Partitioning and increasing the size of a disk in Windows using the Disk Management Tool. Programs for working with hard disk partitions

Disk Management is a utility built into Windows that allows you to manage computer storage devices without using third-party software. Of course, the functionality is not very diverse, but the basic tasks of managing drives can be completed.

The article is relevant for all versions of Windows starting with Seven.

Opening the management console

To get to the management utility it is enough run command interpreter (simultaneously pressing Win + R) and enter the command diskmgmt. msc. This method works on all operating systems above Windows 7.

There is another way - open control Panel, go to folder Administration and run . In the right part of the window that opens, select the required component.

In addition, in new Windows operating systems you can click right key mouse on the button start and run the utility.

Interface and available operations

The utility's interface is quite simple and intuitive. Upper part contains information about physical storage devices, and lower provides breakdown data.

At the bottom Opposite the name of the drive there is a ruler divided by multi-colored rectangles. They show partition drive into logical partitions. The size and name are indicated here. The colors are deciphered at the very bottom of the window.

All actions are performed by pressing right click on disk. The top and bottom are identical, so it doesn't matter where you call up the control menu.

However, some capabilities are called in action menu, located on top.

Let's consider main features Disk management.

• First two points Open And Conductor They will simply open the disk itself.
• Changing a letter calls to change the volume label. Those. you can delete or change the drive letter to an arbitrary one, but not used in the system.
• Formatting will erase all information.
• Volume expansion will allow you to change the size. And not only increase, but also decrease. However, this will delete all information on the logical drive.
• Compression makes it possible to compress all information located on the selected volume.
• Removal– will simply delete the volume, leaving unallocated space.

Converting drives

We will not consider the above operations in detail, but will touch upon transformation from GPT to MBR and vice versa. With the release of Windows 10, this operation has become very relevant.

It is worth noting that this procedure requires complete removal all information on the media, so you must first save the data from the device.

If the device is new and does not contain a structure, then we automatically They will offer to convert it to MBR or GPT.

Storage with structure MBR determined by any computer and any Windows OS. But modern PCs use GPT, because mbr has some restrictions:

• Size logical volume should not exceed 2 terabytes
• On your device you can create no more than 4 main sections.

Because Since modern drives are much larger in size, these limitations make the use of mbr irrelevant.

For comparison, a disk with structureGPT may contain up to 128 sections, and the size can be up to a billion terabytes.

The conversion process itself is quite simple. Choose device, right-click on it and select Convert toGPT(or MBR).

Basic and dynamic disk

Windows allows configure storage, either basic or dynamic. Computers typically use basic disks. But dynamic allow you to implement advanced OS capabilities such as creating mirrored, striped, or spanned volumes.

For conversion, a context menu is used, which can be called up by right-clicking on the disk.

Volume types

Let's take a closer look:

• Base– standard for partitions
• Composite– combines two disks. First, data is written to one device, after it is full, the recording moves to another disk.
• Alternate– also uses several disks for recording, but the data is written one by one to all devices in the volume. This ensures maximum access speed.
• Mirror– recording occurs simultaneously on two devices. Thus, the failure of one of them will not affect the safety of the data. The access speed in this case may be lower.

For those who have worked with drives, this may remind you of RAID. This is true, only in this case the use of a RAID controller is not required.

Creating a virtual disk

Another disk management option worth mentioning is creating a virtual disk. You could say it's a disk on a physical disk. In some ways it resembles a regular one image ISO.

It is often used to work with virtual machines. Such a device should be stored in format vhd.

Creating one is quite simple. Go to the menu Actions, where we select the item Create virtual disk. Choose location And volume then confirm by pressing the button OK.

Disk Management is a utility built into Windows designed to work with drives connected to your computer. With it, you can create and delete partitions, assign letters to partitions, and much more. In this short article we will talk about how to open Disk Management in Windows 7 and Windows 10 operating systems.

Method No. 1. Context menu of the “My Computer” icon.

If you need to open Disk Management, the easiest way is the context menu of the “My Computer” icon. In order to use this method, you need to right-click on the “My Computer” icon (or on the “Computer” icon if you have Windows 10) and select “Manage” from the context menu that opens.

This will open the Computer Management window. Now, in order to go into disk management, simply open the appropriate section.

Method number 2. Run the command “diskmgmt.msc”.

You can also go to Disk Management by running the command “diskmgmt.msc”. To do this, open the Run window using the Windows-R key combination, type “diskmgmt.msc” and press enter.

You can also enter the command “diskmgmt.msc” into the Windows command line or simply into the search bar in the Start menu. This method will also work.

Method number 3. Context menu of the Start button.

If you are using Windows 8.1 or Windows 10, then you can open Disk Management using the context menu of the Start button. To do this, right-click on the “Start” button (or press the Windows-X key combination) and select “Disk Management” in the menu that opens.

\

This article talks about how to create, change or delete hard disk partitions using Windows 7.
To work with hard drive partitions in Windows 7, there is a tool called “Disk Management”: Control Panel → System and Security → Administrative Tools → Computer Management → Disk Management OR “Start” → in the search bar enter: diskmgmt.msc and press Enter.

