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How to find disk management in Windows 7. Partitioning and increasing disk size in Windows using Disk Management Tool

The disk management utility built into Windows 7 provides users with much greater capabilities than its predecessors. Of course, compared to specialized programs, its functionality may seem small. Nevertheless, the interface of the Disk Management program built into Windows is quite convenient and when working with it, you do not need any special knowledge. In general, the utility allows you to perform a wide variety of operations with computer hard drives (internal and external), as well as other memory devices.

One of the key features of the utility is the ability to create a new disk partition from an existing one. For example, after reinstalling Windows, you forgot to change the necessary settings in the BIOS and instead of the usual two drives “D” and “C”, you only have one left. Most users have no idea that this problem can be quickly fixed using the built-in tools in Windows.

How to get into the utility

There are several ways to open Disk Management. The simplest one is:

Launch the start menu.
Go to the "all programs" menu.
Open the "standard" folder.
Select the “Run” application from the list and launch it.
In the window that opens, enter “diskmgmt.msc” (without quotes).
After a few seconds, the program interface will appear in front of you.

If for some reason you are unable to open the Run utility, you can try using hotkeys. If you have a full-fledged keyboard, then press the Win button on it simultaneously (it shows the characteristic windows icon, and it is located near the left Alt) and the R key. A familiar window will appear, by entering the command “diskmgmt.msc” (without quotes) the one we need will open utility. If this does not work, then:

What is the program interface like?

Utility interface

The utility has a typical Windows interface and is distinguished by its simplicity. At the very top there is a toolbar:

File.
Action.
Reference.

Below you will notice a list of all the volumes you have. They take up the bulk of the application. It will also be indicated here Additional Information about them. If your hard drive consists of several partitions or volumes, then it will also be here. All media connected via USB or CD-ROM will be displayed at the bottom of the program interface. You will find information about them (including the number of partitions) right there, similar to the actions with built-in hard ones.

To perform any operation on disks, just use the “actions” menu from the toolbar, or by right-clicking on a specific partition picture. In this case, only those actions that apply to the selected section will be available to you.

Changing the drive letter

One of the simplest operations available in the Disk Management program is changing the letter assignment of a disk or drive. It may be needed for various reasons; some people like the letters to go strictly in order, while others just out of interest. If you decide to change the boring names, the procedure will be as follows:

Volume compression

The next equally simple operation that can be performed in the Disk Management program is creating a new partition from an existing one. Remember that this requires sufficient free place on the main disk. Therefore, the first thing you will need to do is compress it.

Before it turns into a full-fledged disk, it is necessary to carry out a number of procedures, or in other words, “create new volume».

Creating a new volume

Once you have compressed the main disk and allocated sufficient space for the new volume, you can begin to create it directly:

Deleting a created partition

In a similar way to creating a volume, you can delete an unnecessary one, thereby combining several small volumes into one large one. To carry out this operation, you must:

Now you understand that using the Disk Management system utility, you can perform simple, but very useful actions, like creating and deleting volumes and partitions.

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Disk management in windows

Disk management in windows is one of the most important functions, from the very beginning of the computer’s life, you need to split the disk into two or even three partitions for storage necessary information. And if you did something wrong at the beginning, then in the future you may need to expand some partition, you will want to change the letter of the partition or create another one. Yes, the easiest way is to create partitions on a new computer during the installation of Windows, but not always everything can be calculated. There are a lot of programs to work with hard drive, but you need to install them, find a free one and understand the functionality, or you can try the standard disk management feature, it has very good functionality:

1) How to open Disk Management;

2) Compress the disk;

3) Creating a partition (what types of volumes there are, their description, which cluster to choose);

4) Change the drive letter;

5) Format the partition;

6) Remove the disk;

7) Expand the disk;

8) Convert the disk to MBR and GPT;

9) Creating a virtual hard drive;

This functionality may be reduced in home versions of Windows.

Now let’s look at each item in more detail, starting from the first item “How to open Disk Management”:

1) The easiest way is to press the Win + R keys

open disk management

in the window that appears, enter diskmgmt.msc, after clicking OK, Disk Management will open

open disk management

2) Go to start => execute (the line can be found in Windows 7 and higher) => write diskmgmt.msc => press Enter

open disk management

3) Click on My Computer (windows 7 and higher simply Computer) with the right mouse button => in the menu that opens, select Manage

open disk management

go to Disk Management

open disk management

There is a fourth way - through the control panel, and in Windows 8.1 you can simply right-click on Start and select Disk Management

Now let's look at the second item: Shrink disk:

Press Win + R and enter dfrgui.exe (if you have Windows XP then dfrg.msc) => defragment the required volume(It may take for a long time)

Defragmentation before shrinking a volume

After defragmentation, we begin compressing the disk:

1.Go to Disk Management (start => diskmgmt.msc);

2. On the disk that you want to compress - right-click => Shrink volume (in my example it will be compressing drive C)

how to shrink a volume

3. First, you will need to wait a little while the Request for space for compression passes (for me this action took two minutes)

compress volume

4. In the window that appears you will see:

The total size before compression is the full capacity of your disk;

Space available for compression - free space that can be compressed;

The size of the compressed space - here we specify how much space we want to compress, I specified 10000MB;

Total size after compression - how much space will remain on the disk you are compressing after compression.

write down how much you need to compress and click Compress

Shrink Volume

No more than a minute will pass and the disk you were compressing will become smaller, unallocated space will appear

Shrink Volume

We've sorted out the compression, let's continue :)

Let's take advantage of the fact that unallocated space has appeared and move on to the Create partition item:

1. Go to Disk Management (start => diskmgmt.msc);

2. In disk management you see unallocated space, so we will use it to create a new volume. Right-click on not allocated and select Create simple volume

How to create a section

A small digression, for those who wondered “Why create a simple volume” and what other types of volumes mean:

A simple volume can consist of the free space of one disk;

A spanned volume is created from the free space of several (up to 32) disks. Data is first saved to one disk, and when it is full, it is transferred to another. This volume can be expanded with additional disks, but cannot be mirrored;

A striped volume is created from the free space of several disks, but the data is not written sequentially, but is evenly distributed across all disks to ensure maximum data access speed;

A mirror volume records one data on two disks at once, they duplicate each other. Thanks to this function, if one disk fails, the system continues to see the data as it remained intact on the other disk. The system sees it as one disk, and the writing speed to it is slightly lower, since recording goes to two disks at once.

Raid 5 duplicates data onto several disks at once; creating this volume is possible on server versions of Windows.

Not all operating systems support the creation of these volumes, and to create them, the disks must be dynamic, plus there must be at least two of them. If you immediately wondered what dynamic disks are, I won’t go into too much detail about the answer:

There are two types of disks - primary and dynamic; primary (also called basic) is used to work with operating systems. Dynamic ones have a number of advantages over the basic ones: it is possible to create fault-tolerant volumes (as mentioned above), the ability to make changes without rebooting the computer. And other little things that you can read about on the Microsoft website.

3. Let's continue creating a simple volume: after the second step, the simple volume wizard will appear, nothing important is written here, so just click Next

Create Volume

4. Now you need to decide on the volume size, in the field maximum size- you see how much is available for the new volume in the minimum partition size field - the minimum you can allow to create a partition. The size of a simple volume - by default, all unallocated space is registered, which we can use to create a partition; we write down the volume you need or leave it by default. Click Next

Create Volume

5. Select a drive letter from the list and click Next. You can always change the drive letter (we'll look at changing the drive letter later)

Create Volume

6. Decide on the parameters and click Next

File system: NTFS by default is the most popular file system nowadays, allowing the creation of partitions up to 16TB. FAT32 - a file system of the 90s, was popular for a long time, had many limitations, one of them is that this file system cannot manage files larger than 4GB, another drawback is that creating partitions in FAT32 is possible no more than 32GB. Plus FAT32 does not support long file names, a maximum of 256 characters. NTFS is a more stable file system that supports encryption.

Cluster size: the write speed depends on the size of the cluster; if you are going to store only movies on it, then it is better to choose 32kb or more. If different data will be stored on this partition, it is better to leave it as default. If you choose a cluster size of 4096, and while working with a partition you copy data to it 1 byte at a time, then each such file on the partition will occupy 4096 bytes.

Volume label: the usual name of the partition, the name that will be displayed in Explorer

I leave everything as default, change only the volume label and click Next. If you uncheck Quick formatting, the formatting will be complete and more thorough. It is recommended to choose full formatting when you want to erase data irrevocably, but it takes much longer.

Create Volume

7. In the last window there is a list of everything that we have chosen, if you agree with everything - click Finish, if not - click Back and change to what you need

Create Volume

After clicking Finish, another volume appeared in Disk Management, which we created at this point

Create Volume

Let's move on to the fourth point: Changing the drive letter:

1. Go to Disk Management (start => diskmgmt.msc);

2. Right-click on the partition in which you want to change the letter and select Change drive letter

Change drive letter

3. In the window that appears, click Change

Change drive letter

4. Select the letter you need from the list and click OK

change drive letter

5. A warning window will appear that some programs using this drive letter may stop working. Let me explain: if you installed some programs or games on a partition, then after changing the partition letter they may stop working, because when installing the program, data is written to the folder, registry and other system folders. Some programs are installed only in a folder, and they are not afraid of even reinstalling Windows, they will work no matter what disk (they are called portable), while others may have to be reinstalled after changing the letter.

change drive letter

After confirmation in Disk Management, the partition letter will change.

