Dividing a disk into partitions windows 8. How to partition a hard disk into partitions. Why partition a disk
Before proceeding with the partitioning of the disk itself, a useful tip from our visitor Lvius. The system may not allow you to partition the disk the way you want. To fix this, and split the disks in half, you need to disable system protection: "Control Panel"\u003e "System and Security"\u003e "System"\u003e "System Protection". Next, the System Protection tab > Configure > Disable Protection. Apparently, the system places system restore points in the center of the disk. After splitting, protection can be turned on again.
Also, according to our visitor, Dr.Web anti-virus interfered with breakdown. If the partition is blocked and you have this antivirus installed, first disable its protection. If the problem repeats, you will have to remove it for a while. Let's move on to the direct division. All partitioning is done in three simple steps, nothing complicated. In a nutshell, here are the steps to follow:
- Open disk management.
- Select the desired hard drive.
- We right-click on the desired partition of the hard drive that we want to partition.
- In the drop-down menu, select the item " Shrink volume"And set the required volume size.
Now consider all these points in order. To get into "Disk Management" in Windows 8, you need to simultaneously press the keys Windows+R or enter "diskmgmt.msc" in the search bar through "Start". In the window that appears, right-click on the desired drive and select Shrink Volume. Be aware that Windows can shrink a volume as much as it is empty of data.
The following picture clearly demonstrates that after clicking the “Compress volume” menu item, a window will appear in which you can specify how much to leave for the old logical disk, and how much to allocate for the new partition. It's easy to do it right - you need to see how much disk space the data occupies and focus on this number.
After splitting, all that remains is to activate the new logical disk by right-clicking and selecting the "New Volume" menu item.
As you can see, no separate program is needed to partition a disk in Windows 8.
Attention! An attempt to partition the Windows 8 system partition with third-party programs can lead to a loss of system performance!
During the development of Windows 8, Microsoft has done a lot of work on the standard format for placing information on disks. This operating system uses a new data storage standard called GUID PT, or GPT for short. Where BIOS uses MBR, UEFI uses GPT.
Unlike the MBR, which uses a firmware binary to identify and boot the active partition, the GPT is designed to use advanced UEFI capabilities to accomplish this. GPT uses a new LBA block addressing system instead of the outdated MBR addressing used in Windows 7. Its table of contents contains the address of the space with the beginning of the partition table.
Features of GPT
After purchasing a new system unit or laptop with Windows 8.1 preinstalled, you become the owner of new features provided by the updated BIOS with a beautiful graphical interface and many new technologies, one of which is the new partition table - GPT. It replaced the MBR used for more than 15 years, which has a number of drawbacks that limit the capabilities of the equipment.
- In MBR, you cannot work normally with hard drives larger than 2 TB.
Having bought a hard drive with a huge amount of memory (more than 2 TB), the user will be faced with the fact that it is not easy to partition such a drive into volumes. Partitioning a HDD larger than 2 TB in Windows 7 is not difficult, but an operating system that uses MBR will completely refuse to form partitions whose address space exceeds this mark. That is, more than 760 GB of unallocated unused space will remain on the media, for which you paid a considerable amount. This happens due to insufficient addresses when using the master boot record.
When purchasing a 3 TB hard drive, immediately convert it to GPT before use, without having to divide it into volumes.
- The inability to form more than 4 primary volumes.
If such a need arises, the fourth disk will have to be created extended, accommodating several partitions.
- MBR disks are subject to virus attacks.
There are now many malicious applications that allow you to modify the master boot record, which was widespread in Windows XP.
Due to the new partition format concept in Windows 8, naturally, the methods that allow you to partition a disk have changed.
Partitioning a GPT disk in Windows 8 with built-in tools
Having an HDD with Windows 8 and GPT partitions on it, the task of dividing such a hard disk into volumes is easily solved for any user. For example, it does not have a limit on the number of primary volumes that you will see when you try to partition an HDD from under Windows 7.
