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Repartitioning a hard drive in windows 10. How to properly partition a hard drive into sections

To work with hard disk partitions (dividing into partitions or combining them into one) in the Windows 10 operating system, there is a built-in utility " Disk Management". Its use, in my opinion, is preferable to installing any third-party tools. How to divide a hard disk with your own means of "dozens" or, conversely, combine its sections, you can read in separate articles on this site: divide and unite. But sometimes there are situations when it is quite difficult to do without third-party tools.

This article was written in response to questions from readers of the site who had problems dividing a hard drive or combining its volumes. The Disk Management utility built into Windows 10, despite all its advantages, has its drawbacks: sometimes it does not allow you to create a partition of the desired size, from time to time it does not allow you to split the hard disk at all, sometimes it is not possible to combine the necessary volumes into one. In these problem situations(and only in them!) I recommend using a third-party, albeit free program for managing hard disk partitions in the "top ten". It should be remembered that the use of any third party tool to manage the operating system can be potentially dangerous. I am not inclined to dramatize the situation, but I believe that it is my duty to warn about it, even if the likelihood possible problems is one chance in ten thousand. Therefore, when possible, it is still better to use the built-in Disk Management utility developed by Microsoft in Windows 10.

When I was preparing this article, I spent several hours of time to find a truly completely free, reliable and reputable hard drive partitioning software(or their combinations). There are a lot of outright lies and dubious programs of unknown origin in this area. A separate item in my search was the question that the found software was not only free, but also had a Russian-language interface and also turned out to be completely compatible with Windows 10. The last question is far from idle - the fact is that on the Internet you can find information about how some disk partitioning programs created for Windows 7 or 8 ruined hard drives Windows users 10.

So, as a result of a long and careful search, I finally found and tried the program myself AOMEI Partition Assistant. In general, its full version of the Professional Edition costs from $ 59 and much more. But don't let that scare you, because the functionality of its free Standard Edition branch is quite enough to:

Divide hard drive into partitions
Merge hard drive volumes into one partition

In general, the presence of a paid version speaks only in favor of this software. After all, this testifies to the seriousness of the intentions of its authors. Those who create programs for money, for sure, make worthy solutions for free, albeit with somewhat limited functionality (all the more, it will be enough for us). Another proof of the authority of AOMEI Partition Assistant, in my opinion, is the presence of an article about it in Wikipedia. By the way, if you doubt the reliability and safety of a program, always check through a search engine to see if Wikipedia writes about it. This, of course, is not a 100% guarantee, but still, since this electronic encyclopedia strives for maximum objectivity, in articles about software there you can find information about the possible "pitfalls" of a particular program. It is in the same place, on Wikipedia, that it is better to take a link to the official website of the program. The fact is that in search engines, the first places are often occupied by no means official sites of certain programs.

On the official site AOMEI Technology I immediately found section on Partition Assistant. We go down on this page a little down to the second screen. There for download free version the program we need to manage the hard disk, we find the item Partition Assistant Standard Edition and (of course) click "Download". Don't be scared that the site is on English language, the program itself has an official Russian localization. Please note that there are several options for downloading this program for different needs on the page - for home free use, choose the version standard Edition.

The process of installing the program is not complicated at all. First, it is proposed to select a language, then traditionally accept the usage agreement, if necessary, select the folder where the program will be stored - that, in general, is all. After installation, the program will automatically start if at the last step you leave a check mark on the “Run this program” item.

I will not consider all options for using AOMEI Partition Assistant to manage a hard drive. I will analyze in detail only the question of how this free program partition hard drive into multiple partitions in windows 10. Everything else (including merging volumes) is done by analogy.

Partitioning a hard drive with the free AOMEI Partition Assistant in Windows 10

When the program starts, all physical hard disks installed on your computer or laptop, as well as the partitions that exist on them. In order to divide a disk into several volumes, you first need to “pin off” a piece of space from an existing partition. To do this, stand on the donor volume and right-click on it, select " Resize Partition».

A new window will appear in which you need to specify what size you want to leave the existing volume. The rest of the space will be freed up for the new partition. I left the C drive 150 GB. We press OK.

Now we see that we have free space labeled " Unoccupied". We need to create a new partition (volume) on it. To do this, click again with the right mouse button on it and select the item " Section creation».