Change drive letter

Let's move on to the fifth point Formatting:

Formatting is the creation of data access structures, for example: file system structures. During formatting, all partition data is lost! If the formatting was quick, then they can still be restored different programs, if it has been fully formatted, this will be very difficult to do.

1 way. In the same disk management, right-click on the partition => format

formatting

in the window that appears, name the partition (volume label), select file system, cluster size and formatting method, click OK.

formatting

We confirm that you do not mind that all data from the selected volume will be lost - click OK

formatting

We wait a couple of minutes, after formatting our disk will say Fixed

formatting

Method 2. Go to My Computer (in Windows 7 and higher in Computer) => click on the disk that you want to format with the right mouse button => format => select the one you need (described in the previous method) => click OK

formatting

Let's move on to the sixth point: Remove disk:

Just don’t need to delete the volume Reserved by the system - it stores required files to boot the windows operating system, and after removing it you will have to reinstall windows :) or play with the Live CD...

1. Go to Disk Management (start => diskmgmt.msc);

2. On the partition that needs to be deleted, right-click => delete volume

delete volume

you will be warned that all data from the volume will be destroyed, if you agree - click Yes

remove disk

in disk management, we now have unallocated space the same size as the volume.

delete volume

Let's move on to the seventh point, Expand the disk:

To expand a volume using standard Disk Management, you need to have unallocated space immediately after the disk being expanded! If you want to expand a volume, but after it there is a partition, and then only an unmarked place - the “expand volume” itself in the menu will not be active! Therefore, you will have to either delete the volume next to the one being expanded (losing all data) or use free utility, which will expand your disk with another disk without losing data.

We will expand drive C, we have unallocated space after it.

1. Go to Disk Management (start => diskmgmt.msc);

2. Click on the disk with the right mouse button => Expand volume

expand disk

3. The volume expansion wizard will appear, nothing interesting is written here, just click Next. We need to decide how much of the unallocated area you want to leave, and how much to add to drive C.

Total volume size - how much space there is on drive C;

Maximum available space - how much disk space can be taken for expansion;

Select the size of the allocated space - enter how much you want to expand the C drive.

expand disk

In a split second, drive C will be expanded. Nothing complicated :)

Let's move on to the eighth point: Convert the disk to MBR and GPT:

For reference- MBR disk visible to any computer, it just has minor limitations:

you can only create four main partitions;
The maximum volume size is 2.2 terabytes.

Agree, only 2 terabytes, how can it be so “small”? 🙂 And only four partitions, it’s just terrible... Some new laptops use the GPT structure on which you can create 128 partitions, and the size of each can be up to a billion terabytes (in theory, up to 9.4 ZB). Just a billion terabytes, pump up a few movies for relaxation :).

This conversion is only possible on additional disk By choosing this action, you will basically lose all information! Therefore, I will convert a disk from MBR to GPT on a virtual disk, right-click on the disk and select Convert to GPT disk

Convert disk to MBR and GPT

wait a couple of minutes (depending on the size of the disk you are converting) and look at the result. To perform this action with the main disk, you need special programs, loading from a Live CD and complete indifference to the fact that all data from the disk will be lost...

Let's move on to the ninth point: Creating a virtual hard disk:

Use virtual HDD you can do it in different ways, it can be easily created and just as easily dismantled (disconnected), you can install a second operating system on it and carry out the necessary testing, and when you get tired of it, turn it off and transfer it to another computer.

1. To create a virtual hard disk, go to disk management (Win + R in the window that appears, enter diskmgmt.msc)

2. Select Action =>

Create a virtual hard disk

Please note that in the menu there is Attach a virtual hard disk, as you already understood, you can mount a virtual hard disk that was used previously, or on another computer.

3. Here you need to specify the size of the created virtual disk, and decide whether you will have it dynamic or fixed

Dynamic - as the disk fills up, it can expand due to the real disk on which it is located, but if you delete the data, it will not shrink back.

Fixed - you initially set a disk size that does not increase, you know that you have a certain volume and if it runs out, you need to delete the excess.

Create a virtual hard disk

We select Review and come up with a location for it, give it a name.

