how to partition a hard drive mac for windows

Partition A Hard Drive For Windows Full Amount Of
Partition A Hard Drive For Windows Software For The

Since this is a basic tutorial, the options of mounting to an empty NTFS folder or formatting to formats other than NTFS will not be explained.

For example, if you did not want to keep all of your media and documents on Drive (C:), you can create a hard drive partition that will be a new volume separate from (C:).

Partition A Hard Drive For Windows Software For The

This pertains only to Windows 7 and Vista, as other versions of Windows do not have a built-in utility for partitioning and require third party software for the task.

This demonstration is performed on Windows 7, but the instructions are the same for Vista.

The easiest way is to go to the start menu search box and type disk management.

At the top of the resulting list, you should see the Control Panel option clearly listed and highlighted.

Partition a hard drive From here, press enter or click on Create and format hard disk partitions.

This is normal for Windows and you never want to change these.

The first is a recovery partition that is needed to recover the operating system if it becomes inaccessible.

The second is called System Reserved and the third will be displayed as drive (C:).

Essentially, these comprise the operating system except for the third which contains essential system files and free space.

Click Shrink Volume and this will open a small pop-up that indicates that the utility is querying the volume for available shrink space.

You can begin doing this when the following window appears: Specify the size for the new partition.

Partition A Hard Drive For Windows Full Amount Of

In the highlighted blue field, you will see the full amount of space available to shrink next to Enter the amount of space to shrink in MB.

Since you will be entering the size of the new partition (shrink) in MB, understand that 1GB is 1,024MB.

If you want to create a new partition of 10GB, for example, you would enter 10,240.

If you want to create a larger partition, you will need a calculator for odd sizes like 17GB or 183GB.

After entering the desired size for the partition, click Shrink and shortly a new unallocated partition will be created.

Right click on the new partition and select New Simple Volume from the top of the context menu.

This opens the New Simple Volume Wizard, which allows you to set up the formatting and Drive path with an assigned letter.

When the Wizard opens, click Next and the consecutive window will ask you to specify the size of the drive again.

As long as you want it to be the size you originally specified, there is no reason to change the size, so click Next.

How To Partition A Hard Drive Mac For Windows