The pop-up window appears again. In it, we leave everything by default and click OK.

After that, a new section will already appear on the program screen. It would seem that you can rejoice. But it was not there. Turns out, no changes have been made to the hard drive itself yet! To complete the operation, you must press the button at the top Apply».

As a rule, a computer restart is required to complete the operation. This is what the new window in the AOMEI Partition Assistant tells us about. Click "Go" on it. It is better to leave a tick in front of the “Check partitions before execution” item. It will allow the program to check sections for errors before dividing.

After that, a new window will appear again with a warning about restarting the computer. We agree and click "Yes".

After the reboot, the actual physical division of the hard disk into two partitions begins. It happens before loading. operating system Windows 10 in PreOS mode.

Personally, this process took me a couple of minutes. Most likely, the fact is that on the shared hard disk I had nothing but myself cleanly installed Windows 10 and several programs. Therefore, it did not take much time to move the files. If the computer is weak, and there is a lot of information on the disk, then the division process can take much longer. My computer rebooted twice and then started in normal mode. After that, a new section appeared in the explorer, and the existing one became smaller.

Let me remind you that by analogy with this instruction in Windows 10 Freeware AOMEI Partition Assistant Can Merge Hard Disk Partitions.

I foresee a question from some caustic readers of my site, why I reviewed only one free program for managing hard drive partitions on the "top ten". Will explain. The fact is that the rest of the programs I studied did not suit me for various reasons: some of them did not have the Russian language (and for many this is important), for others the functionality in the free version turned out to be too much curtailed, and still others raised doubts in terms of security for the operating system and compatibility with Windows 10. In addition, I absolutely see no reason to look for something else to solve fairly rare tasks. I believe that the considered software copes with the tasks set with a bang and has undoubted advantages over all others. free programs which I have studied. So why fill your head with unnecessary information then?)

many computer users It is convenient to use several 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 is the safety of personal information in the case when 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, they will not be affected. Another plus is the ability to install multiple operating systems and an increase in the performance of the current system. After all, the smaller the volume of the system partition, the faster Windows works.

So how do you break HDD to partitions in Windows 10? Let's figure out how to do this, first with an example standard means Windows, and then third-party utilities.

From operating environment

Split hard Windows disk 10 can built-in applications. If the system is already installed and functioning normally, it is advisable to perform a defragmentation before the division operation. File fragments can be located in different parts of the hard drive, and this will not allow using the entire disk space. Defragmentation collects everything in one place, thereby freeing up space. To partition a drive in Windows 10, click right click Click on the Start icon and go to Disk Management. The same result can be achieved by pressing the keyboard shortcuts "Win + R" and entering the command "diskmgmt.msc".

All volumes will be displayed in the top center of the window. Below - the connected drives are listed. When one hard drive is connected, most likely it will be labeled as "Disk 0". As a rule, it will already contain several sections. No actions can be performed on volumes without a letter. These are parts specially created by the system, where information for the OS loader is located. Divide only the main volume, in most cases it has the letter "C".

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

And better - 30-60 GB of free space.

Click "Compress" and the unallocated area of the disk will appear. Right-click on it and click "Create Simple Volume". The Create Wizard will open. simple volumes". You will be prompted to define the amount of space you want to allocate for the new partition. 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 partitioning takes place 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 by free space another logical drive. If you have several hard drives, Windows 10 can expand the volume of a partition by using a volume on another drive.

Be sure to defragment your drives before repartitioning.

First you need to free up an area for the extension. 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 desired partition and select "Delete Volume". Then click on the unallocated area and click "Expand 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 "Finish".

Partitioning the disk when installing the OS

How to partition a disk Windows installation ten? First of all, it should be understood that in this case you will have to delete all information from the system partition. At Windows installations after requesting an activation key, a window will appear in which you must select "Custom installation".

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

Auxiliary 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 Manager.

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

The main thing is to run as administrator.

With this program you can:

partition the hard drive into sections;
resize a logical volume;
remove 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 the "Partition disk" item. Then allocate space between the existing and new partition. Click "OK" and wait for the process to finish.