Create a virtual hard disk

Enter the Virtual Hard Disk Size and click OK. You already understood that the created virtual disk will be located on the disk where you choose, from my example it will be on the D:\ drive, if I select a fixed size, then I will know that it takes up no more than the space specified for it, and if dynamic, then you will need to look so that it does not eat up all the free space on the D:\ drive.

Create a virtual hard disk

After the virtual disk has been created (Disk 1 in our example), you need to Initialize it (right-click on the disk that appears => select Initialize disk)

Create a virtual hard disk

You will be prompted to choose an MBR or GPT table (if you have a disk smaller than 2TB, it is better to choose MBR), click OK

Create a virtual hard disk

Now the virtual disk will become like a regular disk, you can create volumes on it and perform the same actions as on a regular disk.

As I said at the beginning of the article, there are many utilities for working with a hard drive, but standard Disk Management allows you to perform many actions. I could have written a bunch more theory, but I judge by myself, I’m not a fan of reading encyclopedias, everything should be brief, but I’ve already gone on too long... If you have questions, write comments! Good luck to you :)

Disk management in Windows is one of the most important functions; from the very beginning of a computer's life, you need to split the disk into two or even three partitions to store the necessary information. And if you did something wrong at the beginning, then in the future you may need to expand some partition, you will want to change the letter of the partition or create another one. Yes, the easiest way is to create partitions on a new computer during Windows installations, but not always everything can be calculated. There are a lot of programs for working with a hard drive, but you need to install them, find a free one and understand the functionality, or you can try the standard disk management feature, it has very good functionality:

This functionality may be reduced in home versions of Windows.

Now let's look at each point in more detail, starting from the first point"How to open Disk Management":

1) The easiest way is to press the keys Win+R

in the window that appears, enter diskmgmt.msc, after pressing OK Disk Management will open

2) Go to start => execute (line found in Windows 7 and higher) => register diskmgmt.msc => press Enter

3) Click on My computer(Windows 7 and above just Computer) right mouse button => in the menu that opens, select Control

let's go to Disk management

There is a fourth way - through the control panel, and in Windows 8.1 you can simply click on start with the right mouse button and select Disk management

Now let's consider second item Shrink disk:

Click Win+R enter dfrgui.exe(if you have Windows XP then dfrg.msc) => we defragment the required volume (this may take a long time)

After defragmentation, we begin compressing the disk:

1.Go to Disk management(start => diskmgmt.msc);

2. On the disk that you want to compress - right-click => Shrink volume (in my example it will be compressing drive C)

3. First you will need to wait a little until it passes Request space for compression(for me this action took two minutes)

4. In the window that appears you will see:

Overall size before compression- the full capacity of your disk;

Space available for compression- free space that can be compressed;

Size of compressible space- here we specify how much space we want to compress, I specified 10000MB;

Overall size after compression- how much space will remain on the disk you are compressing after compression.

write down how much you need to compress and press Compress

No more than a minute will pass and the disk you were squeezing will become smaller and appear not distributed space

We've sorted out the compression, let's continue :)

Let's take advantage of the fact that unmarked space has appeared and move on to point Create a section:

1. Let's go to Disk management(start => diskmgmt.msc);

2. In disk management you see unallocated space, so we will use it to create a new volume. Click on not distributed right mouse button, select Create a simple volume

How to create a section

A small digression, for those who wondered “Why create a simple volume” and what other types of volumes mean:

- Simple Volume may consist of free space on one disk;

- Split Volume created from the free space of several (up to 32) disks. Data is first saved to one disk, and when it is full, it is transferred to another. This volume can be expanded with additional disks, but cannot be mirrored;

-Striped volume is created from the free space of several disks, but the data is not written sequentially, but is evenly distributed across all disks to ensure maximum data access speed;

-Mirror Volume The same data is written to two disks at once, they duplicate each other. Thanks to this function, if one disk fails, the system continues to see the data as it remained intact on the other disk. The system sees it as one disk, and the writing speed to it is slightly lower, since recording goes to two disks at once.

-Raid 5 duplicates data onto several disks at once; creating this volume is possible on server versions of Windows.

