How to properly partition a hard drive. How to make several new partitions from one disk? Creating a windows 10 partition

Logical partitions, if not for all, then for most users of Windows systems, are very popular and in demand, since they provide more opportunities for working and saving information. Let's see how to partition a hard drive in Windows 10 without losing data in different situations.

Why is disk partitioning required, and how does it work?

As you know, logical volumes are convenient to use because if the system fails and is subsequently reinstalled, information is erased only in the system partition, that is, where Windows is installed. It does not disappear from the logical volume and remains untouched. Of course, previously installed programs will have to be reinstalled, but the documents corresponding to them will be saved and can be opened in the future without problems.

The logical partitions themselves, although they are virtual, are in fact the same hard drive on which a certain space is reserved, which is not affected even during the process of formatting the system volume.

As for partitioning in Windows 10, there may be several options for action. Among the main ones are the following:

• disk partitioning during system installation;
• creating partitions in an already installed system;
• partitioning if there is unallocated space on the hard drive.

Based on this list, you can determine the procedure that will be used in each specific case.

How to partition a hard drive in Windows 10 when installing the system?

The simplest situation is the initial installation of Windows. How to partition a disk in Windows 10 during installation? As easy as pie! If you look closely at any installation distribution, regardless of the system version, at the stage of selecting disks for installation, it will offer to format the hard drive. In this case, you can use two options: full formatting without partitioning into volumes and formatting with the creation of a system partition (where it will subsequently be installed) and logical volumes (one or more) at the user’s request.

In this case, the solution to the problem of how to partition a disk in Windows 10 comes down only to choosing the second option. First, you need to use the button to create a new partition (New) in the installer window and specify its size. This way you can create several volumes by repeating the operation as many times as necessary, without forgetting about the total volume of the hard drive.

Next, you should format the created partitions. This is done by selecting one of the created sections and then pressing the start button for the process. To continue the installation at the next stage, you will be offered a choice: which partition will be the system partition, that is, where to install Windows? Select the desired volume and wait for the system installation to complete. As a result, the user will receive system and logical volumes.

How to partition a hard drive in Windows 10 after installation?

The installation is simple. But some users are wondering how to partition a disk in Windows 10 when the system is already installed. Probably, at the installation stage, the partition was skipped by the user himself, if only because formatting takes a lot of time.

But few people know that starting with Windows 7, systems have their own tools that allow you to partition a hard drive in an already running operating system without losing information. This tool is called Disk Management.

You can access this utility from the “Control Panel”, where you will then have to select the security, administration, creation and formatting sections, that is, take a roundabout route. In the “ten”, the easiest way to access this tool is to right-click on the “Start” button (the corresponding line will be indicated in the menu that appears).

If you need to split a system partition, you should first disable system protection. This is done from the volume properties menu, where the settings button is used in the properties window in the protection tab. We select the system volume and enable the line to disable protection, after which we confirm our actions.

Now suppose we currently have two partitions: C - system, D - logical. We need to create a third partition. How to partition a disk in Windows 10 in this case? First you need to decide on the partition that has the largest volume (usually volume D), although this is not very important. We right-click on it with the manipulator (mouse), and then select the compression command from the menu. You will have to wait a little while for the process to complete (this may take up to several tens of minutes). When finished, the new size will be indicated in the Explorer window.

When the volume polling is completed, we need to specify the amount of disk space that we want to reserve for the new volume. When you click on the “Compress” button, the corresponding procedure will begin. The fact that it is active can only be judged by the spinning circle of the cursor when it is hovered over the program window. The completion of the process can only be determined when a black bar appears at the bottom of the window, indicating unallocated space of the previously specified size.

Please note that the size of the new volume must be specified in megabytes. For example, to create a 50 GB partition, you should specify the value 51200 MB. This is where disk partitioning ends for now.

Creating partitions from unallocated space

At the next stage, you need to make a full-fledged logical partition from the unallocated space, on which you could save information or install another operating system other than Windows 10 there.

To do this, right-click on unallocated space to open a menu in which you select the command to create a simple volume. In the launched “Wizard” we follow its instructions. No need to change size. This is done only if it is intended to create more than one partition from the unallocated space. The next step is to assign a Latin letter to the new section (for example, X), after which you will be asked to format the new section. Leave the default settings and activate the process by clicking the “Finish” button. Now all that remains is to wait for it to complete. All! A new section has been created. For the system volume, the actions are similar, only drive C is selected as the source.

