Surely you’ve heard of partitioning computers before a full system format to avoid losing saved data in Windows 10.
The so-called hard disk partitions are divisions that are made to the same hard drive, taking into account that they can have different functions, files and even different operating systems. We will show you how to do it for your Windows 10 computer.
What is the maximum number of partitions that can be made on a computer?
When we talk about partitioning the hard drive, we talk about dividing the computer storage into several parts, where we can add an operating system or we can make several partitions to add important files in them.
When we partition the hard drive, we have to keep in mind that the maximum amount of partitions we will make will vary according to the type of partition, we can only make 23 partitions in a logical partition that is inside an extended partition. Here we show you the amount according to the type of partition:
- For the primary partitions, you can only make 4 partitions of this type to your hard disk, since these are the ones that the computer reads at the moment of turning on. These are usually used to install the operating systems of your choice.
- In the hard disk partitions, the extended or secondary partitions were created to have more partitions than the primary ones, but you can only have an extended partition if you already have 3 primary ones. In these, you can only have logical partitions.
- The so-called logical partitions can occupy all or part of the storage of the extended partitions. There can be as many as 23 partitions in an Extended partition for Windows computers.
Depending on the disk storage
Every time we partition our hard disk, these partitions will be affecting the amount of space that this disk has, reducing it every time you partition the hard disk.
It is at this point where the partition tables that hard disks use to partition themselves make their appearance. The computer comes with one of these tables for the aforementioned partition structures, plus it comes with a system for booting the computer.
With the advent of the new GPT partition table format. The number of partitions increases thanks also to the amount of space on the hard drives of the new computers, with the maximum number being 128 partitions on a single hard drive.
How to make one or more partitions on your PC hard drive without formatting it?
The first thing we have to do before starting to make a partition, is to make sure that our hard disk is not damaged, this way, we will not have any inconvenience when making the partition. To start with this, you will have to follow the following steps:
From the equipment administration
- We will have to go to start to look for in the menu ‘computer administrator’ and to open it so that it showed the menu to us and to look for the administration of disks that is in the options of the left.
- Already inside this option, before making the partition we will see the available partitions that are: one of the system, another one to recover and to reinstall the OS, and the other one for the storage, the C drive.
- Opening the menu with the right click we will choose the option Reduce volume. Then you will have to set the space you want to leave free.
- With this free space, you will make the partitions that you want, opening the options with right click and selecting ‘New simple volume’ to activate the creation of the new partition.
- After choosing the size of the partition you will have to add a letter so that you can store information. If this is what you want. We will give that no, to the option to format partition not to format it and to continue giving it in finalize.
How to allocate the GB volume for a new partitioned disk?
When you have partitioned the hard disk, you can assign more capacity to one of your partitions if they run out of space and require more storage. To do this you will need to do this:
- Enter the browser to go to the Computer Manager and go to the Disk Management option and select Storage.
- You will need to create an unallocated disk space. For this, you will right click on Reduce Volume to generate a new unallocated partition. Here, the partition we will assign the amount of GB that we want to use, knowing that 1000 megs are 1 Giga.
- Then we will have to click to open the option and you will see that you have the option to Extend volume, you will write the number of GB you want to assign to this partition.
- What is the way to assign a drive letter to a partition?
- When you have done the partition creation process on your computer, you can then assign a drive letter to it. However, if you go into Disk Management, you can change the drive letter that this drive has.