As we all know newly bought external hard drives only have one partition with the whole size. If you don’t want to put all kinds of data in this partition, you need to repartition it into several partitions. Thus, this tutorial can help you partition external hard drive for free in Windows easily.
Here is an example:
Recently I added an external hard drive to my computer to expand the storage volume. But when I connected it to my computer, it turned out there was only one primary partition. Of course, I need more than one partition. So, is it possible to partition external hard drive in Windows freely and effectively?
This article will provide you a step-by-step tutorial of how to free partition external hard drive in Windows 10/8/7/Vista/XP without data loss. Following the guide, you can easily complete external hard drive partitioning.
Ways to Free Partition External Hard Drive in Windows
Solution 1. Free Partition External Hard Drive with a Partition Manager
MiniTool Partition Wizard, a free partition program, is professional in partition management for Windows operation system with thousands of users.
Managing hard drive partitions is one of its most important features. By using it, you can perform many operations on hard drive, such as creating partition, extending partition or resizing partition. Above all, it will not cause any data loss.
Step One – Connect External Hard Drive to Computer
First of all, you need to connect the external hard drive to computer. Then, launch MiniTool Partition Wizard and enter the main interface. You can see all the hard drives that can be read by computer are listed.
Step Two – Select External Hard Drive to Be Partitioned
Locate and click on the external hard drive. If the drive has only one single partition without unallocated space for creating new partitions, you can use Resize function to mount some unallocated space.
Step Three – Create Partition on External Hard Drive
Right click the unallocated space and choose Create option. You can see the partition parameters and then operate them.
Specify the partition size and location: Drag the blue bar directly to set the partition size as well as the unallocated space after the new partition.
Partition Type: For MBR drive, you can create Primary or Logical partition. For GPT drive, up to 128 primary partitions can be created.
Drive Letter: Assign a drive letter for the partition so that you can visit it.
File System: Select a file system for new partition. NTFS, FAT32 and exFAT are available.
Step Four – Free Partition External Hard Drive
In the end, click Apply button to perform the process to partition external hard drive free in Windows.
Likewise, you can follow this process to split the external or internal hard drive into multiple partitions to store different types of data conveniently.
Solution 2. Partition External Hard Drive with Disk Management for Free
As a built-in tool in Windows OS, Disk Management is usually used to manage disks and partitions for Windows users. Here, you can partition an external hard drive within a few steps.
① Firstly, connect external hard drive to computer as well.
② Press Windows + R. Type diskmgmt.msc and press Enter to launch Disk Management.
③ Select the external hard drive and right-click the unallocated space or free space. Then, click New Simple Volume.
④ Enter the volume size (between the maximum and minimum size). Click Next.
⑤ Assign a drive letter to it and click Next. After that, you need to format this new partition before using it. Choose a file system and set a volume label as well. Then, tick Perform a quick format and click Finish to end the process.
Note: But there is one limitation – if you create a FAT32 partition, it is no larger than 32GB.
Regular partition management is necessary to computer so that it can always work with the best performance. After reading this tutorial, we think many users have mastered how to partition external hard drive with not only a partition magic and Disk Management. You can also share it with more friends if it is helpful for you.