To determine the format of your hard drive, call the Disk Management utility and go to the Properties of the section of interest. The "Partition style" line contains the required information.
- In order to partition a hard drive in a running Windows 8, you need to launch Disk Management. We right-click in the left corner located at the bottom of the screen and call the required system utility.
We write the phrase "Disk Management" in the Windows search bar and launch the application by selecting it in the search results. We use the command "diskmgmt.msc" entered in the run window (called by the combination "Win + R").
The Disk Management service will start, allowing you to partition your hard disk into sections.
The first disk of several hundred megabytes will always be hidden, it is used to write the bootloader and some system data.
- We select the logical drive that we want to split into two or more, and call its context menu.
- In the drop-down window that appears with a list of actions, select the last option called "Compress volume ...". In this case, we need to split the C: drive into two volumes.
- In the new dialog box, enter the desired size of the first volume, which will be formed after splitting the selected disk, and click "Compress".
In order to partition a disk, it is necessary that there is enough free space on it, which will be used to form a new partition.
When entering the desired size manually or using the proposed slider in the "Size of compressible space" field, the bottom line will display the volume of the current disk, which it will be after compression.
- Next, we call the context menu of the area called "Not defined", and select "Create a simple volume ..." from the options offered.
- Enter the desired size of the new disk and click on the "Next" button. If you want to split the unallocated area into several volumes, enter the size of the first one and click "Next".
- Select a free alphabetic partition label and click "Next" again.
- Specify the parameters as in the screenshot.
Be sure to specify NTFS as the file system (FAT32 does not support files larger than 4 GB). If you are going to store a huge number of small files, it is better to choose a cluster size smaller than the standard one (4096) in order to save space, and for storing large documents (disc images, movies), it is better to specify a cluster size larger than the standard one. Here it is recommended to choose full formatting, during which Windows will check its surface for the presence of inoperable clusters (this is true after a long-term operation of the HDD, the purchase of a new or used hard drive) in order to make sure that there are no bad sectors.
Hi all! In this article, we will consider the question of how to divide a hard disk (hard drive) into two or more partitions (local disks) using standard Windows 7/8/8.1 tools (correctly and without data loss). The method is similar for all Windows.
The first thing to do is to defragment the disk so that the system files are not damaged.
To do this, open "My Computer", right-click on drive C, select "Properties" in the window that opens, go to the "Service" section, in Windows 8 / 8.1 select the following ...
In Windows 7, select the "Disk Defragmenter" section, click the "Perform Defragmentation" button, select the C drive in the window that opens, and click the "Disk Defragmenter" button.
The second thing to do is disable the paging file on this drive
To do this, click "Start" > "Computer" > "Properties" > "Advanced Settings".
In the "Performance" section, click the "Settings" button, the "Advanced" tab, then click the "Change" button.
Uncheck the box "Automatically select the size of the paging file", select "No paging file" and click the "Set", "OK" button.
The third thing to do is close the programs in autorun, first of all, close the antivirus so that it (more precisely, its sub-programs) does not interfere with partitioning the disk.
In the window that opens, go down to the very bottom and select the Windows Update tab, in the General tab > Startup type, select Disabled > Start > Stop > Apply > OK.
How to properly partition a hard drive in Windows 7/8/8.1
To enter Disk Management and partition the disk, use Win + R, enter the following command in the search bar, diskmgmt.msc (works on Windows 7/8/8.1). What commands can be run from the Run menu, read.
In the window that appears, you need to right-click on drive C, and select "Compress volume", to determine the free space on the disk, then click "Compress".
After all that has been done by us, another section will open to the right of drive C, which will be given the name (Unallocated).
In order to create and define our unallocated partition in the system, you need to right-click on this partition and select "Create a simple volume".
The New Simple Volume Wizard window will open, click Next. In the next window, you must specify the size of the partition, within the minimum and maximum values.
