Windows 7 hdd partitions. We divide the computer space into new partitions and save data

Hello again everyone! I often encounter a situation - when examining a laptop, I see that the system is installed on the “C:” drive, which turns out to be the only partition. This is not good, because if there is a problem, you lose all the data on your computer. I have seen laptops with one disk partition straight from the store. The sellers forgot to mark the hard drive, or were lax.

By the way, owners of old devices like to install Windows 10 on them... And either because of the relatively small size of the disk space, or without paying attention, users also leave only the system partition on it. There comes a time when the presence of a second (logical) volume becomes an urgent necessity. How can you quickly mark up the disk and let's talk.

For those who are not in the know, I’ll tell you why you need to partition the disk into separate volumes. This is done for the sole purpose of saving important and valuable data. The number of sections can be any - from one to several. One partition is the system partition; it contains Windows, programs and user system folders (“Documents”, “Downloads”, and so on).

On other partitions (logical) you can store important files (photos, documents, system archives). If the system partition crashes (virus infection, failures), important information on it may become inaccessible. Even if everything is fine with your partitions, there are often cases when you need to increase the size of the system disk (after installing “ten”, you suddenly ran out of free space). In this case, you can increase the space using a logical disk. No data is lost.

Creating hard drive partitions when installing Windows 10

The most obvious and easiest way to split a hard drive into separate volumes is when installing Windows. If you decide to reinstall the system, then read this chapter. When you install a system from scratch, everything is very simple. After booting from the installation disk (), the installation wizard reaches the point where you can create new partitions and delete existing partitions. All you need to do is specify the size in megabytes:

The photo shows an example - when the disk is not partitioned, it does not even have a system partition yet. The “Size” field indicates the maximum value for a given disk, that is, this is the classic example that has already been mentioned.

For Windows 10, it is recommended to use disks with a capacity of 500 GB or more. The 120 GB partition will run out very quickly due to the fact that the “ten” by default stores snapshots of its file system and other service information. In a month or two, this information will take up almost all the remaining space. 120 GB disks no longer meet the requirements; they are better used as storage.

So, when we decide where to install Windows, we must first create a partition (system) for example 250 GB in size:

In our case, the disk is not yet partitioned, so the system will also notify you about the creation of additional boot partitions:

After the system partition is created, we still have unallocated space on the disk, due to which we will create another logical volume here:

If you wish, you can delete all existing partitions from the disk and create new ones. This is done in order to quickly delete all information from the disk, also if the partition table is damaged (when installing in such cases, the system notifies that installation to these partitions is impossible):

This is how quickly and easily all this is done during installation. But with this method, all data on the disk is destroyed. And you can create and edit existing sections without losing data. Read about it below.

How to divide a hard drive into two parts without losing data?

If you need to quickly create or redistribute volumes, then in my opinion it is better to use programs specially created for this. One of my favorites is Acronis. This is a powerful tool for working with disks, I use it all the time. This program is included in many “emergency flash drives”, for example this set.

Let's launch our Acronis Disk Director. The program will display all connected disks and the partitions on them. In this case, we have a new hard drive connected and it is not initialized.

To initialize the disk, press the appropriate button...

Consider markup styles when creating sections. In this example, the scheme is classic - MBR. If you already have connected disks in GPT style, then new disks must also be in GPT style

To accept the changes, click “Apply pending operations.”

Now you can proceed directly to creating volumes. Click on the link that appears " Create Volume«:

Our volume will be a basic, logical volume for storing data. Therefore, we need to determine its size, file system, select a drive letter and label (for example, I label the logical drive DATA and the system disk label Sys).

Then click “Finish”, and then again “Apply pending operations”. See what the creation of the main and logical hard drive partitions looks like in the video:

Acronis allows you to resize existing volumes without losing data by using the free space of adjacent partitions. Be careful! If your disk is filled to capacity with data, then you can create a volume on it only after you delete part of the data from it, that is, free space appears.

Editing partitions will take more time, because the operation involves saving data. For a more detailed video on how to partition a disk without losing data, see below.

We divide the disk into volumes in Windows 10 from under the system, through “Disk Management”

Finally, I’ll tell you how you can perform some operations with volumes in Windows 10. I rarely use the Disk Management snap-in for real work, but sometimes it’s good - you don’t need to waste time searching for additional programs or restarting the computer. This is perhaps the only plus - I still give preference to special programs.

So, go to Control Panel - System and Security - Computer Management - Disk Management. This equipment has a fairly simple and intuitive interface.

