How to Create and Format Hard Disk Partitions in Windows 10, 8, 7?

• Necessary to create and format hard disk
• Create and format hard disk partition via CMD
• Create and format hard disk partition via Disk Management
• Create and format hard disk partition via free partition software (Recommended)
• Summary

Necessary to create and format hard disk

A new hard disk inserted into your computer will display as “unallocated” space in Disk Management, and be invisible in File Explorer. To make it visible and available for data storage, we have to first initialize the disk to MBR or GPT, then create at least one partition on it and format it to a file system (NTFS, FAT32, exFAT, etc) that is compatible with your current operating system.

Sometimes, it is necessary to create more than one partition on a hard disk, especially when you have a large hard drive. Creating a separate partition for your system files is also a great way to protect system data from sudden corruption since each partition will have its own file system. In this article, we will show how to create and format partition by CMD, Disk Management and 3rd party partition manager. Read on to get more details.

Create and format hard disk partition via CMD

First of all, we will show how to create and format hard drive partition in Command Prompt. You can manage disk partition by running corresponding commands. First of all, press the "Windows key+R" on your keyboard to open the "Run" tool. Type “cmd” and press “OK” to open Command Prompt window. Then type in “diskpart” and hit on Enter to launch DiskPart.exe tool. And follow the instruction to create and format hard disk partition.

To create a partition, you have to ensure there is unallocated space on your hard disk. If there is not, you can shrink another partition to get one.

Step 1. Type in “list disk” and press on “Enter”.

Step 2. Type in “select disk ” and press on “Enter”.

Step 3. Type in “create partition primary” and press on “Enter”

This command will create a primary partition with all unallocated space. If you want to create a smaller partition, you can input “create partition primary size=n” to create a partition with a specific size. You can also replace primary with extended or logical to create an extended or logical partition.

To format a hard disk partition via CMD, you just execute the following commands:

• list disk

• select disk #

• list partition

• select partition #

• format fs=fat32 quick

You can replace fat32 with ntfs or exfat if necessary. You have to note that Diskpart cannot format a large partition that is over 32GB to FAT32.

Create and format hard disk partition via Disk Management

Apart from running commands to create and format partition, you can also make use of Windows built-in Disk Management. First of all, enter the Disk Management: press the Windows key+R on your keyboard to open the Run tool. Type “diskmgmt.msc” and press “OK”.

To create a partition in Disk Management also requires an unallocated space, so you might need to shrink another partition to get one when necessary. The specific steps:

Step 1. Right-click the partition you need shrink and choose “Shrink Volume”.

Step 2. In the pop-out window, enter the amount of the space to shrink and click on “Shrink”.

Step 3. When it is done, you will get an unallocated space.

Step 4. Right-click the unallocated space, select “New Simple Volume” and follow the wizard to create a new partition. In the process, you will be asked to format this new partition to a specific file system.

To format a hard disk partition to another different file system in Disk Management, you just right-click the target partition, select the “Format Partition” option, choose the proper file system and click on “Format”. Usually, there are NTFS and FAT32 file systems for you to select on an internal hard disk. For an external hard disk, the exFAT is also available in the file system list.

Notes:
①Disk Management does not allow you to create an 32GB+ FAT32 partition, or format an 32GB+ partition to FAT32 file system due to the FAT32 partition size limit.
②Disk Management cannot format an internal hard drive to exFAT file system, which is optimized for flash memory such as USB flash drives and SD cards.

Create and format hard disk partition via free partition software (Recommended)

Using CMD and Disk Management to create and format hard disk partition suffers some limitations as we mentioned above. One of the most significant restrictions is that you cannot create and format a large partition over 32GB as FAT32 file system. To get around such troubles, here we also bring a free yet powerful partition management software named AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard.

This freeware can directly create a new partition from an existing partition, just like splitting a partition into two. Besides, it can format a large drive (at most 2TB) to FAT32, format a partition on an internal hard disk to exFAT, as well as format a partition to Ext4/Ext3/Ext2 Linux file systems. Much more advanced than Windows native Command-Line and Disk Management. Now you can download the freeware and check out the following guides.

▌Part 1. Create a partition from an existing partition

Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. Right-click the partition like C drive and select “Create Partition”.

Step 2. Next, specify the size for creating a new partition. And you can add a partition label to it, set a file system and create it as a primary or logical partition.

Step 3. Click on “Apply” to commit the pending operation.

▌Part 2: Format disk partition flexibly

In this part, we mainly demonstrate how to format a large partition to FAT32 step by step.

Step 1. Right-click the large partition and select “Format Partition”.

Step 2. In the window, select “FAT32” file system. You can see the “Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, NTFS and exFAT” file systems are also available for your selection.

Step 3. Click “Apply” and “Proceed” to commit the pending operation.

Summary

On this page, we have explained how to create and format hard disk partition via CMD, Disk Management, and free AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. Now you can choose one according to your specific situation and requirements. The AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard can also do many other disk partition operations that CMD and Disk Management cannot do, such as: clone partition, clone hard disk, move partition, wipe partition, transfer OS to SSD, convert disk to MBR and GPT without deleting partitions, etc. For enjoying more advanced functions, you can upgrade to Professional edition.