Third party utilities

If one of the users does not want to use the built-in system tools, the problem of how to partition a disk in Windows 10 can be solved using highly specialized programs designed exclusively for this purpose.

Some of the most powerful and popular utilities are programs like Partition Magic and Acronis Disk Director. They have their own “Wizard”, which makes it easier to go through all the stages in the process of creating new sections. However, in some stages the steps above are similar (for example, specifying the volume size). The process itself is almost completely automated.

Conclusion

Finally, it remains to add that there is nothing complicated in the processes of partitioning the disk space of a hard drive in all the above situations. Issues related to what to use are decided by the owner of the computer or laptop. Inexperienced users can be advised to use automated utilities, but administrators or advanced users are still better off using the built-in tools of the system.

New computers or laptops are sold with an operating system installed, but often with an HDD that is not partitioned into logical drives. In the Explorer or My Computer menu, only System C is displayed. 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 your equipment if you independently divide the HDD into logical partitions. Let's find out what needs to be done to partition the hard drive in Windows 10, and how to perform this procedure when reinstalling the operating system.

Built-in utility for partitioning a disk

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, you need to do the following:

The process of formatting and creating a file structure on a new disk will take some time - from 1 minute. up to 3-7 min. This is fine. The duration of the procedure depends on how long ago the user carried out defragmentation and cleaning. In order for everything to go quickly and without errors, it is better to complete these activities before dividing the space.

Using third party programs

Can be used to divide a hard drive into partitions and functional software products. For example: Acronis Disk Director, MiniTool Partition Wizard, Paragon Partition Manager and other tools. Among all the products offered for beginners, the 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 the main thing is that the software product is distributed free of charge on the network and installed on the hard drive of a computer or laptop in the standard way.

After installing AOMEI, it is better to reboot the equipment. Then open the program and follow these steps:

During the process, the computer or laptop will restart. You should not interfere with the operation of the program, otherwise the partition will fail with errors, which may lead to data loss and even reinstallation of the OS. The completion of the procedure will be signaled by the main program window appearing on the screen with active disks, including the new one.

Important! In Windows 10 (starting from the seventh version of the family), only an administrator - a user with Administrator rights - can perform any system actions. If they are not there, the program will start running the process, but the space will not be partitioned.

Partitioning a disk into logical partitions when installing/reinstalling Windows OS

It is easier and safer to share HDD space at the time of installing the operating system. The process is simple and will take no more than 25-35 minutes. After installing the flash drive into the USB connector (or installation disk) and assigning it as “main” in the BIOS, the files will begin downloading. At the stage “Where do you want to install Windows” proceed as follows:

Important! When dividing local C, the above procedure is usually repeated 2-3 times. Depends on the required number of sections. Each new object is assigned its own volume. As soon as the central block of the installer displays the number of system objects required by the user, click “Next” to continue the installation.

When choosing a method of dividing into logical partitions, it is better to prefer the built-in functionality, especially for those users who are encountering the procedure for the first time. OS utilities will perform the operation without errors, since they carry it out 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 the most important thing is not to interfere with the process, otherwise data loss (which may lead to the need to reinstall the OS) cannot be avoided.

Most users are accustomed to using two partitions on one hard drive, usually a drive called C and D. Many have become interested in the question of how to change the disk size in Windows 10 using the built-in system tools (during installation of Windows or after) and third-party free programs.

Use the Disk Management utility

• Open the utility by right-clicking on the Start menu and selecting Disk Management.

• In the search bar of the Start menu, type “Control Panel” and open it.

Select "System and Security".
In the window that opens, in the “Administration” item, click on the “Create and format a hard drive” sub-item.

Shrinking a volume, freeing up space to create a new partition in Windows 10

To create a new volume in the utility, you first need to get free space somewhere for this; it can be obtained by compressing space on an existing volume. In the Windows operating system, no more than 4 partitions can exist on one physical HDD, including system ones (for example, the Recovery Partition). Typically there are two local drives C and D.

To create a third volume, you need to right-click on the partition that has more free space, in our case it is drive D. An explorer window will appear, click on the “Shrink volume” item to free up free space, change it to unallocated.

Partition D to create a new volume.

After this, the message “The volume is being polled to determine the available space for compression” will appear. Wait…". The process can last from several seconds to several tens of minutes.
When the system finishes polling the volume, a window will appear in the “Size of volume to be compressed” column, you need to indicate how much space needs to be separated from the donor disk to create free space for now. It will not be possible to allocate more space for a new partition than specified. In the example in the screenshot, the limit is 78880 MB, a little more than 77 GB.

