[5 Methods] How to Partition A Hard Drive on Windows 11

Need to partition a hard drive on Windows 11

When we first buy a PC, there's usually only the C drive, all types of files (including system files) will stored on it. However, when the system drive crashes, you have to format the entire C drive. Then, there's no doubt that all the data stored on the C drive will lose.

Thus, to avoid accidental loss of important data, many users want to partition a hard drive after buying a new computer.

Generally, partitioning a hard drive has other advantages:

★ Find files faster: Placing files in different partitions can help users find target files faster-the system.
★ Make C drive more stable: With multiple partitions, the C drive can only be used to store system files, so you can avoid accidentally deleting system files or receiving low space warning of the C drive due to too many files.
★ Make repairing easier: Once an error appears in a single partition, users can directly format this partition without considering other important data loss.

But how to partition a hard drive on Windows 11? This article will provide you with some effective methods.

How to partition a hard drive

There are 2 ways to partition a hard drive in Windows: create a partition via DiskPart or create a new volume using Disk Management.

Note: MBR and GPT decide the number of partitions you can create.
☎ MBR disk only supports 3 primary partitions and 1 extended partition, or 4 primary partitions.
☎ GPT disks support up to 128 primary partitions.

│Method 1. Partition a hard drive Via Diskpart

DiskPart is a built-in utility for Windows system, you can format disks, resize disks and delete disks through some input commands. You can also create new partitions through it, the detailed steps are as follows.

Before you do: If you enter and implement wrong instructions, you will suffer irreversible data loss, so you’d better back up important data first.

Step 1. Type "diskpart" in the search box on the taskbar, and then click "Enter".

Step 2. Type the following commands one in turn and press "Enter" each time.

• list disk (Lists all disks on the PC.)
• select disk 1 ("1" refers to the disk number.)
• create partition primary size=100000
• list partition (See the number of the partition you want to create.)
• select partition 2 ("2" is the partition number.)
• format fs=ntfs quick label= "Backup Partition" (Format the partition as NTFS.)
• assign letter=G (Assign a drive letter to the partition you created.)

│Method 2. Partition a hard drive with Disk Management

Disk management is another Windows built-in tool, it is much simpler and easier than diskpart. Because it only takes a few clicks to shrink volumes, format volumes, mark partitions as active, etc. You can create disk partition on Windows 11 by completing the following steps.

Step 1. Click "My Computer", click "Management" in the task bar at the top of the interface, then select "Disk Management" under "Storage" in the popped window.

Step 2. Right-click the partition you want to shrink and click "Shrink Volume".

Step 3. In the popped window, you can see the total size of the volume. You can save the default shrink size and click Shrink directly or specify the final partition size by entering in megabytes in the corresponding field.

Step 4. Right-click the unallocated space and select "New Simple Volume", then please follow the instructions to create a new partition.

Note: If the size of this MBR disk is larger than 2TB, the excess part will become unallocated space, so you should convert MBR to GPT, or the New Simple Volume will be greyed out.

Alternative to partition a hard drive [3 methods]

Although the built-in tools can partition a hard drive, there’re some limitations. If you're unfamiliar to the commands of Diskpart, you may execute the task with the wrong commands; if the target drive is a MBR drive larger than 2TB, you cannot partition it with Disk Management.

Therefore, you can try a perfect alternative - AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. This tool neither requires the complicated commands, nor limited by the size of the drive. You can merge partitions to merge/shrink/delete partitions on your hard drive in a user-friendly interface.

To effectively partition a hard drive, it provides you with 3 different methods: "Split Partition" will split a large drive into smaller drives; "Allocate Free Space" can extend a partition with unallocated space; "Quick Partition" is also an easy method if it's a new drive.

Please download the Demo to see how to partition a computer hard drive on Windows 11.

│Method 1. Allocate free space to another drive

How to partition a hard drive on Windows 11? If one partition on the hard disk is almost full (here takes C drive as an example), and another partition has a lot of free space, "Allocate Free Space" feature can help you directly allocate the free space to another partition.

Step 1. Download and open AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional, right-click the partition with free space and click the "Allocate Free Space" function.

Step 2. Set how much space to allocate to which partition. (Here we allocate free space from D to C.)

Step 3. Click "Apply" to execute the pending operation.

│Method 2. Split Partition

You can also split a larger partition into two smaller partitions. But when a partition has completely used up space, you cannot split the partition.

Step 1. In the interface of AOMEI Partition Assistant professional, right-click the target partition and select "Split Partition".

Step 2. Drag the double arrows left or right to change the partition size, you can also directly enter the size you want to assign to the partition, click "OK".

Step 3. Click "Apply" and "proceed" to confirm the settings.

│Method 3. Quick Partition

If the hard drive you want to partition is a new one, you can directly use the "Quick Partition" function to partition it.

Note: Quick Partition is a repartition to the hard drive, all current partitions on the drive will be deleted after this operation.

Conclusion

From this post, you have learn 5 methods on how to partition a hard drive on Windows 11. It's obvious that AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional is a wonderful choice.

Apart from the functions mentioned, you can also Convert dynamic disk to basic, Wipe System Disk, Convert File System between FAT32 and NTFS, etc. If you're a Windows Server user, you can turn to the Server Version to enjoy these advanced functions.