Overview of Fdisk Windows 7 Partition Software

About Fdisk

What is Fdisk? Fdisk is an advanced command line tool that was part of earlier versions of Windows according to Microsoft. The latest version of Windows that comes with Fdisk program was Windows 98 with a DOS shell. Fdisk was used to create, delete, and format partitions on hard disks that were formatted using the FAT32 and other FAT file systems.

Fdisk doesn’t work with partitions or hard disks that are formatted using NTFS file system. Therefore it has been replaced by diskpart.exe in Windows 7 (both 32 bit and 64 bit) and in later OS like Windows 8/8.1/10 which comes with NTFS file system. Even though today’s technology supports to convert NTFS to FAT32, it is still removed. One possible reason is Fdisk hard drive in Windows 7 is much more risky because its operations are almost irreversible. Another one is Fdisk is incompatible with large size hard disks.

Replacements of Fdisk tool in Windows 7

Since Microsoft has removed Fdisk on Windows 7 and replaced it with another utility, if you type fdisk in the Start search box in Windows 7, it will prompt out Create and format hard disk partitions option and lead you to its new added feature Disk Management. Disk Management is GUI (Graphical User Interface) form and diskpart.exe is more similar to Fdisk due to its CUI (Command/Character User Interface) form. To open Disk Management, you can press “Win+R” to open “Run” dialogue, input “diskmgmt.msc” and hit on “Enter”. To open DiskPart.exe tool, type in “diskpart” and hit on “Enter” instead.

These two replacements allow you to manage objects (disks, partitions, or volumes) in your computer, such as, create new simple volume, extend volume, shrink volume, format partition, and delete partition. However, some features can only work in some specific situations. For example, they only supports NTFS partition, only extend a partition that is followed by an adjacent unallocated space, only format and create a FAT32 partition that is less than 32GB, ect.

Besides, it is still lack of several important features that users need.  Merge Partitions, for instance, merge two data partitions into big one without losing any data. You have to delete one volume and then extend the rest one to realize it using Disk Management, which may end up with data missing. So, today, we will introduce another more useful alternative to Fdisk in Windows 7, 8, 10. That is the free partition manager: AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard.

It is an all-around partition manager for Windows 7/8/10 as well as for Windows previous OS, Windows XP/Vista. Unlike aforementioned two tools, you can preview the result and “undo” actions you take before actually executing them. You can free download it to manage your hard disk now (take merge unallocated space to C drive for example).

Extend C drive easily via the best Fdisk alternative-AOMEI Partition Assistant

You can generate unallocated space from other large size partitions by shrinking them if you don’t have one.

Step 1. Install and start AOMEI Partition Assistant. Right-click C drive, choose “Advanced” and select “Merge Partition”.

Step 2. Check the unallocated space.

Step 3. Verify the virtual result, and click "Apply".

As for extending a partition, the software does not require the contiguous unallocated space. This above feature can directly merge adjacent and non-adjacent unallocated space into the to-be-extended partition. Optionally, you can allocate free space to C drive directly using the professional edition of AOMEI Partition Assistant.

Summary

Even if you cannot use Fdisk in Windows 7 any more, but you can achieve the same goal with other similar Fdisk tools. This more advanced partition manager AOMEI Partition Assistant allows you to transfer OS to new hard drive, convert MBR and GPT without deleting partitions, format large drive to FAT32, as well as to make bootable CD for unexpected failure. Feel free to download it and learn more.