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Disk management (Harddisks in particular) is something that we rarely think about. You set it up once during the initial installation of Windows and that’s the end of it. If you bought your computer off-the-shelf like most end users, it would already have been partitioned, formatted, and loaded with some choice operating system and softwares. But there are still occasions when some knowledge in disk management comes in handy.

For example if you buy a new harddisk and want to add that to your current system. Or perhaps you have created a primary partition on a portion of your drive and left the rest unallocated. Or maybe you just want to rework some of the partitions. There are of course numerous products out in the market that makes this task easier. The most obvious example that comes to mind is Partition Magic by Symantec Corp.

But why pay for a product license when the Disk Management utility that comes with Windows works perfectly fine. Granted that it does not have the extended features (such as resizing a partition without moving its original content) of specialised software like Partition Magic by Symantec Corp, but it still does the job well enough for the basic stuff.

Anyway, this is how you go about it. Access your Computer Management panel (CMP). To do so, either right click “My Computer” and select “Manage” from the pull down options, or find the Computer Management shortcut under “Control Panel > Administrative Tools”. In the CMP, expand the “Storage” branch and select “Disk Management”. The right window will change to display the physical disk drives that are currently installed on your computer and the partitions on those physical drives. Selecting and right clicking on of the partitions or drives will show you a list of options and functions that you can perform on it. Among other things, you can do the following:

• On a partitioned drive:
  1. Change the drive letter and path
  2. (Re)Format the drive
  3. Delete a partition
  4. Delete a logical drive
• On an unpartitioned drive:
  1. Create a new primary partition
  2. Create a logical drive (e.g. virtual drive inside a harddisk)
  3. Create extended partition on a logical drive

So next time you find yourself with a new harddisk that you would like to seperate into two partitions, here’s what you do:

1. Select to create a primary partition
2. Follow the instructions on screen, specifying a suitable size for the partition amd a preferred file format (either FAT32 or NTFS)
3. Allow some time for Windows to create the partition and format the drive
4. Select to create a logical drive on the left over space
5. Select to create an extended partition on the logical drive, specifying a suitable file size (max?) and preferred file format
6. Wait for Windows to create and format the extended partition
7. Close the CMP and go enjoy your new found space

So now you know how to do it yourself.