To launch the Disk Management snap-in, you can use a special command diskmgmt.msc which you need to enter into the “Run” window by calling it by pressing the Win + R buttons

As already mentioned, to create a partition, you first need to make sure that there is free space on the selected disk. If there is not enough free space, you can try shrinking the volume. To do this, select the desired section, right-click on it and select “Compress”:

After compression it forms unoccupied space which we will use to create the volume. But first you need to determine its size:

For example, I chose 50 gigabytes, and an unallocated area appeared on my disk on which I can create a new volume:

The equipment can create a simple volume (when only one disk is connected to the computer) as well as a composite volume (when two or more disks are connected and data is written in parts to one and the other), striped, mirrored. Essentially we can create from several disks

Also, in certain situations, you can resize existing partitions. On the same volume, we can get back our unallocated space using “Extend Volume”:

All operations to change partitions must be carried out carefully so as not to damage or lose data. Be careful, you can accidentally format the disk and lose data. Or make the wrong partition active and then the system will stop booting and you will have to work hard to fix everything. Good luck to you!

Sometimes the hard drive (HD) of a computer or laptop consists of only one partition. Initially, this does not bring any inconvenience: all data is saved in one space, searching is easier, etc.

However, over time, the root folder becomes larger and more branchy, and sometimes it is impossible to find the desired file.

And as soon as many different files accumulate on the hard drive: images, videos, documents, etc. It happens that it is necessary to divide the C:/ drive into one or more independent partitions.

Why do you need to share hard drive space?

However, why divide the railway anyway? When there is only one partition on the computer, there is no situation with a lack of free space to write the necessary programs, there is no need to waste time and move information from one disk to another, etc. But there are also positive aspects.

When partitioning a disk:

• You can structure the data.
• Reinstall the computer system, but save the data.
• Limit access to data.

How to split the C:/ drive into two Windows 7 drives without losing data using external programs

Owners of laptops and PCs who want to change hard drive partitions often have a question: how to create a new partition, but still save all the data. To date, several programs have been created to help solve this problem.

Acronis Disk Director

The program helps not only to separate hard drive partitions, but also to restore lost or damaged information. Acronis Disk Director is easy to use. A simple and intuitive interface, translated into Russian, allows you to quickly master the program.

Advantages:

• Installs under different versions of Windows;
• The program allows you to create, delete, copy and edit hard drive partitions;
• The process of partitioning and compressing the disk takes place while preserving all data;
• With Acronis Disk Director you can view data on hard drive partitions.

The program is freely available and absolutely free. You can also work with Acronis Disk Director from a USB drive.

MiniTool Partition Wizard

The MiniTool Partition Wizard program will also help with the problem of partitioning the C:/ drive in Windows 7 without losing data. It is designed to work correctly with hard drive partitions. The interface is designed for both advanced users and ordinary users.

Advantages:

• The program tests the operation of the railway;
• Saving and backing up all data;
• Supports working with partitions of 2 terabytes or more.

Windows 7 built-in utility

In addition to third-party programs, solve the problem of how to split the C:/ drive into two Windows 7 drives without losing data. A utility built into the software of a personal computer system will help you perform this complex operation.

First, you need to open the control panel. This can be achieved in different ways:

1. Menu “Start” - “Control Panel” - “System and Security” - “Administrative Tools”. In the window that opens, select from the options “Create and format hard disk partitions”, and then: “Disk Management”.
2. Open the My Computer pop-up menu with the right mouse button. Select “Manage” from the pop-up menu. In the Computer Management window, select Disk Management.

The window that appears will display options for exactly how the disk space is divided. For example, a divided hard drive looks like this:

In addition to the main partitions, drive C:/ and E:/, there are:

• Hidden recovery partition, in this case it occupies 457 megabytes. The space of this partition is responsible for restoring the PC system after unexpected failures.
• System partition. A space of 500 megabytes in which system programs are stored that are responsible for the normal startup and loading of the operating system.

The rest of the space is space for information. This can be one section or several. If there is a disk marked with a black stripe in the list, it means there is unallocated space left on the computer.

Shrinking a Volume and Creating a New Disk

After the Disk Management menu has been opened, you need to shrink the desired volume and allocate space for a new disk. The operation is performed in several steps:

Whether to use a system utility or third-party programs to split or compress hard drive space is up to everyone to decide for themselves. Programs may offer additional features, but changing the disk size through the Control Panel will help avoid unexpected errors.

But it is worth remembering that before starting volume compression you must:

• Transfer as much information as possible to external media and cloud storage.
• Save the most important data separately.

If partitioning is successful, you will be able to freely reinstall the operating system, roll back Windows, install programs on separate media and not worry that any important information will be lost in the event of an unexpected breakdown.

Without data loss, provided that there is one partition converted to the main volume with the letter (C:), the operating system is installed on it and nothing should happen to it, how do you like the problem?

