How to partition Windows 8 hard drives. Creating a local drive D in Windows

A hard disk drive (hard drive) and logical drives, which are visible in the “My Computer” tab, should be distinguished. These are different concepts. To understand what's what, let's give a little explanation. A personal computer usually has one hard disk drive installed. If we look into the “My Computer” folder, we will see several disks there, each of which has its own letter designation. This is possible for a simple reason: the physical drive is divided into logical drives. More correctly, they should be called sections. And such division is logical marking.

Why is the disk divided into partitions?

Before you learn how to partition a hard drive in the Windows 8 operating system (OS), let's understand why you need to partition your hard drive.

A hard drive, hard magnetic drive or HDD, in computer slang “hard drive” is an electronic device for storing information with random access to data. Its operation is based on the principle of recording on magnetic disks. HDD is the main drive for storing data in almost all personal computers and laptops.

Hard disk, hard magnetic drive or HDD, “hard drive” - an electronic device for storing information with random access to data

The most common reasons:

Experts recommend that users store different types of data separately. For example, on the first logical drive (usually designated by the English letter “C”), place the boot files of the operating system and programs. The second section contains documents. In the third place various kinds of archives, or photographs, or videos. You can create as many partitions of different sizes as you like.
It happens that a user would like to have several operating systems on his personal computer. This is possible, but you must install each operating system on its own separate partition. In this case, you will also have to perform logical markup.
Some laptop manufacturers divide the hard drive into two sections. One usually has the operating system installed, the second is hidden from the user. It is not visible in the My Computer folder and is small in size. This section contains a copy of the OS. If a failure occurs and the system cannot be started, then when you press a certain key combination, Windows is restored. Which keys to press are usually indicated in the technical documentation for the laptop.
When installing Windows 8 on a new computer, the operating system itself creates an additional partition where the OS boot loader is placed. This partition is approximately 100 megabytes in size. This provides additional protection against damage to Windows 8 by malware, viruses, and users.
Some operating systems put forward certain requirements for logical disks, for example, Linux OS. In this case, a logical partition of the hard drive is also necessary.

How to markup?

You can partition the disk using special programs or standard tools of the Windows 8 operating system. Let's consider the second method in detail, and the capabilities of third-party software are outlined in another article on the site; to find it, use the search at the top of the page.

On a note. Sometimes the system does not allow logical partitioning of a hard disk drive. To successfully partition a physical drive, you must remove protection, which may be installed by default. To do this you should:

Go to the “Control Panel”;

Select “System and Security”;

Then click on “System”;

Go to the “System Protection” tab;

Go to “Configure” and “Disable protection”.

After successful marking, do not forget to enable protection.

Step-by-step instruction:

Launch the Disk Management utility.

There are several ways to access the Disk Management utility in Windows 8. The simplest of them is: hover the mouse over the “My Computer” icon and right-click, select “Manage”. On the left side of the window, click on “Disk Management”.

Second method: press the key combination “Win+R” and in the window that opens, type the command diskmgmt.msc and click OK.

2.In the right part of the Disk Management window, right-click on the disk in which you want to create a new partition and select Shrink Volume. In a new window you can find out how much space you can allocate to the new partition.

3.In the “Size of compressed space” field, enter the number of megabytes allocated for the new partition; if you want to take all the free space, then click on the “Compress” button. The compression process may take several minutes.

4.Then the unallocated space on your hard drive will appear in the panel. Right-click on it and select “Create simple volume”. A special wizard assistant will launch.

5.The launched wizard will help you complete the process of creating a new partition. The custom layout options are suitable for most users, so follow the assistant's instructions and click Next.

6.After the last step, you will have 2 partitions on the selected disk. The latter can be divided into two more. As a result, the logical disk will already have 3 partitions. Each of them will have its own letter designation and will be visible in the “My Computer” folder.

Video: how to partition a hard drive in Windows 8

By following step-by-step instructions, you can easily create several partitions on your hard drive. Performing a logical layout of the hard drive will allow you to create a personal data structure that will ensure quick search and storage of the necessary information.

When developing Windows 8, Microsoft did a lot of work on the standard format for storing information on disks. This operating system uses a new data storage standard called GUID PT or GPT for short. Where BIOS uses Master Boot Record, UEFI uses GPT.

Unlike MBR, which uses firmware binary code to identify and boot the active partition, GPT uses advanced UEFI capabilities to accomplish this. GPT uses a new LBA block addressing system instead of the legacy MBR addressing used in Windows 7. Its table of contents contains the address of the space at the beginning of the partition table.