In conclusion, let's look at how to partition a hard drive using the command line. Press "Win + R" or "Start" - "All Programs" - "Accessories" - " Command line". 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 disk, enter "select disk N", where N is the number of the desired disk;
create partition - create a partition, primary - primary, logical - logical.

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

On logical partitions, if not for all, then for most users of Windows systems, it is very popular and in demand, since it provides more opportunities for working and saving information. Let's see how to partition a hard drive in Windows 10 without data loss in different situations.

What is disk partitioning for, and how does it work?

As you know, logical volumes are convenient to use in that in the event of a system failure and its subsequent reinstallation, information is erased only in the system partition, that is, where Windows is installed. It does not disappear from the logical volume and remains intact. Of course, the programs installed earlier will have to be reinstalled, but the documents corresponding to them will be saved, and in the future they can be opened 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 formatting of the system volume.

As for the fact that in Windows 10 partitions, there may be several options. 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 disk into partitions in Windows 10 during system installation?

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 carefully look at any installation distribution, regardless of the version of the system, at the stage of choosing disks for installation, it will offer to format the hard drive. In this case, two options can be used: full formatting without partitioning into volumes and formatting with the creation of a system partition (where it will later be installed) and logical volumes (one or more) at the request of the user.

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. So you can create several volumes, repeating the operation as much as necessary, not forgetting the total volume of the hard drive.

Next, you should format the created partitions. This is done by selecting one of the created partitions and then pressing the process start button. To continue the installation at the next stage, you will be offered a choice: which of the partitions 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 with system and logical volumes.

How to Partition a Hard Drive in Windows 10 After Installation?

With the installation, everything 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 the 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 already running operating systems without losing information. This tool is called Disk Management.

You can access this utility from the "Control Panel", where you then have to select the security, administration, creation and formatting sections, that is, go around. In the top ten in a simple way access to this tool is to use the right click on the "Start" button (the corresponding line will be indicated in the menu that appears).

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

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

When the polling of the volume is over, 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 end of the process can only be determined when a black bar appears at the bottom of the window, indicating the unallocated space of the previously specified size.

Note that the size of the new volume must be specified in megabytes. For example, to create a 50 GB partition, specify the value 51200 MB. This completes the partitioning of the disk for now.

Create partitions from unallocated space

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

To do this, right-click on the unallocated space to open a menu in which the command to create a simple volume is selected. In the launched "Wizard" follow its instructions. You don't need to resize. This is done only if you intend to create not one, but several partitions from the unallocated space. The next step is to assign a Latin letter to the new partition (for example, X), after which you will be prompted to format the new partition. Leave the default settings and activate the process by clicking the "Finish" button. Now it remains to wait for its completion. All! The 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 also be solved with the help of highly specialized programs designed exclusively for this.

Some of the most powerful and popular utilities are programs like Partition Magic and Acronis Disk Director. They have their own "Wizard", which facilitates the passage of all stages in the process of creating new sections. However, at some stages, the steps above are similar (for example, specifying the size of the volume). 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. Questions 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 should still turn to the built-in system tools.

Often, the standard tools offered by the system are not enough to work with the hard drive. Therefore, it is necessary to resort to more efficient solutions that allow you to get detailed information about the HDD and its partitions. The solutions discussed in this article will help you familiarize yourself with the operations that apply to the drive and its volumes.

With its toolkit, AOMEI Partition Assistant is one of the the best programs of a kind. Wide functionality will allow you to effectively configure hard disk volumes. In addition, the program makes it possible to check a specific section for errors. One of interesting features- This is the transfer of the OS with all installed software to another hard drive or SSD.

It also supports writing an image file to a USB device. The interface is endowed with a pleasant graphical shell. Despite the large number useful features, the program is available for free use, which makes it even more in demand. At the same time, it is possible to download the Russian-language version.

MiniTool Partition Wizard

This software has powerful functionality that allows you to merge, split, copy partitions, and a number of other functions. MiniTool Partition Wizard is completely free and available for non-commercial use only. The program provides the ability to change the disk label, and when creating a partition, the cluster size.

The surface test operation allows you to detect bad sectors on the HDD. The ability to convert is limited to only two formats: FAT and NTFS. All tools for working with disk volumes are placed in a very convenient way, so even an inexperienced user will not get confused.