• Note: If you have a new operating system installed, you can divide your hard drive into partitions using the operating system itself, without resorting to third-party programs, here is the article, if something doesn’t work, use the universal one and free program in Russian.
• If you are on Windows 7, read here. If you have a new laptop, then you need this article.

Such tasks are very easily solved with special disk management programs, for example: Acronis Disk Director, Paragon, I work with all of them. The fact is that when working with such programs, it is easy to damage the partition table of the hard drive, then the computer will not be able to determine the location of the main partition with the operating system among the new volumes created by you, what then? That's right, you simply won't be able to boot into Windows. Acronis, also working from a boot disk, sometimes confuses partition letters.

• Therefore, before working with Acronis Disk Director, you need to insure yourself as much as possible and create a backup of all partitions of your hard drive. Every user should be able to create a backup of the operating system and, if necessary, deploy it back.

I do not want to intimidate you in any way, but simply warn you to be very careful when working with software for working with computers. hard disk partitions. I remember in the old days, when everything was just beginning, I always had several floppy disks in my pocket with the Partition Magic program in bourgeois language, yes, floppy disks, it worked from them, you insert it into the floppy and you always don’t know how it will end, but I will say Honestly, I only let you down a few times. And then I met Acronis and have not parted since then, although now I carry a large suitcase with me and there are always several boot disks with this program. Well, it's time to get down to business, otherwise you'll run away from the site and won't partition your hard drive.

As I said, we have the Windows XP operating system, but everything that will be said below can also be applied to Windows 7. The operating system has one system partition-disk (C:) with a capacity of 111.8 GB, which we will use divide into two sections, as a result we will have another drive (D:), don’t worry about your files on drive (C:), nothing will happen. Here it is our drive (C:), all alone.

Let's launch our program

In the main window of the program, our hard drive is visible as one partition-disk (C), with a capacity of 111.8 GB. Let's go with you to Actions and tools, and then Resize volume

change the size of a volume of 111.8 GB, for example, to 55.8 GB, so we will have a logical volume (D)

We have some unallocated space and we will convert it later into a logical volume (D)

Apply pending operations

Friends, now you can create the second partition you need, right in the operating system, go to Computer->Manage->Disk Management, right-click on the unallocated space and select Create Partition from the menu. Or you can use our program again.

We run our program again, select unallocated space with the mouse and click Create Volume

Select the type of volume to be created: Basic

Specify unallocated space

Do you have a laptop with Windows 7? Then you may be faced with having only one local drive C. This may not be convenient: if you need to reinstall the system or perform a rollback, all important information will need to be manually transferred to external media first. Afterwards you can format the local disk and then install the operating system. The presence of several local disks will allow you to initially save the necessary information in a partition other than that containing system files. This will allow you to format your local drive C without fear of losing important files. Therefore, for convenience and greater reliability, the hard drive needs to be partitioned.

The procedure is quite simple; it does not require downloading additional software. After all, Windows 7 has a built-in utility that makes it easy to partition a disk. The partitioning will take place without losing any information, so there is no need to transfer files to external media before the procedure. Partitioning a hard drive and creating new partitions is only possible if there is sufficient free space.

How to access Disk Management in Windows 7?

• Just go to “START” and enter “diskmgmt.msc” in the search. The application of the same name will need to be opened.
• If you want to run the application with administrator rights, then just press “Win ​​+ R”, then also enter “diskmgmt.msc” and press the “Enter” button.
• Also in Windows 7, you can go to the “disk management” section using the control panel (Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management)

In the top center you can see the available hard drive partitions. Below is the number of physical hard drives, optical drives, and external drives that have been installed. In the image, drive C is already partitioned, so the partition will be shown using drive “J” as an example, which is not significant.

Creating a new partition

To create a new partition in Windows 7, you can use unallocated space, but you may not have it. To create it, just do:

• You need to select a partition that has enough free space and right-click. After this, you need to select the “compress volume...” item. Remember, if you have several partitions, it is better to compress not the system volume.

As a result, a window will pop up, just wait for the process to complete.

• After some time, a new window will open where you will need to specify the size of the space that you decided to shrink. The maximum value will already be indicated in the window that appears, but you can specify a smaller size. The value you specify will be the size of the future logical disk. Remember that the compressible disk will be reduced by this amount, so using the maximum value is not recommended. After entering the required value, just press the “compress” button.

You will need to wait some time, which depends on the fragmentation of the shrinking partition and its volume.

Convert to hard drive partition

After these manipulations, an additional partition will be created in the “Disk Management” window with a black stripe at the top. The size will be listed here, along with the word “Unallocated.” This space needs to be converted into a hard disk partition. You need to right-click and select the line “Create a simple volume”.

Just select the maximum size and click “Next”. Finally, you will need to assign a letter that will be the “name” of the disk and click “Next”.