Features of GPT

After purchasing a new system unit or laptop with Windows 8.1 pre-installed, you become the owner of new features provided by an updated BIOS with a beautiful graphical interface and many new technologies, one of which is the new partition table - GPT. It replaces MBR, which has been used for more than 15 years, which has a number of disadvantages that limit the capabilities of the equipment.

MBR cannot work normally with hard drives larger than 2 TB.

Having purchased a hard drive with a huge amount of memory (more than 2 TB), the user will be faced with the fact that it is not easy to split such a disk into volumes. Partitioning a HDD with a capacity of more than 2 TB in Windows 7 is not difficult, but an operating system that uses MBR will completely refuse to create partitions whose address space exceeds this mark. That is, there will be more than 760 GB of unallocated, unused space on the drive, for which you paid a considerable amount. This happens due to an insufficient number of addresses when using the master boot record.

When purchasing a 3 TB hard drive, immediately convert it to GPT before use, without having time to divide it into volumes.

Inability to create more than 4 primary volumes.

If such a need arises, the fourth disk will have to be created expanded, containing several partitions.

Disks with MBR are subject to virus attacks.

Nowadays, there are a lot of malicious applications that allow you to modify the master boot record, which was widespread in Windows XP.

Due to the new concept of the partition format in Windows 8, naturally, the methods for partitioning a disk have changed.

We share a GPT disk in Windows 8 using built-in tools

Having a HDD with Windows 8 and GPT partitions on it, the task of dividing such a hard drive into volumes is easily solved for any user. For example, there is no limit on the number of primary volumes, which you will see when you try to partition a HDD under Windows 7.

To determine the format of your hard drive, call the “Disk Management” utility and go to “Properties” of the section of interest. The “Section Style” line provides the required information.

In order to partition a hard drive in a running Windows 8, you need to launch Disk Management. Right-click in the left corner located at the bottom of the screen and call the required system utility.

We write the phrase “Disk Management” in the Windows search bar and launch the application by selecting it in the search results. We use the command “diskmgmt.msc” entered into the run window (called using the combination “Win + R”).

The Disk Management service will start, allowing you to partition your hard drive.

The first disk, a few hundred megabytes in size, will always be hidden and is used to record the bootloader and some system data.

We select the logical disk that we want to split into two or more, and call its context menu.
In the drop-down window that appears with a list of actions, select the last option called “Compress volume...”. In this case, we need to split drive C: into two volumes.

In the new dialog box, enter the desired size of the first volume that will be formed after partitioning the selected disk, and click “Compress”.

In order to partition a disk, it is necessary that there is a sufficient amount of free space on it, which will be used to form a new partition.

When you enter the desired size manually or using the suggested slider in the “Size of space to be compressed” field, the bottom line will display the size of the current disk, which it will be after compression.

Next, call up the context menu of the area called “Undefined” and select “Create a simple volume...” from the proposed options.

Enter the desired size of the new disk and click on the “Next” button. If you want to split the unallocated area into several volumes, enter the size of the first and click “Next”.

Select a free letter label for the section and click “Next” again.

Specify the parameters as in the screenshot.

Be sure to specify NTFS as the file system (FAT32 does not support files larger than 4 GB). If you are going to store a huge number of small files, it is better to choose a cluster size smaller than the standard one (4096) in order to save space, and to store large documents (disk images, movies), it is better to specify a larger cluster size than the standard one. Here it is recommended to select full formatting, during which Windows will check its surface for the presence of inoperative clusters (this is important after long-term use of the HDD, purchasing a new or used hard drive) in order to make sure there are no defective sectors.

Now we will analyze the solution to one of the common problems of the user after purchasing a new laptop: the system has only one hard drive on which the operating system is installed, and the user needs to create another partition without losing data. This article describes a method for dividing a partition using Windows, i.e. how to partition a disk without using additional special software. The instructions are suitable for both classic hard drives and SSDs on a desktop PC or laptop. You can safely divide drive C into 2 disks (partitions) without the risk of data loss, formatting or reinstalling the OS.

How to split drive C: into 2 partitions in Windows 10/8.1/7

Disabling system protection

Launch Explorer:

We called the window System. Click on the link System protection :

A window opens Properties of the system on the tab System protection. Select the system disk with the left mouse button and press the button Tune :

Set the selector to position Disable and press OK:

Click Yes to confirm your intentions to disable protection on this disk:

Dividing the disk into 2 parts

We opened the window Computer management. We see two partitions: boot without a letter and system under a letter C:.

