Disk Management
Create a partition
Initialize Disks
Dynamic Disks
Troubleshooting
Before you start, I recommended you back up your data to a safe place. Next, you need to access Computer Management tool first. So, press Win+X simultaneously to bring up the Power Tasks Menu and from the options displayed choose Computer Management’.
This will display Computer Management. Computer Management section is a collection of Windows administrative tools that you can use to perform your computer-management tasks. The option also appears in the Administrative Tools folder in the Control Panel.
In Computer Management, you will find Storage option. Under it you will notice ‘Disk Management’. Click on it. Alternatively, you may simply type “partition’ in Settings search and hit Enter to open the Disk Management Tool.
Once you have clicked it open all the disks with their volume will be displayed in the small window.
Select a disk for creating a new one. Right-click on it. You will see various options like:
Change Drive Letter and Paths
Format
Extend Volume
Shrink Volume
Add Mirror
Delete Volume
(Khanse, 2012)
Let us as an example say that you want to create a new volume or partition. So in order to do this, first select ‘Shrink Volume’.
Then, wait for sometime while Windows check the amount of space available for Shrink. Enter the amount of space to shrink in MB and hit ‘Shrink’. Once you hit the button, you will observe some free space created. Checkout the screen-shot below.
Now, right-click on the free-space created and choose the first option ‘New Simple Volume’.
Then, select the amount of space you would like to allocate to the free space and click ‘Next’.
Now, assign a drive letter to your partition and move to the next step by clicking ‘Next’.
If you would like to store data on this partition you will have to partition it first. So, format the patition with NTFS.
After the formatting process as been completed successfully you can see a new partition created in your Windows Explorer.
Using this in-built Disk Management Tool in Windows 7 and Windows 8, you can similarly create a partition, extend a partition, shrink a partition and do more very easily.
(Khanse, 2012)
Open Computer Management (Local).
In the console tree, click Computer Management (Local), click Storage, and then click Disk Management.
Right-click the disk you want to initialize, and then click Initialize Disk.
In the Initialize Disk dialog box, select the disk(s) to initialize.
On x86-based computers running Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 (SP1), Itanium-based computers, or x64-based computers, you can select whether to use the master boot record (MBR) or GUID partition table (GPT) partition style.
The disk is initialized as a basic disk.
(www.microsoft.com, N.D.)
Create a Simple Volume or Spanned Volume
In the Disk Management window, do one of the following:
To create a simple volume, right-click unallocated space on the dynamic disk where you want to create the simple volume, and then click New Volume.
-or-
To create a spanned volume, right-click unallocated space on the dynamic disk where you want to create the spanned volume, and then click New Volume.
On the Welcome to the New Volume Wizard page, click Next.
On the Select Volume Type page, click either Simple volume or Spanned volume, and then click Next.
On the Select Disks page, do one of the following:
If you are creating a simple volume, verify that the disk that you want to create a simple volume on is listed in the Selected dynamic disks box.
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If you are creating a spanned volume, click to select the disks that you want under All available dynamic disks, and then click Add.
Verify that the disks that you want to create a spanned volume on are listed in the Selected dynamic disks box.
In the Size box, specify the size (in MB) that you want for the volume, and then click Next.
On the Assign Drive Letter or Path page, enter a drive letter or drive path, and then click Next.
On the Format Volume page, specify the formatting options that you want, and then click Next.
On the Completing the New Volume Wizard page, make sure that the options that you selected are correct, and then click Finish.
(www.microsoft.com, N.A.)
When a disk or volume fails, Disk Management displays status descriptions of disks and volumes in the Disk Management window. These descriptions, which are shown in the following list, inform you of the current status of the disk or volume.
Online: This is the normal disk status when the disk is accessible and functioning correctly.
Healthy: This is the normal volume status when the volume is accessible and functioning correctly.
Online (Errors) (displayed with dynamic disks only): I/O errors may have been detected on the dynamic disk.
To resolve this issue, right-click the disk, and then click Reactivate Disk to return the disk to Online status.
Offline or Missing (displayed with dynamic disks only): The disk may be inaccessible. This may occur if the disk is corrupted or made temporarily unavailable.
To resolve this issue, repair any disk, controller, or connection problems, verify that the physical disk is turned on and correctly attached to the computer, right-click the disk, and then click Reactivate Disk to return the disk to Online status.
For a complete list of disk and volume status descriptions, see Disk Management Help. (In the Disk Management snap-in, click the Action menu, and then click Help.)