Then you need to check the box next to “Format this volume as follows:”. Specify NTFS in the file system. And set the cluster size to default. The "volume label" is the name of the disk that was created. You must check the “Quick Format” box, but there is no need to compress files and folders. After this, just click “Next” and you will see the message: “Completing the Create Simple Volume Wizard.” You need to check everything again and click the “Finish” button.

As a result, we managed to split the HDD using Windows 7 tools. Everything is ready to go. After completing the procedure, you no longer have to fear that personal information will be deleted during system recovery.

It must be remembered that one hard drive allows you to create only 4 main partitions.

What to do if the Windows 7 disk failed to partition?

When partitioning a disk in Windows 7, difficulties may arise due to the presence of files on it (hidden and system) that could not be moved to another location.

In this case, you need to use third-party utilities (Acronis or Paragon), which also allow you to partition the disk. You can also boot from any OS boot disk, and then defragment the department.

To partition a disk in Windows 7, you must have administrator or archive operator rights on this PC. With Windows 7 features, you can shrink a volume to a file size that can't be moved.

Physical storage is displayed in the system as virtual volumes, also called local disks or partitions.

The drive can be represented by only one volume, which holds all the disk space and stores all your files. Or it can be divided into several volumes, between which all available space and files are distributed.

The first option is very common, but not the most practical. Keeping OS components in the same place as movies, games and other entertainment content is not a good idea. You or other computer users may accidentally touch important files. And if the system fails and it is needed, then the rest of the volume’s contents will be deleted along with the old OS.

Fortunately, you can always split your drive into two or more partitions. In general terms, the procedure goes like this: you take some space from an existing volume and use this space to create a new one.

For example, you can leave about 40–50 GB for the one with the installed OS, and allocate the rest of the space for a new section reserved for programs and entertainment content. In this case, system and personal files will be stored separately. And if you have to reinstall the system, your content will remain on the computer.

Before partitioning the disk, be sure to copy important files to other media. Your personal data shouldn't be harmed, but it's better to be safe.

The listed separation methods are suitable for both types of drives: traditional (HDD) and solid-state (SSD).

1. How to partition a disk in Windows

By regular means

For partitioning and other operations with drives in Windows, the standard Disk Management utility is used. To open it, right-click on the “This PC” shortcut and select “Manage” → “Disk Management”. You can launch the utility even faster using a special command: press the Windows keys + R, paste into the field diskmgmt.msc and click OK.

In the Disk Management window, you will see a list of local volumes (partitions) into which your drive is already divided. Among them there may be hidden system partitions that are not displayed in Explorer. This is normal, don't pay attention to them.

In the lower half of the window, right-click on the volume you want to split and select the “Shrink Volume” option.

Then specify the amount of data you want to allocate to the new volume and confirm compression.

As a result, the screen next to the selected volume will display the specified amount of free space available for the new partition. Right-click on this area and select “Create Simple Volume”.

If you have Windows XP, the compression option will most likely not be available. Then just right-click on the one you want to split and select “New Partition”. Further steps will be approximately the same for all OS versions.

When the New Volume Wizard appears on the screen, follow its prompts.

In the process, you will need to select the letter and label (name) of the section. When the wizard prompts you for a disk, select the NTFS system and confirm your choice. After formatting, the created volume will appear in Explorer. If this does not happen, restart your computer.

In exactly the same way, you can partition the disk in the future, adding new volumes.

In a third party program

If for some reason you are unable to partition a disk using standard Windows tools, try doing it in one of the third-party programs. For example, in the utility. It's free, compatible with all versions of Windows from XP to 10, and quite simple.

To partition a disk in MiniTool Partition Wizard, select the appropriate volume in the program and click Move/Resize Partition in the left panel. In the window that appears, in the Unallocated Space After field, specify the amount of free space that will be taken from the current volume in favor of the new one. Click OK.

A new nameless section marked Unallocated will appear in the main menu of the program. Right-click on it and select the Create command. In the next window, fill in the Drive Letter and Partition Label fields, select NTFS as the file system and click OK.

Returning to the main menu of the MiniTool Partition Wizard, click Apply on the top panel to apply the changes. The computer will restart and white text will appear on the black screen. Wait and do not turn off the device. When Windows boots, the created volume will appear in Explorer.

2. How to partition a disk on macOS

If you have a Mac, you'll need the pre-installed Disk Utility program to partition your drive. It can be found in the Finder menu → Programs → Utilities.

After launching Disk Utility, in the left pane, select the disk you want to partition and click on the “Partition” button.

A window with further instructions will appear on the screen, in which you can select the number, size and other parameters of the new partitions.

When you have made all the necessary settings, click “Apply” and wait for the changes to take effect.