For any partition management work there are many free third-party tools available, but Windows includes a pretty good Disk Management Tool which should suffice you for most of your disk management work like partitioning, formatting, merging, etc. Similar to Windows 7, the Windows 8 built-in Disk Management Tool also allows you to re-size the disk, create a partition, etc, if you have enough free space on your system drive.
Disk Management Tool in Windows 7 | 8
Before you start, I recommended you back up your data to a safe place. Next, you need to access Computer Management tool first. So, press Win+X simultaneously to bring up the Power Tasks Menu and from the options displayed choose Computer Management’.
This will display Computer Management. Computer Management section is a collection of Windows administrative tools that you can use to perform your computer-management tasks. The option also appears in the Administrative Tools folder in the Control Panel.
In Computer Management, you will find Storage option. Under it you will notice ‘Disk Management’. Click on it.
Alternatively, you may simply type “partition’ in Settings search and hit Enter to open the Disk Management Tool.
Once you have clicked it open all the disks with their volume will be displayed in the small window.
Select a disk for creating a new one. Right-click on it. You will see various options like:
- Change Drive Letter and Paths
- Format
- Extend Volume
- Shrink Volume
- Add Mirror
- Delete Volume
Create New Partition or Volume
Let us as an example say that you want to create a new volume or partition. So in order to do this, first select ‘Shrink Volume’.
Then, wait for sometime while Windows check the amount of space available for Shrink. Enter the amount of space to shrink in MB and hit ‘Shrink’. Once you hit the button, you will observe some free space created. Checkout the screen-shot below.
Now, right-click on the free-space created and choose the first option ‘New Simple Volume’.
Then, select the amount of space you would like to allocate to the free space and click ‘Next’.
Now, assign a drive letter to your partition and move to the next step by clicking ‘Next’.
If you would like to store data on this partition you will have to partition it first. So, format the patition with NTFS.
After the formatting process as been completed successfully you can see a new partition created in your Windows Explorer.
Using this in-built Disk Management Tool in Windows 7 and Windows 8, you can similarly create a partition, extend a partition, shrink a partition and do more very easily.
How To Resize A Partition In Windows 7 | 8 using Disk Management…even if it fails using DiskPart may also interest you.