You can specify any other number less than the one specified above, for example, by setting the value to 51200 MB, allocate exactly 50 gigabytes for the new volume. After selecting the “Compress” option, no result will be noticeable for some time. To check whether the compression process is in progress, you need to hover the cursor over the utility window; a spinning blue circle should appear. When a black strip with unallocated space appears at the bottom of the window, this will indicate that compression has occurred.

This frees up space to create a new volume on the HDD in Windows 10. Now the unallocated space needs to be turned into a full-fledged hard drive partition.

— Creating a hard disk partition from unallocated space

You need to right-click on the area labeled “Unallocated” and select “Create a simple volume.”

The “Create a Simple Volume Wizard” will open, click “Next”, in the next window you will need to specify the size of the new volume. You can leave the value unchanged, or, if you want to create two or more sections, specify a smaller value. Click "Next".

After this, select the Latin letter that will denote the disk, for example, F. Select the letter and click “Next”.

You will then be able to format the new partition if necessary.

Continue by clicking “Done”.

After a few seconds or minutes, the partition is formatted and a new Windows 10 hard drive partition will be created. When choosing the amount of memory you want to allocate for creating a new one, you must take into account that a small amount of compressed space will be taken by Windows for system needs.
So, when choosing 50 GB of memory, we got a volume of 49.9 GB in size.

Creating partitions when installing Windows 10

When installing Windows 10 on a computer from a flash drive or disk, you can divide the disks into volumes. For those who reinstall the operating system, please note that this will lead to the deletion of data from the system partition.
During Windows installation, after entering (or skipping) the activation key, select “Custom Installation”, after which you will be able to select a partition for installation; tools for setting up partitions are available.

In our case, drive C is partition 4.
To make two partitions from one HDD, you need to use the “Delete” button to create a partition; as a result, it will be converted into “Unallocated space on the disk” (step 4).
Then select an unallocated space, click the “Create” button, set the size of the future “Disk C”. After its creation, there will be free unallocated space that will need to be converted into a second disk partition in the same way.

After creating the second partition, it is recommended to select it and click “Format” (otherwise it may not appear in Explorer after installing Windows 10 and will have to be formatted and assigned a letter through “Disk Management”). Then select the volume that was created first, click “Next” to continue installing the operating system on drive C.

Programs for partitioning disks

In addition to the built-in Windows tools, there are many programs for working with disk partitions. Some of the best free programs are Aomei Partition Assistant Free and Minitool Partition Wizard Free.
First, you will need to download the Aomei Partition Assistant program from the official website, install it on your PC and run it. The application has a Russian language; we select a non-system drive, in our case it is “E”.
Right-click on it and click “Resize partition”.

The selected amount of memory will appear, in our case – 15 GB.
Right-click on the system local drive C and select “Resize partition” from the context menu.

Again, drag the slider to the right to the desired size, or set the required space for expansion in the “Unallocated space after” field. A warning will appear to make a Windows 10 system recovery image or a backup copy using third-party tools, click “Ok”. To save changes, click “Apply” in the upper left corner.

A message will appear that there will be several reboots, during which drive C will be merged with unallocated space, select “Go”. A message will appear that the program will work in PreOs mode, click “Yes”.
Windows 10 will begin to reboot.
When you boot for the first time, AOMEI Partition Assistant PreOS Mode will launch.
The process of completing the task will begin.

Many computer users find it convenient to use multiple partitions on one hard drive, but not everyone knows how to partition a disk in Windows 10. Dividing a hard drive into logical volumes has a number of advantages over using a single volume. The most obvious thing is the safety of personal information in the event that you need to reinstall the OS. It is enough to transfer the data to a non-system local disk, and when formatting the system partition, it will not be affected. Another plus is the ability to install multiple OSes and increased performance of the current system. After all, the smaller the volume of the system partition, the faster Windows works.

So, how to partition your hard drive in Windows 10? Let's look at how to do this, first using standard Windows tools as an example, and then using third-party utilities.

From the operating environment

Windows 10 can partition your hard drive using built-in applications. If the system is already installed and functioning normally, it is advisable to defragment it before the division operation. File fragments may be located in different parts of the hard drive, and this will prevent the entire disk space from being used. Defragmentation collects everything in one place, thereby freeing up space. To partition a disk in Windows 10, right-click on the Start icon and go to Disk Management. The same result can be achieved by pressing the key combination “Win ​​+ R” and entering the command “diskmgmt.msc”.