EaseUS Partition Master

A program that opens up many possibilities when working with a hard drive. Among the main ones: disk cloning and OS import from HDD to SSD or vice versa. Partition Master allows you to copy an entire partition - this feature is suitable for the need to create a backup copy of one partition to another.

The program user-friendly interface, in which all operations are in the left block - this allows you to quickly find desired function. The peculiarity of EaseUS Partition Master is that it can be used to hide a specific volume by deleting a letter on it. Creating a bootable OS is another interesting and useful tool.

Eassos PartitionGuru

The convenience of working with Eassos PartitionGuru is achieved primarily due to the simple design. All instruments are located on top panel. A distinctive feature is the ability to build a virtual RAID array. To do this, the user only needs to connect drives to the PC, from which the program itself will construct a RAID.

The existing sector editor allows you to search for the desired sectors, and hexadecimal values are displayed in the right block of the panel. Unfortunately, the software comes in an English-language trial version.

Macrorit Disk Partition Expert

A nice interface displays functionality that is divided into sections. The program allows you to scan your PC for bad sectors, and you can configure the checked disk space. Available conversion formats NTFS and FAT.

Macrorit Disk Partition Expert is free to use, but only in English version. The software is suitable for people who need to spend quick setup hard drive, but for more effective work it is recommended to use analogues.

WonderShare Disk Manager

A program for performing various operations with a hard disk, which allows high-quality data recovery. Compared to other similar software, Macrorit Disk Partition Expert allows you to perform a deep partition scan for lost information.

You can trim and merge hard disk volumes without losing the files stored on it. Other tools will allow you to hide the partition if necessary, or to convert the file system.

Acronis Disk Manager

Acronis Disk Director is one of the most powerful programs with a set of functions and operations to manage hard disk and more. Thanks to the capabilities of this software from Acronis, users can recover lost or deleted data. Among other things, it is possible to defragment the volume, as well as check it for file system errors.

The use of mirror technology allows you to save backup section selected by the user. Acronis Disk Director offers to use the disk editor, which makes it possible to find a lost cluster, taking into account that the execution environment for this operation displays hexadecimal values. The program can be safely used in order to carry out the most efficient work with the HDD.

Partition Magic

A program that allows you to carry out basic operations with a hard drive. The interface is very similar to standard application Windows Explorer. At the same time, among the tools located in the graphical shell, it is easy to find the one you need. The advantage of Partition Magic is that it allows you to select multiple active partitions, each with its own separate OS.

You can also use the services of converting file systems, among them two are supported: NTFS and FAT. You can resize the volume and merge partitions without losing data.

Paragon Partition Manager

Paragon Partition manager pleases users with an interesting set of functions and the purposes of their application. One of them is the connection of the image virtual disk. Among them, image files of VirtualBox, VMware and other virtual machines are supported.

Noteworthy is the function that allows you to convert HFS + file system formats to NTFS and vice versa. Other operations are basic for partitions: cropping and expanding. A large number of The settings provided by the program will allow you to customize all the functionality to your liking.

Reviewed software solutions have a unique potential, each in its own way. The powerful toolkit of the developed software makes it possible to save disk space and extend the working capacity of the hard disk. And the function of checking the HDD for errors allows you to prevent critical errors in the operation of the drive.

Very often there is a need to create an additional partition on your hard drive. This may be due, for example, to the need to protect certain data (you can encrypt the entire selected section). And it happens the other way around, you do not have enough space on a physical medium divided into logical partitions, and then you need to make one out of two and at the same time not lose the data that you store. Today it has already become clear that Microsoft decided to unify all previous developments (Windows 7, windows 8 and Windows XP) into one Windows system 10. Sooner or later, most users will switch to this operating system. Therefore, there is no need to write for previous versions, but I'll tell you how to partition a hard drive into windows partitions 10.

Hard disk partitions - how they are arranged

The main goal in allocating logical partitions on the main physical fische is the convenience of working and separating, for example, operating system files from user files. Sometimes it is necessary to be able to boot multiple operating systems from a single hard drive. If you have only one drive or don't want to mix storage files with operating system files, the logical drive system will help you. Each logical partition can have its own file system.

