Partition a Drive Without Losing Data

Wishes to partition your hard drives? But, partitioning a drive in windows will needed us to format the drive. In this tutorial, I will teach you how to partition a drive without need to backup your data and format your drives. You might wonder if this trick need you  to download some softwares or tools. Do not worry because this trick is 100% download-free. We just gonna use a built in windows tool.

This trick had been tested on Windows7 and Vista. I'm not sure that this trick will work onwindows XP. This trick allows you to partition any drive including system drives.

Okay, first of all open Run dialog box ( Start > Run ). Type in "diskmgmt.msc" without the quotes in the text box. Wait until Disk Management window pop up. It may take a few seconds to load. After it’s fully loaded, go to Storage > Disk management at the left sidebar. Now you could see a list of storage devices that are currently connected to your computer. Now choose the drive that you want to partition. Right Click on it and select "Shrink Volume" option from menu. 


The system will search for available space in your selected disk volume. A window will pop up asking you to wait while it loads. This will not take much longer than few seconds. Next the Shrink dialog box will pop-up. This is where you’ll have to specify the volume for next partition. Look at the total size of available shrink space. Below it, you’ll have to enter the space to shrink.


To make sure that you not losing any data, shrink size is not below the total size of space taken by files in that drive. You can check the used space by right clicking on the drive you are going to partition and choose "Properties" from the menu.


After done shrinking your drive. You can see an unallocated space in your shrunk drive. But you’ll still not able to access this new drive. You’ll have to format it and specify the drive letter to access them. Right click on unallocated drive and choose "New Simple Volume" option.


New Simple Volume Wizard Window will pop up. Click on "Next" button to continue. In next window, you’ll have to specify the size for your new volume. Set full size if you are satisfied with two partitions or you can divide it again for new partition. Next, choose any drive letter from the available list and click on "Next" button. In next window, leave everything as default but make sure it's similar to the screen below ( If you want to change the volume label, feel free to do it ).


Click on Finish window to complete the wizard. Go to My Computer and you can see your new drive. That is all. Hope this tutorial will help you. Enjoy.