Create Or Manage A Partition Using Windows Disk Management MMC Snap-In

Creating a new partition or expanding an old one is a hard job for anyone. Though there are a lot of third-party app available to manage hard-disk partition from Windows, and also one can do it while installing new operation system, but yet it’s confusing and hard. And almost all third party apps will format affected partitions so you will be in a risk to lose your files. But most people are not aware of a default Windows service called “Disk Management” which can shrink partition, create new allocated space and also create/allocate a virtual hard disc space. This service will make your partition management easier. Even you don’t need to format your effected partition so your files will be safe. Let’s check this amazing feature out.

Also Check

• Complete Guide To Install Windows 8 Developer Preview On VirtualBox
• How To Dual Boot Windows 8
• Video Tutorial : How To Use Windows 8 On VirtualBox
• Create A Windows 8 Bootable USB Drive/DVD Disc
• Check Whether Your Processor Can Run Windows 8 Virtually Or Not
• Create Or Manage A Partition Using Windows Disk Management MMC Snap-In

We are creating this tutorial with a focus to install newly released Windows 8 developer preview here as a dual boot mode. So we will show you how to create a separately create a partition 1st. Additionally, we will show how to expand a partition without formatting it, how to create or attach a Virtual Hard Disk.

To launch Disk Management MMC Snap-In, go to run from start menu (or use “Windows Key + R” shortcut) and type “diskmgmt.msc” into the run box.

After pressing the ok button, a MMC will load with the disk management snap-in pre-loaded. You can get a nice overview of your hard drives here.

Now, as you can see, the MMC is displaying all partitions and also showing information about each one. If you have to create a new partition, search for unallocated free space. There is no such space here. So we will create a free space 1st. As mentioned earlier, this tutorial is especially built to separate a new partition for Windows 8, so we will shrink 25 GB and then create a new partition with that 25 GB free space.

To shrink 25 GB space, 1st we need to choose the partition we are going to shrink from. For your safety, make sure that the chosen partition is well defragmented and have 25 GB blank space minimum. We are going to shrink F drive. So right click on that.

 

Now click on”Shrink Volume”.

A dialog box will then appear asking you how much you want to shrink from the drive. You need to put the value in Megabytes. As we need 25 GB free space, so we put 25*1024=25600 (1024 MB=1 GB) on the field. Then click on shrink button then.

Then Windows will shrink your drive. Once it has completed shrinking your partition, the Disk Manager will display this new space with a green header. This means it is an empty partition, you can use this space to create a separate file system or add as additional memory in another drive. We will now create a separate one. Right click on that green space and click on “New Simple Volume”.

A wizard will launch this is going to take us through all the steps we need to format the drive. Click next here.

Now we need to decide how much we are going to give to make this new partition. We recommend to give up all shrinked space here. Leaving any space may result in some space going to waste. Then click next.

In the next dialog it asks you to assign it a drive letter, you can accept the defaults or use any letter you want and click next.

Now this will ask you whether you want to format it or not. You can accept the default (Do Not Format) if you want to keep your previous data. We are going to format it. And also giving the partition a name “Windows 8”.

Now this following info will be displayed.

You have now successfully created a new drive.

Additional

To re allocate the free space into the drive you have shrinked, right click on that partition and click “Expand This Volume”.

To create a Virtual Hard Disc or to attach one, click the Create VHD or Attach VHD from Action menu.