How to Partition a Hard Drive Without Losing Data

Partitioning a hard drive can help you use the disk space more rationally. If there is no important file on the hard drive, you can delete all partitions on the hard drive and then create partitions according to your needs.

However, if you have stored data in partitions on the hard drive, you may want to find a way to repartition the hard drive without losing data. How to partition a hard drive without losing data? Disk Management (a Windows built-in tool) and MiniTool Partition Wizard (a free partition manager) are recommended. 

Use Disk Management to Partition a Hard Drive Without Losing Data

Disk Management has two features: Shrink and Extend. They can shrink or extend an NTFS partition without losing data.  

Note: Disk Management can’t shrink or extend a FAT32, exFAT, or Recovery partition.

How to Shrink a Partition

1.       Open Disk Management from Windows Search.

2.       Right-click a partition and choose Shrink Volume.

3.       On the pop-up window, enter the amount of space to shrink in MB and then click Shrink.

4.       After that, you can see an unallocated space appears behind this partition. Then, you can use this space to create a new partition.

How to Extend a Partition

1.       Open Disk Management.

2.       Right-click a partition and choose Extend Volume. This feature is only available when there is unallocated or free space. In addition, the unallocated or free space should be behind and adjacent to the partition to be extended.

3.       When the Extend Volume Wizard pops up, click Next.

4.       Select the amount of space in MB and click Next.

5.       Click Finish.

Use MiniTool Partition Wizard to Partition a Hard Drive Without Losing Data

As you can see, using Disk Management to partition a hard drive without losing data has many restrictions. To unlock these restrictions, you can use MiniTool Partition Wizard. This partition software can shrink and extend NTFS and FAT32 partitions.

In addition, it can extend a partition even if the unallocated/free space is not behind or adjacent to the partition. It can even extend a partition by taking free space from other partitions.

How to Move/Resize a Partition

Step 1: Launch MiniTool Partition Wizard. Right-click a partition and choose Move/Resize.

Step 2: On the pop-up window, drag the arrow icons to shrink the partition. You can also drag the arrow icons to extend the partition if there is unallocated space next to it. Drag the partition block to change the location of the partition. Then, click OK.

Step 3: Check the layout of the partition and then click Apply to execute the operation.

How to Extend a Partition

Step 1: On the MiniTool Partition Wizard main interface, right-click a partition and choose Extend.

Step 2: On the pop-up window, choose a partition or unallocated space to take free space from. Then, decide how much free space you want to take. After that, click OK. Finally, check the disk layout and click Apply to execute the operation.

How to partition a hard drive without losing data? The above free methods can meet your needs in most cases.