All volumes will be displayed in the upper center of the window. Below - the connected drives are listed. When one hard drive is connected, most likely it will be signed as “Disk 0”. Typically, it will already contain several sections. You cannot perform any actions on volumes without a letter. These are specially created parts by the system that contain information for the OS boot loader. Divide only the main volume, in most cases it has the letter "C".

To start partitioning, right-click on the main disk and select the “Shrink Volume” menu item. In a new window you will be asked to determine how much space you want to allocate for the new section. It is highly undesirable to allocate all unfilled space for these purposes. For normal operation of the system, you need to leave about ten gigabytes.

Better yet, 30-60 GB of free space.

Click "Shrink" and the unallocated area of ​​the disk will appear. Right-click on it and click “Create simple volume”. The “Create Simple Volume Wizard” will open. You will be asked to determine the amount of space you want to allocate for the new section. If this will be the only volume, select all free space. If you plan to create another one, allocate as much space as you need for the current one. Next, assign a letter, format the partition in the NTFS file system and click “Finish”. The breakdown occurs automatically, so you only need to wait for the operation to complete.

Using the “Extend Volume” function, you can increase the size of an existing partition using the free space of another logical drive. If you have multiple hard drives, Windows 10 can expand the volume of the partition using a volume on another drive.

Be sure to defragment the disks before repartitioning.

First you need to free up the area for expansion. This can be done either by shrinking one of the partitions or by deleting the existing volume. For the second option, you need to right-click on the required partition and select “Delete Volume”. Then click on the unallocated area and click “Extend Volume”. In the window that appears, the expandable section will be on the right side. Click “Next” and check if everything was specified correctly. To divide the area, click on “Done”.

Disk partitioning when installing OS

How to partition a disk when installing Windows 10? First of all, you should understand that in this case you will have to delete all information from the system partition. When installing Windows, after requesting an activation key, a window will appear in which you must select “Custom installation”.

Next, remove unnecessary volumes. After that, select the unallocated space and create a new partition based on it. First you need to determine the size of the system disk. Everything else will be under the second logical volume. You also need to select it and click on the “Create” button. To avoid problems with recognition, format it. This way you can create the desired number of volumes.

Helper utilities

You can also partition a disk in Windows 10 using third-party programs. Consider utilities such as:

• Aomei Partition Assistant Free;
• Partition Magic;
• Acronis Disk Director.

As the name itself suggests, Aomei Partition Assistant Free is distributed free of charge. You need to download and install the program. Installing the application on Windows 10 is easy.

The main thing is to run as administrator.

With this program you can:

• partition the hard drive into partitions;
• resize logical volume;
• delete or add a section.

To allocate disk space, open the previously installed Partition Assistant and select the drive in the main window. At the bottom left, click on “Partition disk”. Then distribute the space between the existing and new partition. Click “Ok” and wait for the process to complete.

Finally, let's look at how to partition a hard drive using the command line. Click “Win ​​+ R” or “Start” - “All Programs” - “Accessories” - “Command Prompt”. You need to run as administrator and enter the commands:

• list disk - displays a list of available media;
• list volume - shows logical partitions on all hard drives;
• to select a hard drive, enter “select disk N”, where N is the number of the desired disk;
• create partition - create a partition, primary - primary, logical - logical.

For dividing a hard drive into logical volumes, the Windows 10 environment is just more convenient than the above method. However, the choice is yours.

Partitioning or managing a hard drive is a very important task, especially for those who have just installed or reinstalled Windows 10. And it can really be a problem for ordinary inexperienced PC users. Here we will introduce you to two methods 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 dedicated partition management software. Of course, we are only interested in free versions of such solutions.

Solution 1: Partition your hard drive using standard Windows 10 tools

Solution 2: Partition Windows 10 Hard Drive for Free Using Third Party Software

1. If you find the native utility in Windows 10 to be complicated, professional partition management software is what you need. We will look at this operation using the example of EaseUS Partition Master Free, which allows you to easily solve all partition management problems.
2. 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 on it, selecting “Create Partition.” If you need to perform another operation, select the appropriate button in the partition management menu. Select Apply. That's it, now your partitions will be successfully created. Once you complete the above steps, you can use these partitions to manage data and store files.

Video: How to partition or partition a Windows 10 hard drive