TechWhiz » hard disk

Resize Partition in Windows 7

saurabh — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 03:04:40 +0000

Windows 7 operating system is an upgrade to Windows Vista, hence most of the features of Windows 7 are similar to Windows Vista. Resizing partition in Windows 7 is as simple as it was in Windows Vista. There is no need to install any third party applications to resize the partition. The required tool is an inbuilt application in Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Preparatory Steps

Goto ‘Control Panel’ from the ‘Start’ menu.
Enter ‘Partition’ in the search bar and press enter.
Click on ‘Create and format hard disk partitions’ under ‘Administrative Tools’. It will pop up ‘Disk Management’ window on the screen

Shrink Volume

Right click on the desired drive and select ‘Shrink Volume’. It will inform you about the maximum size of the hard disk that can be shrunk. If you have been using the computer for long time, defragmenting the hard disk is recommended prior to the resizing operation.
Enter the amount of space to be shrunk.
Once it is done, you can find some unallocated space.

Create New Volume from Unallocated Space

Right click on ‘Unallocated’ and select ‘New Simple Volume’.
You will be taken to ‘New Simple Volume Wizard’ window.
Enter volume size and click next to continue.
Select file system type as ‘NTFS’ and follow the onscreen guidelines to create and format a new partition

Click here to read my post “Partition Hard Disk in Windows Vista”.

Partition Transcend external hard disk (XP)

saurabh — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 19:30:24 +0000

Preparatory Steps

Goto ‘Start–>Control Panel’.
Click on ‘Classic View’ in the left pan.
Open ‘Administrative Tools’ from the right pan
Open ‘Computer Management’ from the right pan.
Double click on ‘Storage’ and then on ‘Disk Management (Local)’
You will be taken to ‘Computer Management’ screen. You can see the snapshot of your drives.

Delete Existing Partition

Right click on the drive and select ‘Delete Volume..’
You will be prompted for confirmation, click ‘Yes’
You will find the entire drive as Unallocated

Create Extended Partition from Unallocated Space

Right click on ‘Unallocated’ and select ‘New Partition’.
You will be taken to ‘New Partition Wizard’ window.
Since it is an external drive, select ‘Extended Partition’ and click next to continue
Make sure the maximum size of the disk and size of new partition is same. Click next to continue.
Extended drive has been created. Now you have to create logical drives.

Create Logical Drives

Right click on the drive and select ‘New Logical Drive’.
You will be taken to the new partition wizard. Click next to continue.
Click again to continue.
You can enter the size of the new drive as per your choice.
You can choose to select a drive letter for the newly created drive
Select the following options and click next to continue.
‘Format this volume with the following settings:’
File system as ‘NTFS’
Check ‘Perform a quick format’
Click finish to complete the process.
Repeat the process to create more logical drives.

Partition Transcend external hard disk (Vista)

saurabh — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 17:45:25 +0000

Yesterday I bought a 320 GB Transcend portable hard disk. Well the actual storage space was roughly 300 GB. It came with a pre-installed software for managing the drive and had only one drive. The next thing to do was to partition the drive.

Preparatory Steps

Goto ‘Start–>Control Panel’.

Click on ‘Classic View’ in the left pan.

Open ‘Administrative Tools’ from the right pan.

Open ‘Computer Management’ from the right pan.

Windows Vista will prompt you to confirm. Click on ‘Continue’.

Double click on ‘Storage’ and then on ‘Disk Management (Local)’

You will be taken to ‘Computer Management’ screen. You can see the snapshot of your drives.

Delete Existing Partition

Right click on the drive and select ‘Delete Volume..’
You will be prompted for confirmation, click ‘Yes’
You will find the entire drive as Unallocated

Create New Volume from Unallocated Space

Right click on ‘Unallocated’ and select ‘New Simple Volume’.
You will be taken to ‘New Simple Volume Wizard’ window.
Enter volume size and click next to continue.
You can choose to select a drive letter for the newly created drive
Select the following options and click next to continue.
‘Format this volume with the following settings:’
File system as ‘NTFS’
Check ‘Perform a quick format’
Click finish to complete the process.
Repeat the process to create more drives

Partition hard disk in Windows Vista

saurabh — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 04:35:44 +0000

A new laptop or a desktop comes with a preloaded Operating System and other applications. Most of them come with Windows Vista. Generally the preloaded systems have two drives, the first one is where the Operating System is installed and the second one is the recovery drive. But what if the system crashes and you had kept all your data in the primary drive. It is always better to keep your files in a drive other than where the Operating System has been installed. You can probably format the entire hard disk and partition. But, there is a very simple method in Windows Vista to partition a drive without loosing any data.

Preparatory Steps

Goto ‘Start–>Control Panel’.
Click on ‘Classic View’ in the left pan.
Open ‘Administrative Tools’ from the right pan.
Open ‘Computer Management’ from the right pan.
Windows Vista will prompt you to confirm. Click on ‘Continue’.
Double click on ‘Storage’ and then on ‘Disk Management (Local)’
You will be taken to ‘Computer Management’ screen. You can see the snapshot of your drives.

Shrink Volume

Right click on the desired drive and select ‘Shrink Volume’.
Enter the amount of space to be shrunk.
Once it is done, you can find some unallocated space.
Create New Volume from Unallocated Space

Right click on ‘Unallocated’ and select ‘New Simple Volume’.
You will be taken to ‘New Simple Volume Wizard’ window.
Enter volume size and click next to continue.
You can choose to select a drive letter for the newly created drive
Select the following options and click next to continue.
‘Format this volume with the following settings:’
File system as ‘NTFS’
Check ‘Perform a quick format’
Click finish to complete the process.

However there are limitations in using this. E.g. You find that you have around 200 GB free space but you could shrink only 50 GB. Read my other post to solve this shrink volume limitation.
http://www.techwhiz.in/2009/03/solution-to-shrink-volume-inadequacy-problem/

For any query please send email to saurabh(at)techwhiz(dot)in