After you have chosen the desired partition size, you need to select a drive letter, click "Next", in the next window we leave everything by default (if you want, you can change the name of the drive).
Removing a hard disk partition
If for some reason you want to delete this section, it's as easy to do as it is to create it.Again, go to "Disk Management", select the partition we need, right-click and select "Delete Volume".Then we right-click on drive C, here we select "Expand volume", in the disk selection window, click "Next", "Finish".
Conclusion
After you have created a partition, or deleted it, do not forget to enable the swap file, the programs that you had in autorun, and the antivirus.This is the standard way Windows can divide a hard drive into several partitions. I hope that the article was useful and interesting for you ...
Disk space management is a useful feature with which you can create new volumes or delete them, increase the volume and, conversely, reduce it. But not many people know that Windows 8 has a standard disk management utility, even fewer people know how to use it. Let's look at what can be done using the standard Disk Management program.
There are several ways to access disk space management tools in Windows 8, as in most other versions of this OS. Let's consider each of them in more detail.
Method 1: Run window
Using a keyboard shortcut Win+R open the dialog box "Run". Here you need to enter the command diskmgmt.msc and press "OK".
Method 2: "Control Panel"
You can also open the volume management tool with Control panels.
Method 3: Menu "Win + X"
Use keyboard shortcut Windows + X and in the menu that opens, select the line "Disk Management".
Utility Features
Volume compression
Volume creation
Changing the partition letter
Volume formatting
Deleting a volume
Deleting a volume is very simple: right-click on the disk and select "Delete volume".
Partition extension
- Total volume size - the total volume of the disk;
- Maximum available space - how much the disk can be expanded;
- Select the size of the allocated space - enter the value by which we will increase the disk.
Convert disk to MBR and GPT
What is the difference between MBR and GPT disks? In the first case, you can create only 4 partitions up to 2.2 TB in size, and in the second case, up to 128 partitions of unlimited size.
Attention!
After conversion, you will lose all information. Therefore, we recommend creating backup copies.
Right click on the drive (not partition) and select "Convert to MBR"(or in GPT), and then wait for the process to finish.
Thus, we have considered the main operations that can be performed while working with the utility. "Disk Management". We hope you learned something new and interesting. And if you have any questions - write in the comments and we will answer you.
- How to Partition a Hard Drive in Windows 8 tools built into the operating system, without resorting to third-party programs? A 750 GB hard drive with a GUID Partition Table or GPT partition table. Now almost all laptops on sale come with UEFI BIOS and Windows 8 operating system installed on a GPT disk. I have never dealt with a GPT disk before. So I ask you - Can you partition it in the same way as a simple hard disk of the old MBR (Master Boot Record) format through the built-in Windows Disk Management utility? What is the difference between GPT and MBR disks? Forgive me if my question to you seems lamer, but I don't want to spoil anything on the new laptop. Maksik.
- Hello admin! I installed the Windows 8 operating system on my computer, I want to divide the disk into several partitions, can I use your article “” as an instruction. In my opinion, the difference between the seven and the eight is small. I have a simple system unit on which I installed Windows 8. My BIOS is UEFI, but in it I turned on the extended UEFI mode - Legacy OpROM and the hard disk, therefore, MBR.
- Hi all! How, when installing Windows 8, to correctly divide the hard disk into partitions, if I create one C: drive and install the operating system there, will it be possible to create several more disks for data storage after installation?
How to Partition a Hard Drive in Windows 8
Hello friends, in the first part of this article, we will divide the hard disk of the GPT partition table format into several partitions. The computer is running Windows 8 operating system. By the way, if you have a laptop with Windows 8 installed, read our article.In the second part of the article, we will partition the hard drive of the old MBR (Master Boot Record) format. The Windows 8 operating system is also installed on the computer. All this is very simple and the process will proceed in exactly the same way in both cases, but there is still a slight difference and I will show it to you.