3 . Let's continue creating a simple volume: after the second point, appear simple volume master, nothing important is written here, so just click Further

4. Now you need to decide on the volume size, in the field maximum size- you see how much is available for the new volume in the field minimum partition size - the minimum you can afford to create a partition. Simple volume size - By default, all unallocated space is registered, which we can use to create a partition; we write down the volume you need or leave it by default. Click Further

5. Select a drive letter from the list and click Further.(we'll look at changing the drive letter later)

6. We decide on the parameters and click Further

- file system: NTFS by default is the most popular file system nowadays, allowing the creation of partitions up to 16TB. FAT32 - a file system of the 90s, was popular for a long time, had many limitations, one of them is that this file system cannot manage files larger than 4GB, another drawback is that creating partitions in FAT32 is possible no more than 32GB. Plus FAT32 does not support long file names, a maximum of 256 characters. NTFS is a more stable file system that supports encryption.

- Cluster size: The write speed depends on the size of the cluster; if you are going to store only movies on it, then it is better to choose 32kb or more. If different data will be stored on this partition, it is better to leave it as default. If you choose a cluster size of 4096, and while working with a partition you copy data to it 1 byte at a time, then each such file on the partition will occupy 4096 bytes.

- Volume Label: the usual name of the section, the name that will be displayed in Explorer

I leave everything as default, change only the volume label and click Further. If you uncheck Quick formatting then the formatting will be complete, more thorough. It is recommended to choose full formatting when you want to erase data irrevocably, but it takes much longer.

7. In the last window there is a list of everything we have chosen, if you agree with everything, click Ready, no - click Back and change to the desired one

After clicking Ready Another volume has appeared in Disk Management, which we created in this paragraph

Let's move on to the fourth point Changing the drive letter:

1. Go to Disk Management (start = > diskmgmt.msc);

2. On the section in which you want to change the letter, right-click and select

3. In the window that appears, click Change

4. Select the letter you need from the list and press OK

After confirmation in Disk Management, the partition letter will change.

Let's move on to the fifth point Formatting:

Formatting is the creation of data access structures, for example: file system structures. During formatting, all partition data is lost! If the formatting was quick, then they can still be restored using different programs; if a full formatting has taken place, this will be very difficult to do.

1 way. In the same disk management, right-click on the partition => format

in the window that appears, name the partition (volume label), select the file system, cluster size and formatting method, click OK.

We confirm that you do not mind that all data from the selected volume will be lost - click OK

We wait a couple of minutes, after formatting it will be written on our disk Corrected

Method 2. Go to My Computer (in Windows 7 and higher in Computer) => click on the disk that you want to format with the right mouse button => format => select the one you need (described in the previous method) => click OK

Let's move on to the sixth point Remove disk:

Just don't delete the volume Reserved by the system - it stores the necessary files to boot the Windows operating system, and after removing it you will have to reinstall Windows :) or play with the Live CD...

1. Go to Disk Management (start => diskmgmt.msc );

2. Right-click on the partition you want to delete => delete volume

you will be warned that all data from the volume will be destroyed, if you agree - click Yes

in disk management, we now have unallocated space the same size as the volume.

Let's move on to the seventh point Expand disk:

To expand a volume using standard Disk Management, you need to have unallocated space immediately after the disk being expanded! If you want to expand a volume, but after it there is a partition, and then only an unmarked place - the “expand volume” itself in the menu will not be active! Therefore, you will have to either delete the volume following the one being expanded (losing all data) or .

We will expand drive C, we have unallocated space after it.

1. Go to Disk Management (start => diskmgmt.msc);

2. Click on the disk with the right mouse button => Expand volume

3. The volume expansion wizard will appear, nothing interesting is written here, just click Further. We need to decide how much of the unallocated area you want to leave, and how much to add to drive C.

Total volume size - how much space is there on drive C?

Maximum available space - how much disk space can be taken for expansion;

Select the size of the allocated space - Enter how much you want to expand drive C.

In a split second, drive C will be expanded. Nothing complicated :)

Let's move on to point eight

For reference- MBR The disk is visible to any computer, it just has minor limitations:

you can only create four main partitions;
The maximum volume size is 2.2 terabytes.

Agree, only 2 terabytes, how can it be so “small”? 🙂 And there are only four sections, it’s just terrible... Some new laptops use the structure GPT on which you can create 128 partitions, and the size of each can be up to a billion terabytes (in theory, up to 9.4 ZB). Just a billion terabytes, pump up a few movies for relaxation :).

This conversion is only possible on an additional disk; if you select this action on the main disk, you will lose all information! Therefore, convert the disk from MBR to GPT I will be on a virtual disk, right-click on the disk and select Convert to GPT disk

wait a couple of minutes (depending on the size of the disk you are converting) and look at the result. To do this with the main disk, you need special programs, loading from a Live CD and complete indifference to the fact that all data from the disk will be lost...