Click right click on the system disk (the largest) and select the item Shrink Volume :

In the next window we see a customizable parameter. In fact, this will be the size of the free space after the partition C:, which you can use for other sections. And the meaning Overall size after compression- this is the size to which you want to reduce the existing system disk C:

We recommend setting aside at least 80 GB for the system partition. Don't overdo it with compression. If you shrink the system disk to 30-50 GB, then there is a high probability that it will eventually run out of free space and you will have to increase its volume.

So ask Size of compressible space(to create new sections) with an eye to Overall size after compression(drive C) and press Compress:
(In our case, we free up approximately 239 Gigabytes and leave 80 Gigabytes for the C: drive)

After the compression procedure is completed, you will see two partitions on the map and unallocated space after them. The system partition no longer occupies all of the hard disk space, but only part of it. In our case - 80 GB:

Now we need to create additional partitions (or one partition) using the unallocated space. Click right click on the unallocated space to the right of the system partition and select in the context menu Create a simple volume... :

The Create Simple Volume Wizard starts. Click Further :

At the stage Specifying the volume size we have several options:

leave the value unchanged - in this case we will create one partition that will occupy all the available free space;
decrease the value - in this case we will have free space to create other partitions.

In our example, we want to create one partition that will take up all the remaining space on the hard drive. Therefore, just click Further :

Select a letter (it can be changed in the future) and press Further :

Let's ask volume label for a non-system partition, check the box quick formatting and press Further :

Click Ready to start creating a partition and formatting it:

After a few seconds we see a new section on the map:

Entering the area This computer, we also see that we now have two disks: C: And E:

... put the selector in position Enable system protection and press the button OK.

Good afternoon or pleasant evening, dear friends, readers, visitors, blog guests!!! In this article we will consider the question of how to divide a hard drive (hard drive) into two or more partitions ( local disks), using standard Windows 7/8/8.1 tools ( correctly and without data loss). The method is similar for all Windows.

The first thing we need to do - This is disk defragmentation so that system files are not damaged.

To do this, open “My Computer”, right-click on the C drive, in the window that opens, select “Properties”, go to the “Services” section, in Windows 8/8.1 select the following...

In Windows 7, you need to select the “Disk Defragmentation” section, click the “Defragmentation” button, in the window that opens, select drive C and click the “Disk Defragmentation” button.

The second thing we need to do — disable the paging file on this disk. To do this, click “Start” > “Computer” > “Properties” > “Advanced Settings”.

In the “Performance” section, click the “Options” button, the “Advanced” tab, then click the “Change” button.

Uncheck the box “Automatically select the size of the paging file”, select “Without paging file” and click the “Set” button, “OK”.

Third thing to do - close programs in startup, first of all close the antivirus so that it ( more precisely its sub-programs), did not interfere with disk partitioning.

In the window that opens, go down to the very bottom and select the “Windows Update” tab, in the “General” tab > “Startup type”, select “Disabled” > “Run” > “Stop” > “Apply” > “OK”.

Well, I think it’s time to start dividing the hard drive into partitions:

To enter “Disk Management” and split the disk into partitions, use Win + R and enter the following command in the search bar, diskmgmt.msc ( works on Windows 7/8/8.1). Read on to find out what commands you can run from the Run menu.

In the window that appears, you need to right-click on drive C and select “Shrink Volume” to determine the free space on the disk, then click “Shrink.”

After everything we have done, another partition will open to the right of drive C, which will be given the name (Not distributed).

In order to create and define our undistributed partition in the system, you need to right-click on this partition and select “Create a simple volume”.

The “Create a Simple Volume Wizard” window will open, click “Next”. In the next window you must specify the partition size, within the minimum and maximum values.

After you have chosen the desired partition size, you need to select a drive letter, click “Next”, in the next window we leave everything as default, ( if you want you can change the name of the disc).

Removing a hard drive partition:

If for some specific reason you want to delete this section, doing so is just as easy as creating it.

Again, go to “Disk Management”, select the partition we need, right-click and select “Delete Volume”.

Then right-click on drive C, here select “Extend volume”, in the disk selection window click “Next”, “Finish”.

Small addition:

After you have created a partition, or deleted it, do not forget to include the swap file, programs that you had in startup, and antivirus.

In this standard Windows way, you can divide your hard drive into several partitions. I hope that the article was useful and interesting to you. Subscribe to blog updates, bye everyone!!!

Sincerely,