1. Creating a section
Right-click on a free space not occupied by other partitions on the desired hard drive → Create a simple volume... The “Simple Volume Creation Wizard” window will open, click the “Next” button. Then specify the size of the partition to be created, assign a drive letter, select the required file system and formatting options, once again make sure that you did everything correctly and click “Finish”
2. Compressing a Partition
Right-click on the desired section → Shrink Volume... A message window will appear asking for space for compression, wait until the end of the survey. Then in the window that appears, in the line “size of compressed space”, indicate the amount of free space and click “Compress”
3. Section expansion
Extend Volume... The “Volume Expansion Wizard” window will appear, click the “Next” button. Then select the required free space from the list, click “Add”, then specify the size of the free space allocated to the partition, click the “Next” button, check the information and click “Finish”
4. Deleting a partition
Right-click on the desired section → Delete volume... Before continuing the operation, copy all the necessary files and folders to another drive, because... Once a volume is deleted, all data on it will be lost.
5. Changing the drive letter
Right-click on the desired section → Change drive letter or drive path... Click on the Change button, select the desired drive letter and click OK. Next, we will look in detail at ways to expand disks without harming the information stored on them.

In order to divide the hard drive into partitions, you need to go to the "Start" menu → right-click on "Computer" and click on "Manage".

In the window that appears, go to the "Disk Management" section.

Select the hard drive and partition that needs to be divided and right-click on it.

In the drop-down menu, you need to select "Shrink Volume" and then select the size to which you want to shrink the existing partition. The space freed up after compression will be the new hard drive partition.

To create a new partition, you need to right-click on the free space and select “create volume”. Then specify the size of the new partition and wait for the operation to complete. Sooner or later, any computer user is faced with a problem such as lack of free space on the system partition of the hard drive. This is where the question arises: How to expand drive C?

First we need to go to the "Computer Management" tab (see above).
When this tab opens, you will see in the window all the media that are currently connected to the computer. Each hard drive can be divided into several logical ones. The very first one will be "Disk 0". On the right you will see the space reserved by the system and the logical partitions (C, D, E, F, etc.). If you have only one drive C and it is full, then you can try “Shrink volume” (see above). If you have several logical partitions, then move on.

The principle of disk division.

Possible difficulties.

Windows 8 provides the same tools for increasing space. Therefore, this method is also applicable on this operating system.

Partitioning a hard drive in the Windows 7 operating system is a very simple thing. You can see this for yourself if you partition and create a new partition according to the described algorithm.

*MBR (Master Boot Record) master boot record in a PC - a table in the first sector of the boot disk that stores data about the physical and logical organization of the disk. If this record is corrupted, loading the OS becomes impossible.

That's all. Thank you for reading the article. I hope it was useful to you.

Last time you learned how easy it is in the Windows operating system. If you remember, we used the built-in Disk Management utility to rename the disk.

At that time we indicated only two ways to get to it; in fact, there are many more ways to open utilities for working with disks.

In this post, we will give five examples of running Disk Management in Windows 8.1, including the two that were already mentioned in the previous article. At the same time, it would probably be nice to say a few words about this utility itself.

So, Disk Management is used to create and manage computer partitions. This tool's capabilities include checking, creating and renaming volumes, viewing their properties, formatting, and resizing. In addition, Disk Management allows you to create and connect virtual disks. Getting to the disk management section is very simple.

Method No. 1

The first method is also the simplest. You can access Disk Management Manager from the Start button menu. To do this, click on the Start button with the right mouse button and select “Disk Management” from the context menu. You can also use the Win + X hotkeys to open the menu.

Method No. 2

The second method is no less simple. It works everywhere, even if you are on the start screen. Press Win + R and in the “Run” window that opens, enter the command diskmgmt, then press OK or Enter.

Method No. 3

You can also use the built-in search engine. Just type the phrase “Creation and...” in the search field, the rest will appear on its own. What exactly? Creating and formatting hard drive partitions. This is exactly what we need.

Method No. 4

However, no one forbids opening the Disk Management Manager the old fashioned way - through the Control Panel. In this case, it would be preferable to switch to the classic view of displaying elements by category. So in the “System and Security” section there is a subsection “Administration”, and in it there is a link “Creating and formatting hard disk partitions”. Not a very convenient way, right?

Method No. 5

The fifth method is convenient when you are in Explorer. In the transition area, right-click on the “This PC” icon, select “Manage” in the context menu, and in the window that opens, find “Disk Management”. The same can be done from the desktop by clicking on the “This PC” icon. It's that simple.

In the end, you can simply create an executable diskmgmt.msc file, and then pin it anywhere, be it on the desktop, taskbar or start screen. A little hint - look for it in the System32 directory at C:/Windows/System32. And by the way, do not forget that in the additional properties of the shortcut you can always enable the option to run the file with administrator rights.

