By Sidhant Raj
All of you must be aware of the term Disk Management, basically we associate it with Disk Partition. Yes! the process by which you divide the space on your Hard Disk into different partitions or Drives.
Most of Us have the notion that Disk partitioning is done only during Installation of OS, but what If you desire another partition of hard disk after OS installation? What if you want 4 drives instead of 3?
Windows provide features that help to do solve this partition issues through Computer Management.
So read on and you will find a simple way to create new partitions as well as extend volume of a partitioned drive.
Windows provide features that help to do solve this partition issues through Computer Management.
So read on and you will find a simple way to create new partitions as well as extend volume of a partitioned drive.
Computer Management
1.Go to Start and type "Computer Management"
2. The second step is quite obvious, click it and you see a window appearing like this:
5. As per my need I find Shrink Volume option and I click it. Now what happens is this...
My F: drive is almost full and I need to Extend the volume immediately. As I have some unallocated space in my hard disk and all I need to do is open Computer Management and a series of step will help me do this :
Right click the disk drive you want to extend and then click extend volume. Now, watch the screen shots keenly -
3. Now, on this window of Computer Management you are going to see a lot of options and features.
Click on the Storage and select Disk Management
4. You will see a window like the one above showing all the available disk drives and all the details associated with the drives, partition or whatsoever.
In this segment, I see my E: drive seems to be having more space as needed and I need to shrink it to a certain minimum value. What I will do is, I will select the particular drive (E:) and right click it where I see a variety of options as shown below:
5. As per my need I find Shrink Volume option and I click it. Now what happens is this...
6. The query is going to take some time and once it is done a window appears as below. This will show you all the particular details as in, total size before shrink, size available for shrink. It will ask you an option to enter the size you want to shrink in MB(Megabytes) and as per your requirement you enter it (shown below):
7. After you are done with the entry click the Shrink button and wait for few seconds.
8. Mark the black unallocated area where it shows the volume which has not been allocated or the volume you just now shrink.
In this case I have shrunk both the drives E: and F: for which it is showing two different unallocated blocks.
The reason behind this is the property of both the drive is different from one another. For instance watch the blue box at the top of the screen shot just above. You will find something like System, Active, Primary Partition.
Now, just below it watch the green box where it's just written Primary partition.
Now, I have two unallocated drives and I want to create a new partition.
Now, I have two unallocated drives and I want to create a new partition.
9. For this task you need to right click the particular unallocated partition from which you will create a new volume. Click the option Create new simple volume and you will find a wizard popping out.
10. Again as per your requirement you need to enter the volume size out of which some MB is dedicated for addressing as in here it is 3 MB and that quite natural. No need to bother about that. After that you need to choose a letter as drive name (shown below)
Choose it and hit Next.
11. This area solely depends on you whether you want to format the volume or not.My take would be a No No!
After hitting the finish button the drive is ready for me but a warning comes about the formatting to be done. So better do the format in the wizard itself.
Now, you know, how to shrink volume, create a new partition and similarly delete it as its very easy just give it a try or if u insist then we will post another version of this and the platform would be XP. One more thing which is left is the extension of the volume.
Now when I open My Computer I find this
My F: drive is almost full and I need to Extend the volume immediately. As I have some unallocated space in my hard disk and all I need to do is open Computer Management and a series of step will help me do this :
Right click the disk drive you want to extend and then click extend volume. Now, watch the screen shots keenly -
After all this, I guess you are now handy with your hard disk and partitions.
If there is any bit of doubt then please feel free to ask your queries through comments. And if you find this post useful then do Like and Share on Facebook.
If there is any bit of doubt then please feel free to ask your queries through comments. And if you find this post useful then do Like and Share on Facebook.
Thank You for stopping by.
Later...
I want to add some more points on this for our users to take some safety steps so that their data remains safe if any thing goes wrong...
ReplyDelete1: Shrink takes some time if there z a lot of data on that partition. So power failure during the operation may be resulting in data loss. So double check that u have enough backup power to complete the entire process.
2: Follow the steps by completely reading the prompt boxes. Some times (i cant tell the whole thing here, just follow) it may ask you to convert the HDD to a "DYNAMIC DISK". Don't ever try to do that if u are not sure wht dynamic diks are because u can't revert back to BASIC DISK, if u want to, without formatting the whole disk.
3. Never set any partition "ACTIVE" if u dont know about what an ACTIVE partition iz. Let it be the default partition active. Otherwise if u do so u may lead to some annoying OS starting problems which u cant solve at your own and u have to take it to someother guy like us.
So be careful and happy partitioning...
And one more thing there are more advanced third party softwares such as "EASEUS Partition Manager" or "Mini Tools Partition Managers" (for Windows) in which u can do more advanced partitioning tasks with ur HDD (if u want).
Appreciative...
ReplyDeleteNow, I have a small doubt. If the drive is a system drive, then shud it be active or i need to change it...share your views about this rajanpanigrahi
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteas much as i know.. YES : system drive must be active for x86 or x64 based Windows OSs
ReplyDeleteACTIVE Partition : The "master boot code" thats in the BIOS (software) scans the "partition table" for an ACTIVE partition on the HDD to load the the basic hardware drivers and the first executable code to the memory for execution.
There should be a "single" ACTIVE partition on a HDD and that partition contains the Boot.ini file in case of Windows XP and "BCD" Store in case of Windows VISTA or later.
If u r familiar with Windows 7 Installation then u certainly hv noticed that there is a 100 MB extra partition is created while installing Windows before the C: drive which iz not displayed in Explorer but it is there in the Disk Management.
That is called the SYSTEM partition or ACTIVE partition. If u r able change that anyhow then ur system is not going to boot next time... becaiuse it will nt be able to find from where to load the basic drivers..
(basic drivers are not those what we install from CD after Windows Installation.. these are standard drivers for ur mobo and all other core components and bundled with the OS.. if u have a latest Laptop or desktop with Intel HM55/65 series chipset then u cant install Windows XP in there because of this.. Windows XP isnt shipped with the drivers of current time so u have to search for something called "Windows XP with SATA drivers" or else u can put your drivers on to ur disk by some method)
Thsi is allabout ACTIVE or SYSTEM partition
But the BOOT partition is that one which have the "System32" folder in it. C:\ always has the System32 folder in "Windows" so it is called the BOOT partition. BOOT partion MAY or MAYNOT be equalu to the AVTIVE(SYSTEM) partition.
# But the whole things changes if u put a linux with windows with "GRUB" as the default boot loader. U can specify all of them on ur own. GRUB is a two step boot loader.
I m posting few words here on which u have to "Google" a bit to know more deeply about this.. "MBR and GUID partitioning" "Boot Sector" "Partition Table" "Static and Dynamic Disk types" "Primary and Extended partition" "GRUB boot loader" "BCD (of Windows based OS)" ....and so on
I wish my efforts so faaaar will certainly help U .. :D
loled..
ReplyDeleteby seeing yur pictures up there.. u have C:\ which is a extended partition (Green one, which one never wants to do in any case u sud install the OS on a "primary")
2nd thing there is no 100 mb partition and ur E:\ is your active partition (this is because u cant mark an extended partition as active..there is a reason behind this)...so if u lateron format your E:\ then ur system will not be going to boot the very next time...
I suggest u to make changes to ur system...
U can simply do that by formatting ur drives and reinstall windows..or else there is a software to play with this windows boot system named "EasyBCD" wchich is free but is very dangerous to play with..(read the documentation if u want)