Creating a partition on a hard disk without formatting

Creating a partition on a hard disk without formatting

Often, the hard disks on our computers have only one partition, which means that our data and the operating system files are stored on the same partition. In the event of a system crash, when the only option is to reinstall the operating system, we end up losing our data. Hence, to avoid this data loss, we will have a look at how to create a separate partition to store data safely.

It is so convenient to store what we frequently use on our computer hard disk. Right from important documents, to other recreational things like songs, movies and photos, everything is ready to use at the distance of a few clicks. But what happens when your operating system goes haywire and the only option is to reinstall it. Now, if your valuable data happens to be on the same drive or partition as your operating system, it is invariably lost if you need to reinstall your operating system. This is because when you reinstall your OS, you have to format the drive on which it is to be installed. Formatting means deleting all data on the drive and preparing it for a fresh installation.

So how to prevent your valuable data from being lost if you have to reinstall your operating system, while keeping your data on the computer itself? The solution to this is to keep your operating system data on one partition and your data on another partition. But what if you have only one partition and your operating system is already installed? We will see how you can create a new partition on your hard disk on which your operating system is already installed.
The following instructions are specifically for Microsoft Windows 7, though other versions of Windows will have similar procedures.

What we need to do first is to shrink our existing partition to a smaller size, so a new partition can be created. You can do so by following these steps -


Go to Computer

Click on Control Panel in the top right section

Go to the System and Security section

Click on Administrative Tools

Double click on Computer Management

In the list on the left side, select Disk Management

In Disk Management, all the information about your drives is given. Now, shrink the primary partition, right click on the partition as shown in the picture above and click on Shrink Volume. The system will check how much the size of the drive can be reduced, and it will ask you to specify the size in Megabytes. After you specify the sizes, click on Shrink.

After you shrink a partition, there will be unallocated space on your hard disk, which you can use to create a new partition. To create a new partition, right click on the unallocated space and select New Simple Volume. Make sure you specify that you do not want to format the drive in the dialogue boxes that follow while you create a new volume. After specifying the size and the drive name, the system will create a new partition on your hard disk.

After creation, before using a new partition, the system asks you to format the new volume. After formatting, your new volume is ready to be used, and your data can be safely stored on a separate partition without worrying about data loss in the event of a system crash.