- Note: If this article does not help you, for example, you can't detach from drive C: enough space to create drive D:, then know that the hard drive on a laptop can be divided not only using the Disk Management utility built into the operating system. Also drive D: You can create with a free program (and in Russian)
- There is also a good free program EaseUS Partition Master Free Edition, it has more features than Disk Management. Read our new article. Or you can use a paid program.
What is the difference between GPT and MBR disks?
If you bought a new laptop, then for sure it will be with UEFI BIOS and Windows 8 operating system installed on a GPT disk.
Partition table (GPT, GUID Partition Table) was developed specifically to solve the problems of disks using the old MBR (Master Boot Record) boot record.
On disks of the old MBR format, it is not possible to:
1) Create partitions larger than 2 TB. If you have a 3TB hard drive, no matter how you divide it, you will still have about 750 GB of unallocated space. If you bought a 3 TB hard drive, immediately convert it to the GPT partition table layout format.
2) It is not possible to create more than four primary partitions, the fourth partition will have to create an extended partition that contains logical partitions, details later in the article or read in more detail here ""
3) Such disks have poor protection against viruses, there are special malicious programs that modify the master boot record.
How to determine if your hard drive is GPT or MBR.
We go to Disk Management, in the properties of the disk, in the "Volumes" tab, we see that the Partition Style is a Table with a GUID, that is, GPT.
You may ask me: "If a GPT disk has so many advantages, why, in fact, many users do not like the fact that on almost all modern laptops the hard disk has a GPT partition table." The answer is: “They just didn’t like the new Windows 8 operating system, and reinstalling Windows 8 on Windows 7 on such a laptop just won’t work, this is due to certain difficulties described in our article:.
How to partition a hard drive GPT in Windows 8
So, if Windows 8 is installed on your laptop or desktop computer, and the hard disk is in GPT format, dividing it into as many partitions as you like is as easy as shelling pears, there is no certain limit on the number of primary partitions that you will see when we divide the hard disk into partitions MBR format disk.
We right-click in the lower left corner and select Disk Management, we see this situation. This is my 120 GB SSD, and we will partition it. In your case, the hard drive may be larger, but you need to do everything in the same way as described below.
First partition: hidden, 300 MB, Healthy (Recovery partition), this partition contains Windows 8 boot files, do not touch this partition in any way.
Second partition: hidden, 100 MB Healthy (Encrypted (EFI) system partition), this partition cannot be touched either, but even if you wish, you will not succeed.
Third partition: Good (Main partition) 111 GB. It contains the installed operating system Windows 8, that is, drive C: in person. So I want to divide it first into two sections, and then into three.
Right-click on the C: drive and select Shrink Volume.
Disk C: split approximately in half - select 45 GB and click Compress,
An unallocated area appears, right-click on it and select Create Simple Volume.
Leave the size as is.
A letter is automatically assigned to a new drive, if you wish, you can assign it yourself. Further.
Ready.
Please, there is a new volume D:
Since our hard disk is in the GPT disk format, you can create as many partitions as you need without any problems using the method described above.
Even in this case, you can partition your hard drive in Windows 8. Right-click on the C: drive and select Shrink Volume.
Unallocated space appears. We create a simple volume and that's it.
How to Partition an MBR Hard Drive in Windows 8
If you just bought a desktop computer and didn’t really delve into your BIOS, without specifically looking for UEFI settings, installed Windows 8 on it, most likely your hard drive is MBR format.
To partition a disk, we do everything as described above, but with a slight difference. Look at the screenshot, we can pinch off space from the C: drive or the E: drive. Let's pinch off drive E: 25 GB, Shrink volume.
Unallocated space will be created, convert it to a partition. Create volume.
A so-called "Additional partition" is created, in which we can create many logical disks.
The inconvenient thing is that if we need to create another partition, then we can create it only in the "Additional partition". This is the restriction on creating primary partitions on hard drives using the old MBR (Master Boot Record) boot record.
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