How to Partition a Hard Drive in Windows 10

You might be looking for an easy way to partition a hard drive in Windows 10 if you have installed Windows 10 on your laptop or desktop. If your computer's hard drive has only one partition, you should create hard disk partitions on your Windows 10 computer to make it clutter free and organized for better management of your files and data.

By partitioning the hard drive in your Windows 10 laptop or desktop computer, you will be able to create two or more partitions to separate your personal files such as music, photos, videos, movies, documents, etc. from the operating system and program files.

Generally, Windows 10 operating system and program files are located in the C: drive, and if you have only one partition, for example C: drive, on your computer with sufficient free space, then you should partition your hard disk or drive and create a new D: drive for keeping your personal files and folders.

You can easily partition a hard drive in Windows 10 using the Disk Management utility which comes with Windows 10 without installing a third party software for partitioning a hard disk. In this guide we will show you how to partition a hard disk in Windows 10 using the Disk Management Utility.

How to Partition a Hard Drive in Windows 10?

1) Open the Start menu or Search tool in Windows 10 and search for "hard disk partitions". Click on "Create and format hard disk partitions" in the search results as shown below to open the Disk Management utility.

2) Now, you will need to shrink an existing partition on your Windows 10 computer to create space for the new partition. To shrink a partition, for example C: drive as shown below, right-click on the partition you want to shrink then select Shrink Volume.

3) In the Shrink window, you will see the total space before shrinking and the maximum amount of space you can shrink in MB. Enter the amount of space you want to shrink in MB as shown below then click on the Shrink button. If you want to create the new partion with 100 GB space on your Windows 10 PC, you can enter 102400 MB to shrink the existing partition by 100 GB. For 50 GB, you can enter 51200 and for 200 GB, you can enter 204800.

For a general rule, if you want to shrink Y GB, you should enter Y * 1024 MB.

Note: Remember, you will get a little less amount of hard disk space for the new partition then the amount you entered to shrink because some space is used for disk management by the operating system. If you have entered 102400 for shrinking 100 GB you will get around 99.9 GB for the new partition.

4) After you have shrinked an existing partition, you will see the amount of space shrinked as Unallocated space. The image below shows 100.00 GB unallocated space. Right-click on the Unallocated space and select New Simple Volume... to open the New Simple Volume Wizard to create a new partition as shown below.

5) Click Next in the New Simple Volume Wizard.

6) By default, the volume size for the new partition is equal to the maximum disk space available. If you want, you can specify a lower volume size than the maximum available space for the new partition. If you specify a lower amount, the extra space will remain unallocated. To convert all the unallocated space into a new partition, you should not change the default value. Now, Click Next.

7) Now, you can choose a Drive letter for the new partion on your Windows 10 PC. Assign a drive letter then click Next as shown below.

8) Click Next to format the new partition with the default file system NTFS.

9) Click Finish to complete creating a new partition in Windows 10.

After a new partition is created you can see the new partition inside This PC in File Explorer. Now, you can use your new partition to keep your personal files and folders and organize your Windows 10 laptop or desktop PC smoothly and efficiently.