How to Partition A Hard Drive in Windows 10 [2021 New]

2 Reliable Ways to Partition a Hard Drive in Windows 10

Are you looking for a reliable solution to create a partition or make a partition in Windows 10/8/7? On this page, we collected two practical solutions to help you partition a hard drive in Windows 10 for free.

Method 1. Partition a Hard Drive with Disk Management

TIP: the coming solutions are also applicable to the question "how to partition C drive in Windows 10 without formatting". Just replace the target drive in the example with the C drive.

Step 1. Right-click the Windows icon, then click Disk Management.

Please check if you have unallocated space on your computer disk. If you don't, follow our guide step-by-step. If you do, you can directly jump to Step 4 and continue.

Step 2. Right-click the hard disk partition that you want to shrink, and select "Shrink Volume".

Step 3. Enter the amount of space you want to shrink in MB, then click on the "Shrink" button.

Wait for the process to complete, you'll get an unallocated volume.

Step 4. Right-click on the unallocated space on your hard disk, and then select "New Simple Volume".

Step 5. In the New Simple Volume Wizard interface, click "Next".

Step 6. Enter the size of the volume you want to create in MB or accept the default size, and then select "Next".

Step 7. Accept the default drive letter or choose a different letter for the partition, and then select "Next".

Step 8. Set the default file system as NTFS and click "Next" to format the volume.

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

Method 2. Create Partition in Windows 10 via Qiling Free Partition Manager

To some beginners, partition hard drive using Disk Management in Windows 10 is a bit complex. A more intelligent solution is to turn to third-party free partition manager software like Qiling Partition Master Free for help.

Download Qiling partition manager and apply it to create partitions in Windows 10 now:

Qiling Partition Master Free

Support creating, shrinking, extending, merging, moving partitions for free.
Support disk surface test, converting file system, formatting/deleting volumes.
Support cloning hard drive, migrating OS to HDD/SSD, partition recovery. (Advanced Features)

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Steps to Partition Hard Drive (and Make Partitions) in Windows 10 with Qiling Partition Master:

Step 1. Check for free space

To divide a disk partition into multiple ones, you must ensure that there has adequate free space to be allotted.

Step 2. Shrink a disk partition to create unallocated space

By doing so, start with the "Resize/Move" feature. Select a partition with a lot free space and click "Move/Resize"

Drag either end of the partition rightwards or leftwards so you can shrink its size as the red arrow does, in order to get ample unallocated space. You can visually know how much space you've decreased in the "Partition size" area.

Click "Proceed" to resize the partition

Step 3. Create a new partition on unallocated space

The last step is to turn the unallocated space into a usable partition drive with a recognized file system. click on the unallocated space and click "Create".

Customize the partition information by choosing a drive letter, partition label, file system (NTFS, FAT32, EXT2...) and many more settings in the Advanced Settings.

Click "Proceed" to create the partition

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Bonus Tips: How To Format Partition (Volume) in Windows 10

If you need to format an existing partition or change the volume format to a new file system, try the following steps:

Step 1. Press Windows + R keys to open the Run box, type diskmgmt.msc, and hit Enter.

Step 2. Right-click the volume that you want to format, and then select "Format".

Step 3. To format the volume with the default settings (as NTFS), in the Format dialog box, select "OK", and then select "OK" again.

Advantages of Disk Partition in Windows 10

To most Windows users, only very few of them know the necessity and advantages of making disk partitions in Windows 10/8/7. Check out the advantages of partition a hard drive on your computer.

Advantages of Partition a Hard Drive vs. Disadvantages of Not Partition Hard Drive

Advantages	Disadvantages
Manage data in a clean and logical way: create disk partitions as OS partition, personal data volume, and media drive, etc. Guarantee data safety: isolate system files from personal data, protect data from OS crashing or system failure error.	Endanger data easily with only one drive due to OS failure or reinstallation, virus infection error. Way too complex to find and manage files with everything saved in one drive.

How Many Partitions Can You Make On a Hard Drive:

On MBR disk, you can create maximumly 4 partitions in total - 3 primary partitions + 1 extended partition, or 4 primary partitions.
On GPT disk, you can create as many partitions with no limitation for the number of partitions.
For MBR users who wish to make five partitions or more, you need to convert MBR to GPT.

Go and Partition Hard Drive in Windows 10, Make Use Of Your Drive Now

On this page, we discussed how to partition a hard drive in Windows 10. Based on the needs, we introduced two commonly used disk partitioning tools for Windows 10 users, including Windows Disk Management and Qiling Partition Master Free.

As for beginners, free partition manager software - Qiling Partition Master Free Edition is more flexible and advisable for partitioning hard drive in Windows 10/8/7.

Free Download

In the end, we also talked about the necessity of disk partition. We suggest that all of you Windows users take steps to make partitions on your computer so as to manage your OS data, personal documents, and other programs in a safe and sound manner.