Let's move on to point nine Creating a virtual hard disk:

You can use a virtual hard disk in different ways; it can be easily created and just as easily dismantled (disconnected), you can install a second operating system on it and carry out the necessary testing, and when you get tired, disconnect it and transfer it to another computer.

1. To create a virtual hard disk, go to disk management ( Win+R in the window that appears, enter diskmgmt.msc)

2. Choose Action =>

Please note that the menu has Attach a virtual hard disk, as you already understand, you can mount a virtual hard disk that was used previously, or on another computer.

3. Here you need to specify the size of the virtual disk to be created, and decide whether it will be dynamic or fixed

Dynamic- as the disk fills up, it can expand at the expense of the real disk on which it is located, but if you delete the data, it will not shrink back.

Fixed- you initially set a disk size that does not increase, you know that you have a certain amount of space and if it runs out, you need to delete the excess.

Choose Review and come up with a location for him, give him a name.

Enter Virtual hard disk size and press OK. You already understood that the created virtual disk will be located on the disk where you choose, from my example it will be on the D:\ drive, if I select a fixed size, then I will know that it takes up no more than the space specified for it, and if dynamic, then you will need to look so that it does not eat up all the free space on the D:\ drive.

After the virtual disk has been created (Disk 1 in our example), you need to Initialize it (click on the disk that appears with the right mouse button => select Initialize disk)

You will be prompted to decide whether to choose an MBR or GPT table (if you have a disk smaller than 2TB, it is better to choose MBR), click OK

Now the virtual disk will become like a regular disk, you can create volumes on it and perform the same actions as on a regular disk.

As I said at the beginning of the article, there are many utilities for working with a hard drive, but the standard Disk management allows you to carry out many actions. I could have written a bunch more theory, but I judge by myself, I’m not a fan of reading encyclopedias, everything should be brief, but I’ve already gone on too long... If you have questions, write comments! Good luck to you :)

The disk management utility built into Windows 7 provides users with much more advanced capabilities than its predecessors. Of course, compared to specialized programs, its functionality may seem small. However, the interface is built into Windows programs“Disk Management” is quite convenient and when working with it, you do not need any special knowledge. In general, the utility allows you to perform a wide variety of operations with computer hard drives (internal and external), as well as other memory devices.

One of the key features of the utility is the ability to create a new disk partition from an existing one. For example, after Windows reinstallation you forgot to change the necessary parameters in the BIOS and instead of the usual two drives “D” and “C”, you only have one left. Most users have no idea that this problem can be quickly fixed using built-in Windows tools.

How to get into the utility

There are several ways to open Disk Management. The simplest one is:

Launch the start menu.
Go to the "all programs" menu.
Open the "standard" folder.
Select the “Run” application from the list and launch it.
In the window that opens, enter “diskmgmt.msc” (without quotes).
After a few seconds, the program interface will appear in front of you.

If for some reason you are unable to open the Run utility, you can try using hotkeys. If you have a full-fledged keyboard, then press the Win buttons on it simultaneously (it shows a characteristic Windows icon, and it is located near the left Alt) and the R key. A familiar window will appear, by entering the command “diskmgmt.msc” (without quotes) the utility we need will open. If this does not work, then:

What is the program interface like?

The utility has a typical Windows interface and is distinguished by its simplicity. At the very top there is a toolbar:

File.
Action.
Reference.

Below you will notice a list of all the volumes you have. They take up the bulk of the application. Additional information about them will also be provided here. If your hard drive consists of several partitions or volumes, then it will also be here. All media connected via USB or CD-ROM will be displayed at the bottom of the program interface. You will find information about them (including the number of partitions) right there, similar to the actions with built-in hard ones.

Changing the drive letter

Volume compression

The next equally simple operation that can be performed in the Disk Management program is creating a new partition from an existing one. Remember that this requires sufficient free space on the main disk. Therefore, the first thing you will need to do is compress it.

Before it turns into a full-fledged disk, it is necessary to carry out a number of procedures, or in other words, “create a new volume.”

Creating a new volume

Once you have compressed the main disk and allocated sufficient space for the new volume, you can begin to create it directly:

Deleting a created partition

In a similar way to creating a volume, you can delete an unnecessary one, thereby combining several small volumes into one large one. To carry out this operation, you must:

Now you understand that using the Disk Management system utility, you can perform simple but very useful actions, such as creating and deleting volumes and partitions.

Some users use for various manipulations with disks connected to the computer. third party programs. Unfortunately, they do not always work correctly, which can cause serious damage, especially if the operation is performed on the system HDD of a PC. At the same time, Windows 7 has its own built-in utility to perform these tasks. In terms of functionality, it is not inferior in any way to the most advanced software from third-party developers, but at the same time, its use is much safer. Let's look at the main features of this tool.

