Creating Partition using Disk Management in WindowsMustBeGeek

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Partition is a container in the disk where data will be stored. Administrator can create several partitions in the disk with total size equal to the disk capacity, or create a single partition that takes up the entire disk. In Windows, partition is referred as volume and labelled with a drive letter. Managing partition is done via Disk Management snap-in. It is important for administrator to understand the way of creating partition using Disk Management in Windows, because the disk cannot be used to store data without any partition or volume created on it.

Creating Partition using Disk Management in Windows

Partition can be created in an unallocated space on the disk. This is called the primary partition. The step by step of creating primary partition is as follows:

1. Opening Disk Management

Open Explorer, then right click on This PC on the left pane and select Manage (administrator right is required to perform this step).

On the Computer Management snap-in, expand Storage section on the left pane then select Disk Management.

2. Finding unallocated disk space

You must have an unallocated disk space before creating partition using Disk Management in Windows. By default, you would already have one partition created during Windows installation and named as C: drive. The partition size may be the same as the disk size, which means the partition has taken the entire disk capacity.

If the existing C: drive has taken up the entire disk capacity, you can shrink it to gain some unallocated space. Please be careful when doing so, it is highly recommended to have any kind of backup before playing around with the Windows partition. To shrink an existing partition, right click on the partition then select Shrink volume.

Specify the amount of space to be freed in megabytes. Notice that the amount should not exceed the maximum available shrink space.

If you have unallocated space on other disk, you can also create partition in there. Insert new disk and initialize it to the machine, and it will show up in Disk Management as unallocated.

3. Creating the partition

After deciding the unallocated space to create the partition, right click on it and select New Simple Volume.

Click next on the welcome page.

4. Configuring the partition

Fill in the Simple volume size field to the desired value in megabytes, then click next. Notice the minimum and maximum allowed size when creating the partition.

Choose Assign the following drive letter and select the desired drive letter from the dropdown menu. Click next to continue.

On the Format Partition page, give name for the new volume on the Volume label field. You can leave everything else in default selection. Click next to proceed.

5. Verifying the result

Review the summary and click Finish to proceed.

Now the new partition has been created.

Things to Consider

Before creating partition, administrator has to consider the types of partition structure or partition style that is being used on the disk. Partition style on the disk can be examined by right clicking on the disk name in Disk Management and select Properties.

Then open the Volumes tab to see the partition style in use between MBR and GPT. On MBR disk, only maximum 4 partitions can be created. If more than 4 partitions are required, it will be easier to use GPT disk.