Right click on the drive you want to format and click on the format item and press OK. So ensure that you have to taken the backups of your database at any time you think of formatting your drive. Remember that formatting deletes everything on the drive. You have to now repeat the same partitioning process on the 'unallocated space' until your entire drive is allocated.Ħ. Now it is the time to format your new partition and once formatted, it will appear as 'Healthy' and any left over space will continued to be shown as 'Unallocated'. Each partition when formatted will appear as its own logical disk (C:, D:, E: and so on).ĥ. This is done to have a space for additional partitions on the same hard disk. Normally we allocate the entire space to a single partition, but if you like you can allocate less than the maximum space. Now you will be asked about the space to be allocated to the new partition which you will be creating. There is no need to click on "Extended Partition" unless you want to make more than 4 partitions which is usually not done. You will be asked to select "Primary" or "Extended" partition. Click on this to setup the new partition. You will find that the earlier option 'Delete Partition' has now changed to 'New Partition'. The word 'healthy' written under the drive letter will change to 'Unallocated'.Ĥ. Make a note that the next step has to be performed very carefully because you are going to delete everything from the drive.ģ. , Format., Delete Partition., Properties and Help. Right click on the Drive letter in the lower pane, and you will get a dropdown menu with items like Open, Explpore, Mark Partition as Active, Change Drive Letter and Paths. You have to first remove the existing partition. Below you will find the graphical representation of the physical disk drives with the colour legends royal blue for your logical drives and some other colours for primary partition and extended partition.Ģ. Now you will find a new small window, where all the volumes of your system drives with the capital letters arranged in alphabetical order will appear. On the left side panel of this dialogue box, under the heading 'Storage', click on the 'Disk Management'. This will take you to Computer Management dialogue box. Right click on your 'My Computer' icon on your desk top and then click on Manage.
How to partition external drive windows#
However, in case you are interested to make changes in what you have, then there are tools available in the Windows OS which you must make use of. If this is the case, you need not to do anything now as it is already done for you. Mostly, these are already configured as a single unlabelled partition that uses FAT32 file system. Once you plug in the external hard disk drive, the Windows OS immediately tracks it and it there on your system ready to use with an additional letter for this drive.
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Whenever we buy an external hard disk drive, it is usually a read to use and plug n play disk drive. Repeat the same process and get your external hard disk partitioned as per your requirements.Follow the rest of instructions and you will find one partition created and some Unallocated space.Enter the size or capacity in MB for a partition.Right click on this Unallocated space and create 'new simple volume'.Now the Unallocated disk space will be shown.
![how to partition external drive how to partition external drive](https://www.partitionwizard.com/images/uploads/articles/2019/06/partition-external-hard-drive-free/partition-external-hard-drive-free-4.png)