Utility "Disk Management" allows you to perform various manipulations on physical and logical disks, works with hard drives, flash drives, CD/DVD drives, as well as virtual disk drives. With its help you can perform the following operations:

Split disk objects into partitions;
Change the size of partitions;
Change letter;
Create virtual drives;
Remove disks;
Perform formatting.

Launching the utility

Before moving directly to the description of the functionality, let's figure out how the studied system utility.

Click "Start" and go to "Control Panel".

Open "System and safety".

Go to "Administration".

In the list of utilities that opens, select the option "Computer Management".

You can also launch the desired tool by clicking on the element "Start", and then right-clicking ( RMB) by item "Computer" in the menu that appears. Next in the context list you need to select a position "Control".

A tool called "Computer Management". In the left area of its shell, click on the name "Disk Management", located in a vertical list.

The utility window that this article is devoted to will open.

utility "Disk Management" you can run much more in a fast way, but less intuitive. You need to enter the command in the window "Run".

Viewing information about disk drives

First of all, it is worth saying that with the help of the tool we are studying, you can view various information about all disk drives connected to the PC. Namely the following data:

Volume name;
File system;
Location;
State;
Capacity;
Free space in absolute terms and as a percentage of the total capacity;
Overheads;
Fault tolerance.

In particular, in the column "State" You can get information about the health of the disk device. It also displays information about which partition the OS is located in, a crash memory dump, a paging file, etc.

Changing the partition letter

Moving directly to the functions of the tool we are studying, first of all, let’s look at how you can use it to change the partition letter of a disk drive.

Click RMB by the name of the section that should be renamed. In the menu that opens, select "Change drive letter...".

The letter change window opens. Select the section name and click "Change…".

In the next window, click again on the element with the current letter of the selected section.

A drop-down list opens, which contains a list of all free letters that are not present in the names of other partitions or disks.

Once you have selected the option you want, click "OK".

Next, a dialog box will appear warning you that some programs that are bound to the partition letter being changed may no longer function. But if you are determined to change the name, then in this case click "Yes".

Then restart your computer. After re-enabling it, the section name will be changed to the selected letter.

Creating a virtual disk

Sometimes you need to create a virtual disk (VHD) within a specific physical drive or partition. The system tool we are studying allows you to do this without any problems.

In the control window, click on the menu item "Action". Select a position from the drop-down list "Create a virtual disk...".

The window for creating a virtual drive opens. First of all, here you need to indicate on which logical or physical disk it will be located, and in which directory. To do this, click the button "Review…".

A standard file browsing window opens. Navigate to the directory of any connected drive where you want to create a VHD. Required condition: the volume on which the placement will be made must not be compressed or encrypted. Next in the field "File name" Be sure to assign a name to the created object. After that, click on the element "Save".

Next, you return to the main window for creating a virtual drive. The path to the VHD file is already entered in the corresponding field. Now you need to specify its size. There are two options for specifying volume: "Dynamic Expansion" And "Fixed size". When you select the first option, the virtual disk will automatically expand as it fills with data up to the specified limit volume. When data is deleted, it will be compressed by the appropriate amount. To select this option, set the switch to the position "Dynamic Expansion", in field "Virtual Disk Size" indicate its capacity in the appropriate values (megabytes, gigabytes or terabytes) and click "OK".

In the second case, you can set a clearly indicated size. In this case, the assigned space will be reserved on the HDD regardless of whether it is full of data or not. You need to put the radio button in position "Fixed size" and indicate the capacity. After all the above settings are completed, click "OK".

Then the VHD creation procedure will begin, the dynamics of which can be monitored using the indicator at the bottom of the window "Disk Management".

After completing the specified procedure, the window interface will display new disk with status "Not initialized".

Initializing the disk

Creating a Volume

Now let's move on to the procedure for creating a volume using the same virtual media as an example.

Click on the block with the inscription "Not distributed" to the right of the disc name. In the list that opens, select "Create Simple Volume".

Starts "Create Volume Wizard". In its start window, click "Further".

In the next window you need to specify its size. If you do not plan to split the disk into several volumes, then leave the default value. If you still plan to split it, make it smaller by the required number of megabytes, then click "Further".

In the window that appears, you need to assign a letter to this section. This is done in almost the same way as we discussed earlier when changing the name. Select any available symbol from the drop-down list and click "Further".