When a new partition is created, information about it is written to special table sections (in English: partition table). The first sector of a physical hard drive is the Master Boot Record (MBR). The partition table is part of the master boot record. In the MBR, 64 bytes are allocated for storing information about logical partitions, and each partition occupies 16 bytes in this area. Accordingly, only 4 logical disks can be created on one hard disk. This limitation was at the very beginning when creating and developing the logical structure of disks, but it can be circumvented using special programs called partition manager

For a better understanding of how to work with logical partitions on a hard drive, I will show you how to delete, create, compress and split into several using the example of Windows 10.

Partition Manager in Windows 10

Step 1: To work with disks in Windows 10, there is special utility which is called "Disk Management". You can run it from the launch line by pressing the combination Win + R and in the "Open:" field specify diskmgmt.msc and click OK.

Step 2: More fast way You can launch the utility through the "Start" button. Right-click on the Start button and select Disk Management from the list.

How to remove and create a hard drive partition

Step 1: In the disk manager, you will see a list of all your physical disks and, in each, the composition of the logical ones into which they are divided. In my case, the physical drives are Disk 0, Disk 1, and Disk 2. The logical drives are C and G. To remove one of the virtual disks, right-click on it and select "Delete Volume...".

Step 2: Make sure you are removing the exact drive you want. All data on it will be permanently deleted. Confirm deletion.

Step 3: After deletion, the area that was previously allocated to the disk will be marked as "Unallocated".

Step 4: If you need to delete all partitions, do the same operation with all logical partitions until the entire disk area is marked as "Unallocated". I have Disk 2 and the unallocated area is the same size.

Step 5: You can only create a new volume from a partition that is marked as "Unallocated". Right click on the area to create and in the list context menu select "Create a simple volume...".

Step 6: In the Create Simple Volume Wizard window, specify the desired volume size. If you need to create a disk from all available space, specify the maximum capacity. If you specify a smaller size in MB, the manager will create a partition equal to the specified one, and leave the remaining area unallocated. Click Next.

Specify the required size

Step 7: Assign a letter to the partition you are creating. The choice is possible only from those available. Click Next.

Select a letter for the partition from the available list

Step 8: Formatting the created partition. You can choose without formatting and then the partition will need to be formatted manually separately, or you can select the file system for formatting. From the drop-down list, select the type of formatting, cluster size (it's better to leave the default if you don't know why you need it) and specify the volume label (this will be the name of your partition).

Step 9: At the end of creating and formatting the partition, the volume creation wizard will display summary information about the created hard disk partition.

Step 10: Created and formatted in NTFS system The partition looks like this in Disk Manager.

Compression - how to partition a hard drive

Shrinking in Disk Management is a feature of dedicating a single partition to create a new one. With compression, you can create a new logical disk partition from an already existing and working partition. In this case, the data will not be lost (unless, of course, the size of the remaining part is sufficient for storage).

Step 1: Start the disk management manager as shown in the previous example. On the partition in which you want to allocate an area for the new partition, right-click and select "Shrink Volume ...".

Step 2: In the Compressible space (MB): field, enter the amount of space you need. I entered 350,000 (which is about half the capacity of my entire hard drive. It will be 350 GB.

Specify the size to compress

Step 3: When compression is complete, the new and old partitions will look like this. The new partition will be marked as "Unallocated" and the old partition will simply be smaller.

Step 4: On an unallocated partition, right-click and create a simple volume. The previous section described how to create a volume.

Extension - how to merge hard disk partitions

In Disk Management, Extend allows you to increase the capacity of an existing partition by using the unused area of another partition. Naturally, it is impossible to expand a partition that occupies the entire area on a physical medium. Similarly, it is impossible to expand a partition without having free space on the disk marked as "Unallocated". If you have multiple physical disks, you can expand the volume of a partition with another partition on a second physical disk.

Step 1: First you need to free up an area for expansion. There are two options for this:

Compress one of the volumes by biting off the required volume, which will then be expanded to a new volume.
Completely remove one of the existing volumes to expand to a new volume.

I have one unnecessary volume on the disk and I delete it. Right-click on the volume and select "Delete Volume...". The area of the remote volume will be marked as "Unallocated" by the system. This is exactly what we need.

Step 2: On the unallocated area, right-click and select "Extend Volume..."

Step 3: In the extension wizard, the section will automatically be added to the selections for extension window. In the same window, you can add from those available on the left.