Three Easiest Ways to Partition a Hard Drive and Keep Files

Reasons to partition a hard drive

Partition, an independent part of disk, is used to do some specific aims. As we all know, many computer users create new volumes to store their personal information, for example, partition a hard drive for backups. Generally speaking, there are two volumes in the disk: one for operating system applications, and the other for data and files. Based on personal's needs, the more various files and data to keep, the more volumes need to create. Why need to partition a disk? Here are several reasons:

• When there is something wrong in one partition, the other will not be affected. Putting all the things in one volume will seem too disorganized and undertake a great risk, because when the system crashes or virus attacks, all the information in the disk will be lost.

• For business workers, storing files and data with classification makes them work fluently and easily.

• If there are some files or data need to encrypt, it will save a lot of time to lay them in single partition, rather than the whole disk. Meanwhile, the system partition cannot be encrypted.

• Partition a hard drive for dual boot. With the desire of using dual boot or multiple boots, a series of volumes are necessary to put them apart in order to make them work.

• Partition a hard drive after installing Windows 7. After installing an OS, the hard drive partition layout may become unreasonable.

How to partition a hard drive on Windows 7/8/10?

Partition a hard drive using Disk Management

Partition a hard drive has many meanings. It is important that you understand what you want. Given that you have already existing partitions on the hard drive and just want to resize some of the partitions or create a new partition to better manage files. Disk Management can help you achieve the goal. If you have unallocated space on the hard drive, you can partition a hard drive by creating a new volume. If you don’t have an unallocated space, generate one by shrinking one of the existing partitions. Steps are very simple.

• Right click the “Computer” icon on the desktop and select “Manage”. Click “Disk Management” under “Storage”.

• Right click the unallocated space and select “New Simple Volume”. Follow the wizard to complete creating. You can create a NTFS or FAT32 partition.

• If you don’t have unallocated space on the hard drive, right click any redundant partition and select “Shrink Volume” to generate one. Then repeat above step to create a partition.

Partition a hard drive using CMD

Supposing that you have an empty hard drive needs to be partitioned. You can utilize Diskpart in Windows Command Prompt to create several primary partitions or extended partitions.

• Press “Windows + R” key to open Run box. Type “cmd” to open “Command Prompt”. Then input “diskpart” and hit Enter.

• Type “list disk”.

• Type “select disk 1”. Disk 1 stands for your empty hard drive.

• Type one of these commands to create desire partition: “create partition primary [size=n] [offset=n] [ID=byte | GUID] [noerr]” or “create partition extended [size=n] [offset=n] [noerr]” or “create partition logical [size=n] [offset=n] [noerr]”.

• Type “assign letter=H”. Then partition H would be the one you just created.

Tips: To create more partitions, please repeat above steps.

How to partition a hard drive and keep files?

In order to better manage the disk, it is essential to do some operations, like resize, create and delete partition. To achieve all these goals, powerful software to partition a hard drive in Windows 7, 8, 10, XP, Vista—AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional Edition, is extremely helpful. Let's see how to partition a hard drive without losing data respectively.

Tips: To partition a hard drive with no important data on, you can right click the hard drive and select “Quick Partition” to create multiple partitions at a time.

Resize Partition on a hard disk

Supposing that the system drive C has a small space, while D: has a larger space and most of space is not used. In this case, this magic tool can help to extend C by freeing some space in D:. In fact, the built-in disk management in Windows 7/8/Vista has the option "Extend Volume", but it is limited. Yet, it is apparent that the previous Windows operating systems don't have the utility. Thus, the third software is needed. Now, let's see the steps below.

Step 1: Download the partition software to begin, and right click D: to choose "Resize/Move Partition".

Step 2: Do as the following picture to free the unallocated space. After that, click "OK".

Step 3: Right click C: to choose "Resize Partition". In the following window, drag the double-headed arrow to right. After that, please select "OK".

Step 4: Click "Apply" to commit the task.

Create a new volume in Windows 7/8/10

It is so easy to create a new volume in Windows 7. AOMEI Partition Assistant can create new partition even if there is no unallocated space. With the help of AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional Edition:

Step 1: Start it and right click the unallocated space to select "Create Partition".

Step 2: Specify the details of new volume. Move and resize can be accessible in this step. By clicking "Advanced", more details will be presented. After that, please click "OK".

Step 3: Remember to click "Apply" to execute.

Note: When there is no unallocated space in your disk, just click the volume to choose "Create Partition". Then, follow the wizard to continue. To learn more, please refer to create partition in Windows 7 from C drive.

Is it easy? With this partition magic, all your partition problems can be solved completely. You can even use this software to partition a hard drive on Windows 8 HP laptop, either in GPT or MBR style. Partitioning external hard drive is also available. Why not download it to experience more?