Then the volume formatting window will open. We recommend formatting it unless you have a compelling reason not to. Set the switch to position "Format Volume". In field "Volume Label" you can specify the name of the section as it will be displayed in the computer window. After completing the necessary manipulations, press "Further".

In the last “Wizard” window, to complete volume creation, click "Ready".

The simple volume will be created.

Disconnecting VHD

In some situations, you may need to detach the virtual disk drive.

VHD Attachment

If you have previously detached the VHD, you may need to reattach it. Also, such a need sometimes arises after restarting the computer or immediately after creating a virtual drive, when it turns out to be unattached.

Removing virtual media

Sometimes it is necessary to completely remove virtual media in order to free up space on the physical HDD for other tasks.

Formatting disk media

Sometimes it is necessary to format a partition (completely erase the information located on it) or change the file system. This task is also performed by the utility we are studying.

Click RMB by the name of the partition that needs to be formatted. Select from the drop-down list "Format…".

A formatting window will open. If you want to change the file system type, click on the corresponding drop-down list.

A drop-down list will appear where you can select one of three file system options to choose from:
- FAT32;
- NTFS.

In the drop-down list below, you can select the cluster size if necessary, but in most cases it is enough to leave the value "Default".

Below, by checking the box, you can disable or enable quick formatting mode (enabled by default). At activated mode formatting is faster, but less deep. You can also enable compression of files and folders by checking the box. After all formatting settings have been specified, click "OK".

A dialog box will open warning you that the formatting procedure will destroy all data contained in the selected partition. To agree and proceed with the operation, click "OK".

After this, the formatting procedure for the selected partition will be completed.

Partitioning the disk

There is often a need to split a physical HDD into partitions. This is especially appropriate to do in order to divide the OS and data storage directories into different volumes. Thus, even if the system crashes, user data will be saved. You can perform partitioning using the system utility.

Merging sections

There is also the opposite situation, when you need to combine two or more sections of a storage medium into one volume. Let's see how this is done using the system drive management tool.

Before you begin the procedure, please note that all data on the attached partition will be deleted.

Click RMB by the name of the volume that you want to attach to another partition. From the context menu select "Delete volume...".

A warning window about data deletion will open. Click "Yes".

After this, the section will be deleted.

Go to the bottom of the window. Click on the remaining section RMB. IN context menu choose "Expand volume...".

The start window opens "Volume Expansion Wizard", where you need to click "Further".

In the window that opens, in the field "Choose size..." enter the same number that is displayed opposite the parameter "Maximum available space", and then press "Further".

In the final window "Masters" just click "Ready".

After this, the partition will be expanded at the expense of the previously deleted volume.

Convert to dynamic HDD

Default hard disks PCs are static, that is, the sizes of their partitions are strictly limited. But you can carry out the procedure of converting the media into a dynamic version. In this case, the partition sizes will automatically change as needed.

As you can see, the system utility "Disk Management" is a fairly powerful and multifunctional tool for performing various manipulations with information storage devices connected to the computer. It can do almost everything that similar third-party programs can do, but it guarantees more high level security. Therefore, before installing third-party software for disk operations, check whether the built-in software can handle the task. Windows tool 7.

This article talks about how to create, change or delete hard drive 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
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
Right-click on the desired section → 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 amount of 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 faces such a problem 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.

The principle of action is this: we must expand drive C at the expense of the adjacent logical partition. This could be drive D, E, and so on. In the same way, you can increase not only section C, but also others, if you have such a need. So, delete the adjacent disk, for example, D. Right-click on it and select the “Delete Volume” option. Click OK. Immediately after this this volume should appear in black. The message “Volume is not allocated” should appear on it. Now we can add the space we need to drive C. To do this, right-click on partition C and select “Extend volume”. Click "Next" and select the size you want to add.
You can use the maximum size as suggested by default, or select one of your own. Click "Next" and then "Finish". If no additional windows pop up, then the operation was successful. You have learned how to expand a disk using Windows 7. The main thing to remember is that the system partition can only be expanded if there is free space to the right of it. IN otherwise nothing will work out.

Possible difficulties.

What other difficulties could there be? Let's say we have five volumes. We want to configure them in such a way that part of the space is added to drive C, and the other to drive D. When deleting one of the partitions, the “Delete Volume” function may not be active, and the “Extend Volume” function may not be available on volume C.
The whole point is that the section style can be used MBR*. This is an outdated style. In this case, two adjacent volumes can be connected by a green frame. This means that you cannot create more than four volumes with the MBR partition style.

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 operating room Windows system 7 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) main boot record in PC - table in the first sector boot disk, which 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.

05.04.2020

Computer

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