While working with a personal computer, it may be necessary to change, add or delete hard disk partitions. If during the initial installation of Windows 7 the creation of partitions takes place interactively and is intuitive, then making changes to the created partitions requires a certain skill. Due to the lack of any experience in these matters, the user may incorrectly perform the necessary actions, which will subsequently lead to complete loss of data or even failure of the hard drive. The Disk Management utility will help simplify the process of creating and changing disk partitions.

Disk Management utility and its functions

The Disk Management utility is a tool for performing various operations with hard drives and their partitions.

With its help you can:

• create, delete, merge volumes on a disk;
• compress volumes;
• format volumes;
• assign letters for volumes;
• add volumes without rebooting;
• manage local and remote disks on the network.

Opening Disk Management

There are several ways to launch the program.

Via the Start menu

1. Click on the “Start” menu and right-click on “Computer”. Select "Management".

   Right-click on “Computer” and select “Manage”

2. In the “Computer Management” window that opens, click on “Disk Management”.

   Select "Disk Management"

3. The Disk Management window will open.

   Disk Management window

Via command line

Via "Control Panel"

1. Click on the “Start” menu and select “Control Panel”.

   Click “Control Panel”

2. In the search bar, enter “administration” and click on the “Administration” section that appears.

   Click on the “Administration” section

3. Select “Computer Management” from the list.

   Select "Computer Management"

4. In the “Computer Management” window that opens, click on “Disk Management”.

   Click on “Disk Management”

Why doesn't Disk Management open?

There are situations when the Disk Management console does not open or opens but the console window is blank and the warning “Could not connect to the Logical Disk Manager service” appears.

The reasons that caused this problem to appear may be different. To eliminate their influence on the disk management process, you must perform the following steps:

1. Conduct an anti-virus scan. It is recommended to launch an antivirus program from an optical disk or from a protected flash drive. After checking, open the “Quarantine” of the antivirus. If the dmdskmgr.dll library is in Quarantine, then return it to its place.
2. Run the command Rundll32 setupapi, InstallHinfSection DefaultInstall 132 %windir%\inf\dmreg.inf through the Start menu and the Run window.
3. Go to “Control Panel” - “Administration” - “Services” and make sure that “Logical Disk Manager” and “Logical Disk Manager Administrative Service” are running. If they are stopped, then enable them.
4. Enter the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) menu. To do this, when turning on the computer, press Del, F2 or Esc (the choice of key depends on the computer manufacturer). If the launch panel does not contain information about the connected HDD, then check the connecting cables at the points of connection to the drive.

How to create a logical drive

The very first hard drives, first created by IBM in 1973, contained 30 cylinders, each of which was divided into 30 tracks. By analogy with automatic rifles using the .30–30 Winchester cartridge, such discs were called “Winchesters”. Over time, in colloquial speech the word “Winchester” was transformed into “screw”.

Most hard drives are sold already prepared for installing Windows, i.e. the main partition has already been created on them. The remaining operations are carried out during the system installation process. Installation is carried out from a bootable optical disk or USB device. At one of the installation stages, a window will appear asking you to select a space to install the system.

If the hard drive was not prepared for immediate installation of the system before going on sale, then all operations will have to be done by the user. To do this, you will need a bootable optical disc or USB drive.

Before installation, configure the BIOS (basic input/output system) to boot from a DVD or USB drive:

When forming a partition on a hard drive, all free space is used, and additional partitions are created after installing Windows 7.

If possible, it is better to use Windows PE boot, which has Acronis Disk Director or Partition Magic built-in. These utilities are designed to manage hard drive partitions.

Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE) is used to prepare your computer for Windows installation. It is a built-in component of other system installation and recovery tools and is not intended to be used as a primary operating system.

If you don't have a bootable disk like Windows PE, you can:

The created logical drives must be formatted using the format.com utility. Now you can proceed to installing Windows 7.

Hard drive logical drive management

You can manage hard drive partitions through the context menu of each of them. They provide a set of commands necessary for work.

Compressing a Partition

The command to compress a logical drive is specified in the context menu.

Creating a section

A new partition is created in a free area of ​​the hard drive that is not yet part of a formatted volume. At the bottom of the Disk Management console, this space is highlighted in bright green, and in the legend line it is indicated as “Free”.

1. Once the partition has been compressed, right-click on the unallocated space and select “Create simple volume” from the context menu.

   Right-click on the unallocated space and select “Create simple volume” from the context menu

2. The “Create Simple Volume Wizard” will launch.

   After launching the “Create a Simple Volume Wizard”, click “Next”

3. Specify the size of the new volume.

   Specify the size of the new volume

4. Assign a letter (letter) to the disk.

   Assign a letter to the disk

5. We decide on the file system, cluster size and volume label.
6. We format the partition.

   We format the partition

7. In the last window, click on the “Finish” button and create a new logical drive.

   Click on the “Finish” button

After reformatting, the volume is ready for use.

Changing the section letter

Merging sections

When there is a need to reduce the number of logical drives, two are merged into one joint logical drive. Before merging, the necessary information from the logical drive being removed is copied to another drive or removable media.

To merge one drive with another:

1. Select the volume that we want to attach and call the context menu. Click on “Delete Volume”.