Can i repartition my hard disk

If you know what you're doing, feel free to format the drive as part of this process. However, since this tutorial focuses on partitioning a hard drive in Windows, we've left the formatting to another tutorial, linked in the last step below. Verify your choices on the Completing the New Simple Volume Wizard screen, which should look something like this:.

Because your computer and hard drive are unlikely exactly like mine, expect your Disk selected , Volume size , and Drive letter or path values to be different than what you see here.

File system: None just means that you've decided not to also format the drive right now. Choose Finish and Windows will partition the drive, a process that will only take a few seconds on most computers. You might notice that your cursor is busy during this time.

Once you see the new drive letter F: in our example appear in the listing at the top of Disk Management, then you know the partitioning process is complete. Next, Windows will try to open the new drive automatically. However, since it's not yet formatted and can't be used, you'll see this message instead: " You need to format the disk in drive F: before you can use it.

Do you want to format it? This only happens in Windows 10, Windows 8, and Windows 7. Just skip to the last step below if you're using one of those versions of Windows.

Select Cancel and then proceed to Step 14 below. If you're familiar with the concepts involved with formatting a hard drive, feel free to choose Format disk instead. You can use our tutorial linked in the next step as a general guide if you need to. Continue to our How to Format a Hard Drive in Windows tutorial for instructions on formatting this partitioned drive so you can use it.

Windows doesn't allow for anything but very basic partition management after you create one, but a number of software programs exist that can help if you need them. See our Free Disk Partition Management Software for Windows list for updated reviews on these tools and more information on what exactly you can do with them.

Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Here are some good reasons for this practice.

Keeping your Windows system files separate from your personal information makes it easy to perform operations on Windows itself. For example, it's relatively trivial to reinstall Windows when it's on a separate partition. All you have to do is format your Windows partition and reinstall the OS. Your installed programs and files will stay where you left them.

If you like, you can even clone your Windows partition so you have an exact copy of your OS setup to return to in the future, in case of issues. Backing up your files is vital. While putting files on a separate partition isn't an actual backup, it can make your backup scheme much simpler.

Like with your Windows installation, you can clone the entire partition to have an exact copy of its data. For a simpler approach, you can point your backup app to protect the entire drive, instead of having to pick and choose individual folders. Partitioning your drive can also keep your data safer from malware attacks, in theory. If ransomware lands on your Windows partition, it may have a lesser chance of locking your personal files on another partition.

To remove the malware, you can easily nuke the OS partition and reinstall Windows, per above. Of course, this depends on the specific attack, so we recommend keeping yourself protected against ransomware and other malware in the first place. Sophisticated attacks won't be stopped by a simple disk partition. Maybe you're someone who loves to put everything in a certain place.

Partitioning lets you add more dividers between data types. Perhaps you'd like to create one partition for games and apps, and another for documents, music, and similar files. If you find that the organization methods available to you on a single partition aren't enough, adding new ones could help keep your data straight. We've discussed separating your OS files and personal data in most of the above reasons.

But that's not the only use for partitioning a hard drive. You can also add a partition to a drive to install another operating system on it. Perhaps you want to run Linux alongside Windows, but your computer can't handle a virtual machine. You can create a new drive partition for Linux without touching your existing Windows system. A quick format is much faster than a normal format, which fully erases any existing data on the volume. Windows 7 More In the Format Partition dialog box, do one of the following: If you don't want to format the volume right now, select Do not format this volume , and then select Next.

To format the volume with the default settings, select Next. Review your choices, and then select Finish. Notes: You cannot format a disk or partition that is currently in use, including the partition that contains Windows.

Need more help? Join the discussion. Was this information helpful? Yes No. Nevertheless, that can be done on the external hard drive only because Windows does not allow you to delete system partition under Windows environment. It also goes to formatting a partition with another file system.

You can do hard drive partitioning using CMD, a more direct method for advanced users. Type diskpart and run as administrator. You can replace extend with shrink. Each command needs to be followed by pressing "Enter".

Generally, more options than Disk Management can offer. For more information about diskpart. Moreover, all operations have risk of losing stored data.

To be specific, to give a drive with different file system, you need to format it. To add unallocated space to a non-adjacent partition for extending, you need to delete the partition between the target partition and unallocated space. You can download the demo version and check out how it resizes drives:. Step 1. You will get the main interface.