Best Windows 11 Utility for Efficient Disk & Partition Management

Since Windows 11 was released, nearly all utilities on market for Windows PC are perfectly compatible with this new member of the Windows OS family.

A computer with nice performance tightly depends not only on sterling hardware but also on nice maintenance. That’s why many people would like to add a third-party disk Windows 11 manager to efficiently organize their computers even though Windows has built-in tools like Disk Management and CMD.

Overview of 2 Windows 11 tools from OS

To help users manage their Windows computers, Windows develops many utilizes. Among them, there are two tools that people use most, Disk Management and Command Prompt.

▶ Disk Management

Disk Management is a Windows system program that’s carried on all Windows PC. It allows you to execute some basic functions such as extend/shrink/delete/format/create a partition, change drive letter, and so on.

The problem is that some of its functions have limits to being available otherwise the option in the menu will be greyed out:

• Extend Volume: Only when the target drive has an unallocated volume right behind it, otherwise the Extend Volume will be greyed out.

• Convert to MBR/GPT: You will be unable to convert the disk to MBR/GPT in Disk Management if it is not empty. You must first erase all partitions before proceeding with the conversion.

• Shrink Volume: It only supports NTFS drives and does not support FAT16, FAT32, or exFAT file systems. If there are any unmovable files at the very end of the partition that you wish to shrink, or if the partition contains any virtual memory, the choice remains greyed off.

• Change drive letter and path: Only support FAT and NTFS file system.

Of course, if your devices fitly satisfy the conditions of the function you need, Disk Management is a nice tool.

▶ Command Prompt

Command Prompt is the full name of CMD or CMD.exe. It’s a more advanced tool for users who are familiar with computers to manage and modify their machines. To use this tool, people need to execute orders by typing exact commands.

It’s like advanced Disk Management, the difference is that the Disk Management is visual, while the CMD is command-line, and it can do a lot more than Disk Management.

However, some genetic conditions are the same as Disk Management, such as if you want to convert your disk to MBR/GPT, you need to clean the target disk (by running clean orders) first, then you can do the conversion.

A handy third-party disk management for Windows 11

Both system utilities for Windows 11 developed by Microsoft are, indeed, helpful. However, since one has some prerequisites that limit users and requires some tech knowledge, we suggest you employ a third-party disk management tool to manage your devices flexibly, with no limits and not much PC knowledge required.

If you’re still struggling in searching for an apposite Windows 11 utility, here, we recommend you AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional, an all-around Windows PC disk management for all Windows OS versions.

 With this tool, you can:
• Resize/extend/create/delete/format/check & repair/merge/wipe/split partition
• Clone partition/disk
• Convert system/data disk between MBR and GPT without data loss
• Migrate OS to another drive/disk without reinstalling
• Allocate free space from one partition to another without losing data
• Move installed programs without reinstalling
• Create bootable media
• Convert file system between FAT32 and NTFS
• SSD secure erase wizard
• Wipe system disk
…

It has more practical features than the built-in tool, and all operations only need a few clicks. All tasks can be halted if you have another plan suddenly.

To let you know more about this tool, we’ll use “Convert to GPT/MBR” and “Allocate Free Space” as two examples to show you.

1. Convert to MBR/GPT without cleaning data

As we mentioned, if you use Disk Management and CMD to convert a disk to GPT, both tools will ask you to clean data first. But, with this tool, you can flexibly convert your system/data disk between MBR and GPT without deleting anything. You can even convert your disk on a PC without OS.

Step 1. Install and launch the software, right-click the MBR disk you want to change, and then choose Convert to GPT.

Step 2. In the pop-up windows, click OK to continue.

Step 3. Click Apply to operate and then your disk will be changed to GPT disk style.

Then, your disk will be converted to the target partition scheme.

2. Allocate free space to extend partition

If you upgrade to Windows 11 from your Windows 10 computer, your C drive might be suddenly full. And this issue also frequently appears after an OS update. If your disk has nonadjacent unallocated space, you can directly merge it via the “Merge Partition” feature. However, if there’s no unallocated space but you have more than one drive on your disk, “Allocate Free Space” allows you directly share free space from one partition to another partition.

Step 1. Launch AOMEI Partition Assistant, right-click the partition which you want to allocate free space from, select "Allocate Free Space".

Step 2. Type in the size of the free space which you want to cut from the D partition and this free space will be directly added to the C drive.

Step 3. Click "Apply" to execute this operation.

After you confirm the task, the target drive will be extended. With this tool, you’ll never need to worry about “Extend Volume” greyed out.

To sum up

With AOMEI Partition Assistant, practical Windows 11 utility software, you can use and modify your devices to the maximum. In addition, it’s not a Windows 11 utility, but the Server Edition of this tool is a Windows Server utility perfectly compatible with Windows Server 2022/2019/2016/2012(R2)/2008(R2)/2003.