How to Split Partition in Windows 10 or 11 without Formatting? (2 Methods)

Why need to split partition in Windows 10 or 11?

Splitting partition is to divide a large partition into two smaller partitions. It is necessary under some conditions. For example, modern computers now usually have only one partition (system C partition). The OS, applications, personal files, etc will be saved to this system drive, which undoubtedly will affect the OS loading and running performance. So dividing it into two partitions to realize partition C drive can help separate OS from personal files. Then when the system crashes and you plan to format the system partition for OS reinstallation, the personal data can be safe.

Besides, when one of your hard disk partitions is too big but just used a little, splitting it into two smaller ones enables you to store various data and make the fullest use of the disk space. On the whole, splitting hard disk partition can make the partition number and size more reasonable.

2 Methods to split partition without formatting in Windows 10/11

In general, in order to split one disk partition into two partitions, you can make use of Disk Management (Windows built-in tool) and AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional (3rd party software). Either way, you don’t need to format any partitions. Next, we will show how to split the partition via those two methods.

Method 1. Split NTFS partition via Windows 10/11 Disk Management

If you would like to apply Disk Management to separate a large partition, you need to first shrink a partition to get an unallocated space and then create a new partition on it.

Note: Disk Management can only support shrink NTFS partitions, and you cannot use it to split FAT32 partitions.

Step 1.  Press “Windows+R” to open “Run”, type “diskmgmt.msc” in the empty box and tap “OK”.

Step 2. Right-click the large partition you want to shrink and select “Shrink Volume”.

Step 3. Then it will calculate how much space can be shrunken. In the next window, you can input the shrunk size (MB) and click “Shrink” to proceed.

Step 4. Then you will see an unallocated space after the partition you shrunk. Now right-click it and select “New Simple Volume”, and then follow the wizard to create a new partition on the unallocated space.

However, this way requires more than 5 steps and lots of time; moreover, it may lead to data loss. Luckily, there is an easier and safer way to split partition. Just keep reading!

Method 2. Divide partition via professional partition software

In order to split a large partition into two smaller partitions without formatting or losing anything important, you had better use a third-party partition manager such as AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. It provides a specialized function called “Split Partition”, which can split hard disk partition into two just 3 steps. Compared with Disk Management, it does not require you to shrink the partition first, so this method is more time-saving and safer. Besides, it is able to split both NTFS and FAT32 partition.

Below we will take how to split system partitions without formatting via this software as an example.

Note: Because only the partition with unused space can be split into two partitions, please make sure there is free space in the partition that you plan to divide.

Step 1. Install and run AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. Right-click the C partition and select “Split Partition”.

Step 2. In this window, you can specify the size and location of the new partition, and click “OK”.

Step 3. Back to the main interface, click “Apply” and “Proceed” to commit the pending operation.

Tips:
● The splitting process will take some time, so allow your computer to finish this task before using it for anything else.
● If there are 4 primary partitions on MBR disk and you plan to split one of them, the split partition will be converted to logical partition automatically.
● If there are four primary partitions on a hard disk, the program would not allow you to split the system partition or boot partition, unless you could convert one of the other partitions from primary to logical partition. The new generated partition will be automatically set as a logical partition.

In addition to splitting partition in Windows 7/8/10/11, AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional also offers many other amazing functions to help Windows users to resize hard disk partition without losing data, such as: merge two adjacent partitions into one partition (opposite of splitting partition), or merge unallocated space into an existing partition to extend partition; move partition to another location; allocate free space from one partition to another partition; create partition within existing partition.

Summary

Now, you must have learned how to split partition in Windows 10 or 11 without formatting other partition using Disk Management and AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. In consideration of convenience and data safety, AOMEI Partition Assistant is more recommended. If you want to split partition in Windows Server 2012/2016/2019 and so on, you can try AOMEI Partition Assistant Server.