Managing the storage on your computer is quite important. It’s a good idea to have a partition reserved for your operating system and to divide your storage into at least 2 or 3 partitions to avoid losing your data if something goes wrong.
Luckily, you won’t have to look far as it carries the Disk Management tool for managing partitions in Windows. In this post, we will guide you through the steps of creating, deleting and defragmenting storage partitions in Windows 10. So let’s start.
How to Partition Hard Drive in Windows 10
If you want to partition the hard drive on your PC to keep your files, folders and other data separate, here is how to partition the hard drive with Disk Management tool in Windows.
Stage 1: Press Windows Key + R to open the Run utility. Medicine diskmgmt.msc and press Enter.
Step 2: In the Disk Management window, you will be presented with all available drives on your PC and their capacities. Right-click the drive you want to partition and select Shrink Volume from the list.
Stage 3: In the window below, enter the amount of space to shrink the drive. So the amount you enter here will be the size allocated to the new partition. Here you can also find the size driver before and after shrinking.
When done, click Shrink.
Step 4: After shrinking the drive, you will find the new partition titled ‘Unallocated’ in the Disk Management window. To allocate this space to a new drive, right-click on it and select New Simple Volume from the list.
Step 5: Now follow the on-screen instructions to start the process. You will be prompted to enter the amount of storage to allocate. By default, it will allocate all the space to the new drive. Then press Next.
Step 6: After that, you need to assign a new letter and a name to the drive. Select NTFS under Format option. Then press Next.
And that’s about it. Now your hard drive is split in two. You can repeat the above steps to create more partitions.
How to Delete Partition in Windows 10
In addition to creating partitions, you can use the Disk Management tool in Windows if you want to delete an existing partition. Here’s how.
Stage 1: Open the Start Menu, type create and format hard disk partitions and press Enter.
Step 2: In the Disk Management window, you will find the list of drives on your computer.
Stage 3: Right-click the partition you want to delete and select Delete Volume from the list. Click Yes when prompted.
After deleting, the partition will be named Unallocated. You can now combine this unallocated storage with any of the available drives.
How to Merge Partition in Windows 10
If you regret dividing your storage into too many parts, you can easily combine them using Disk Management or Command Prompt in Windows.
Method 1
Let’s start with the Disk Management tool. To merge partitions, you must first delete one of the partitions to be merged. So make sure to transfer the data to another drive first. Then delete the partition using the above method.
Once you’ve prepared the two partitions, here’s how to merge them using the Disk Management tool.
Stage 1: Press Windows Key + X and select Disk Management from the menu that appears.
Step 2: In the window below you will find the list of all the drives on your PC along with the amount of storage they hold. Now select the existing partition you want to expand. Right click on it and select Extend Volume.
Stage 3: In the Extend Volume Wizard, add the unallocated space of the deleted drive and hit Next and then Finish.
This much. Now both existing and unallocated drive are defragmented.
Method 2
Step 1: Open the Start Menu, type diskpart.exe, and press Enter.
Step 2: In the console type list volume and press Enter. Here you will find a list of all the drivers on your PC.
Stage 3: To merge the two partitions we will have to delete either one. To do this, enter the following command and press Enter.
select volume DiskLetter
relocate DiscLetter in the above command with the letter of the partition you want to delete.
Step 4: Next, type delete volume and press Enter. This will delete the partition and make it available for merge.
Step 5: Now select the partition you want to expand. To do this, enter the following command and press Enter.
select volume DiskLetter
Again, change DiscLetter in the above command with the letter of the partition you want to expand.
Step 6: Finally, type to lengthen and press Enter.
You will see a message that says ‘DiskPart successfully expanded the volume’.
Storage Made Simple
While the Disk Management tool in Windows is quite effective at splitting, deleting and merging partitions, EaseUS Partition Master, MiniTool Partition Wizard, GParted etc. There are third-party tools such as So why use a third-party tool? For all their advantages, these tools are much simpler to use and do not require you to erase or format the drive before partitioning or defragmenting.
