Windows Disk Management

When you buy a new laptop, with 320GB hard-disk or 500GB hard-disk, you get only partition in it either of 280GB or 470GB respectively. Many of us wants to arrange our disks. Keep one partition for movies and songs, other for data and another one for ‘C’ Drive, but we don’t know how to do that. Plus we are afraid, in doing so we might lose all out data.

Well thankfully Windows has a pretty simple and easy Disk Management System, which will allow you to make partitions from you current drive. Some manufacturers also keep 30-40GBs of Raw space in your hard-disk, which hardly any one notices.
From windows Disk Management you can :

• Create New Partitions.
• Delete Existing Partition.
• Create Raw Space (In case you want to install Linux).
• Extend Partition (If you have Raw Space).

So lets see how to open Disk Management and do have fun with our partitions 🙂

1. How to open Windows Disk Management??
   Start –> ( Right click on ) My Computer –>  Manage.
   
   

   Open Device Manager.

    

2. Current Summary.

   

   Current Partition.

    

3. Shrink Volume
   Right click on partition you want to divide and click on ‘Shrink Volume’.
   

   Right click –> Shrink Volume

    

4. Wait till windows checks for available space.
   
   

   Windows checking space.

    

5. Enter size of new partition/disk.
   Check the maximum size available to shrink, and then give the size of new partition.
   

   Enter size.

    

6. New Partition.
   This partition is actually ‘Raw Space’ with no file system. So you can’t see this in your ‘My Computer’ because windows cannot read it.To make it usable, we need to format it in ‘NTFS’ File system so that Windows recognizes it.
   
   

   New Partition created.

    

Create New Disk.

To make a new disk out of the Raw space, we need to format it. You can format the new partition as :

1. Simple New Volume.
   To create a new disk, Right click on the unallocated space, and select ‘Simple New Volume.
   

   Right click –> Simple new Volume

    

2. Click on ‘Next’.
   
   

   Next

    

3. Enter the size again.
   Keep it as it is. If you created a new partition of 10GB, and you enter here 5GB, then 5GB would still be as ‘Unallocated Space’. So don’t change any value here.
   

   Enter size.

    

4. Drive letter.
   Enter the drive letter you wish to assign to New Disk.
   

   Assign letter and give name.

    

5. Format.
   To make this partition usable, perform a ‘quick format’ of this space. Keep the file-system as NTFS, and you can change the Volume Label.
   

   Format and give disk a new name.

    

6. Click Finish.
   
   

   Summary of new disk created.

    

7. New Partition.
   
   

   New partition 🙂

    

Extend existing partition.

What if we want to Extend a partition. You have unallocated space, but you don’t want to create a new disk, instead you want to add it to an existing disk.

1. We will extend unallocated space with C drive.
   
   

   C extended with raw space.

    

    

2. Extend Volume.
   Right click on the disk you want to extend, and click on ‘Extend Volume’.
   Note : If you don’t have unallocated space, the ‘Extend Volume’ option will be disabled. You can’t select it.
   

   Right click. Select Extend Volume.

    

3. Click Next.
   
   

   Click Next.

    

    

4. Select disks.
   Windows will by-default take the whole of unallocated space.
   
   

   Select disks.

    

    

5. Click on Finish.
   
   

   Finish.

    

    

6. Extended Partition.
   
   

   Extended Partition.