard drive, hard drive, hard drive, etc.) is a physical medium on which all information is stored.
A logical disk is a marked area of a drive for storing information. Can be as HDD area, flash drive, DVD, etc.
Partition - (not to be confused with volume) an area for storing information, created for the convenience of the system and the user. Volume is the drive letter (physical, logical, or virtual).
For example, there is a system with 1 HDD and an ISO image connected. In this case there will be 1 disk (physical), 2 partitions and 3 volumes. (see image).
Working with hard disk partitions Windows 10 - deleting partitions
When working with logical drives, namely expanding, reducing the volume or dividing into different sections, we will need to delete them. Unfortunately, this is standard Windows functionality.
When deleting a partition standard means the so-called markup is removed, but not the information. Third Party Programs(for example, Hetman Partition Recovery) can recover information from an "unallocated" area, but, unfortunately, the standard functionality of the system cannot do this.
The main tool we will have is an application "Disk Management", which is located in the Microsoft Management Console (MMC or Computer Management). To run, enter the command diskmgmt.msc out the window "Run"(Win + R) or right-click on the Start button and select the appropriate item.
The application we need will open.
Removing is extremely simple - right-click on the desired partition and select "Delete volume", and then confirm the deletion.
The system does not see hard disk partitions Windows 10
Sometimes after major system updates or reinstalling windows a section may not appear in Explorer. The system simply does not see this area without the presence of a corresponding volume (letter).
In order for the system to be able to "find the loss", you must specify a letter for the system. To do this, click on the volume with an empty RMB designation and select « Change letter or path...».
Then in the window that opens, click "Add" and specify the desired letter.
If you have a question about how to hide Windows 10 hard disk partitions, then the answer is simple - deleting a letter. In the same window, click "Delete" and confirm the action.
Partitioning a Hard Drive in Windows 10
To split a disk into multiple partitions, select the desired volume, right-click and select Shrink Volume.
The system will then automatically select a location that can be allocated for staking. To increase the possible allowable space - first perform a defragmentation.
For example, the system allows you to compress up to 87 128 MB, which can then be used.
Click the button Compress” and wait while the system performs the necessary actions.
Then the compressed space will be formed into unallocated space. To create a new disk, right-click on the unallocated space and select « Create Simple Volume...» .
Set the required volume (by default, the maximum is specified), select a letter and name the section, after which a new logical drive will be displayed in the explorer.
How to merge hard drive partitions Windows 10
To merge hard disk partitions in Windows 10, you must follow the steps from the previous method, but in reverse order.
Let's say that the created partition needs to be reattached to the original one. For this the attached section needs to be removed (information from it will be lost). Right-click on a section and click « Delete volume» , after which it will become an unallocated area again.
Warning! The standard utility cannot merge partitions while preserving information. The information of one of them will be lost. But the program can do it.
Right-click on the partition you want to expand and select « Extend Volume» . In the window that opens, select the required volume, how much you want to expand the logical disk and complete the expansion.
This is how you can change the size of Windows 10 hard drive partitions Reduce by compressing volumes and increase by expanding volumes.
Have a great day!
Partition or management hard drive is a very important task, especially for those who have just installed or reinstalled Windows 10. And this can really become a problem for ordinary inexperienced PC users. Here we will introduce you two ways to quickly partition your hard drive in Windows 10().
One solution is to try the disk management tool that Microsoft offers. The second is to use special software to manage partitions. Of course, we are only interested free versions similar solutions.
Solution 1: Partition your hard drive using regular Windows 10 tools
Solution 2: Partition your Windows 10 hard drive for free using third party software
- If the native utility in Windows 10 may seem complicated for you, professional partition management software is what you need. We will consider this operation with an example. EaseUS Partition Master Free, which makes it easy to solve all partition management problems.
- Download EaseUS Partition Master Free from the official website and run it on your computer. Select an unallocated area on your hard drive in Windows 10 and right-click it, choosing Create Partition. If you need to perform another operation, select the appropriate button in the section management menu. Select Apply. That's it, your partitions will now be successfully created. After you complete the above steps, you can use these sections to manage data and store files.
Video: How to Partition or Partition a Windows 10 Hard Drive