Part 1. Partition and Partition management: Note: For Partition management, please log on as an administrator to do the operations. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation during the operation, type the password or provide confirmation. 1. What is partition? A partition, sometimes also called a volume, is an area on a hard disk that can be formatted with a file system and identified with a letter of the alphabet. For example, drive C on most Windows computers is a partition. A hard disk needs to be partitioned and formatted before you can store data on it. Many computers are partitioned as a single partition that equals the size of the hard disk. Partitioning a hard disk into several smaller partitions is not necessarily required, but it can be useful for organizing data on your hard disk. Some users prefer to have separate partitions for the Windows operating system files, programs, and personal data. 2. What is primary partition? A primary partition used to start an operating system and functions a physically separate disk. When you create partitions on a basic disk using Disk Management, the first three volumes you create will be formatted as primary partitions. 3. What is extended partition? Extended partition is a type of partition on a basic disk that should be used when you want to create more than four volumes. Extended partitions can contain multiple logical drives that can be formatted and have drive letters assigned to them. 4. How to create a partition? You can create more partitions or volumes only when the hard disk contains unallocated space. An unallocated space is unformatted space that is not part of an existing partition or volume. To create unallocated space, you can shrink a volume, or use a third-party partitioning tool. You can perform the following steps to create and format a partition: I. Click the Start button, right-click on Computer , and then click Manage . In the Navigation pane, under Storage , click Disk Management . II. Right-click an unallocated region on your hard disk, and then click New Simple Volume . III. In the New Simple Volume Wizard , and click Next . IV. Type the size of the volume you want to create in megabytes (MB) or accept the maximum default size, and click Next . V. Accept the default drive letter or assign a different drive letter to identify the partition, and click Next . In the Format Partition dialog box, do one of the following: I. If you don't want to format the volume right now, choose Do not format this volume , and click Next . II. To format the volume with the default settings, click Next . (Or you can modify the settings.) III. Review your choices, and click Finish . 5. How to format a partition? Note: Formatting a volume will destroy any data on the partition. Be sure to make backups of any data you want to save before you begin. And you cannot format a disk or partition that is currently in use, including the partition that contains Windows. To do this, please follow the steps below: I. Open Disk Management . II. Right-click the volume that you want to format, and click Format . III. To format the volume with the default settings, in the Format dialog box, click OK , and click OK again. Quick format is a formatting option that creates a new file table but does not fully overwrite or erase the volume. A quick format is much faster than a normal format, which fully erases any existing data on the volume. 6. How to delete a partition? When you delete a hard disk partition or volume (the terms partition and volume are often used interchangeably), you create empty space that you can use to create new partitions. If your hard disk is currently set up as a single partition, then you cannot delete it. You also cannot delete the system partition, boot partition, or any partition that contains the virtual memory paging file, because Windows needs this information to start correctly. Note: All data on a partition will be lost when you delete it. Be sure to back up any files that you want to save to a different location before you continue. Please follow the steps below to do this: I. Open Disk Management . II. Right-click the volume, such as a partition or logical drive that you want to delete, and then click Delete Volume . III. Click Yes to delete the partition. 7. How to repartition? In Disk Management, you can shrink an existing partition or volume to create unallocated disk space, from which you can create a new partition or volume. (Often, the terms partition and volume are used interchangeably.) I. Open Disk Management . II. Right-click the volume you want to shrink, and click Shrink Volume . III. Follow the instructions on your screen. Notes: I. If you have multiple partitions on your hard disk, you can delete and create partitions from the resulting unallocated space. When you delete a partition, all data on the partition will be erased. II. For more information about shrinking volume, please refer to: Shrink a Basic Volume III. If you are facing long time delay in shrinking, it may be because of the disk is fragmented. For example, if you have a 60GB drive and you already have 45GB of data in that. These data upon daily usage after weeks, it would have evenly spread across the whole 60GB space. Now if you try to shrink that drive to 50GB and try to get 10GB unallocated space, then disk management has to find empty space between files in the 50GB space and relocate the files from the 10GB space. This is what is usually done in defragmentation and I would suggest doing that on regular basis as it improves file reading speed. 8. How to manage Drive Letter? You can change, add, or remove a drive letter by using Computer Management with the following steps: I. Open Disk Management . II. Right-click the partition or drive that you want to change, and click Change Drive Letter and Paths . III. You will have the following choices: To assign a drive letter if one has not already been assigned, click Add , click the letter that you want to use, and click OK . To change a drive letter, click Change , click Assign the following drive letter , click the letter that you want to use, and click OK . To remove a drive letter, click Remove , and click Yes to confirm that you want to remove it. Notes: I. Many MS DOS and Windows programs make references to specific drive letters. If you change a drive letter, some programs that you have installed on your hard disk might not work correctly. II. You cannot change a drive letter if the drive is either a system partition or a boot partition. If you get an error, the partition or drive you are trying to change might be in use. Close any program or window that is using the partition or drive and try again. 9. How to convert a partition type to NTFS? The NTFS file system provides better performance and security for data on hard disks and partitions or volumes than the FAT file system used in some earlier version of Windows. If you have a partition that uses the earlier FAT16 or FAT32 file system, you can convert it to NTFS by using the convert command. Converting to NTFS does not affect the data on the partition. Please note: I. After you convert a partition to NTFS, you cannot convert it back. If you want to use the FAT file system on the partition again, you'll need to reformat the partition, and this will erase all data on it. II. Some earlier versions of Windows cannot read data on local NTFS partitions. If you need to use an earlier version of Windows to access a partition on the computer, do not convert it. III. Although the chance of corruption or data loss during a conversion is minimal, you should back up all data on the partition before you begin. You can perform the following steps: I. Close any open programs running on the partition or logical drive to be converted. II. Click Start , click All Programs , click Accessories , right-click Command Prompt , and then click Run as administrator . You can also click Start , type cmd , right –click on the cmd.exe and click Run as administrator . III. In the Command Prompt window, type convert drive_letter : /fs:ntfs , where drive_letter is the letter of the drive you want to convert, and press ENTER. For example, convert D: /fs:ntfs would convert drive D to the NTFS format. Note: If the partition you are converting contains system files—which would be the case if you are converting your entire hard disk—you will need to restart your computer for the conversion to take place. If your disk is almost full, the conversion process might not succeed. If you receive an error, try deleting unnecessary files, or back up files to another location, to free up disk space.