Hard drive expansion program. Hard disk service - review of the best programs for working with partitions

This article talks about how to create, change or delete partitions hard drive using Windows 7.
To work with hard drive partitions in Windows 7, there is a tool called “Disk Management”: Control Panel → System and Security → Administrative Tools → Computer Management → Disk Management OR “Start” → in the search bar enter: diskmgmt.msc and press Enter.

1. Creating a section
Click right click mouse on a free space not occupied by other partitions on the desired hard drive → Create a simple volume... The “Simple Volume Creation Wizard” window will open, click the “Next” button. Then indicate the size the section being created, assign a drive letter, select the required file system and formatting options, once again make sure that you did everything correctly and click “Finish”
2. Compressing a Partition
Shrink Volume... A message window will appear asking for space for compression, wait until the end of the survey. Then in the window that appears, in the line “size of compressed space”, indicate the quantity free space and click "Compress"
3. Section expansion
Right click on the right section → Extend volume... The “Volume Expansion Wizard” window will appear, click the “Next” button. Then select the required free space from the list, click “Add”, then specify the amount of free space allocated to the partition, click the “Next” button, check the information and click “Finish”
4. Deleting a partition
Right-click on the desired section → Delete volume... Before continuing the operation, copy all the necessary files and folders to another drive, because... Once a volume is deleted, all data on it will be lost.
5. Changing the drive letter
Right-click on the desired section → Change drive letter or drive path... Click on the Change button, select the desired drive letter and click OK. Next, we will look in detail at ways to expand disks without harming the information stored on them.

In order to divide HDD to partitions, you need to go to the "Start" menu → right-click on "Computer" and click on "Manage".

In the window that appears, go to the "Disk Management" section.

Select the hard drive and partition that needs to be divided and right-click on it.

In the drop-down menu, you need to select "Shrink Volume" and then select the size to which you want to shrink the existing partition. The space freed up after compression will be the new hard drive partition.

To create a new partition, you need to right-click on the free space and select “create volume”. Then specify the size of the new partition and wait for the operation to complete. Sooner or later, any computer user is faced with such a problem as lack of free space on the system partition of the hard drive. This is where the question arises:

How to expand drive C?
First we need to go to the "Computer Management" tab (see above).

When this tab opens, you will see in the window all the media that are currently connected to the computer. Each hard drive can be divided into several logical ones. The very first one will be "Disk 0". On the right you will see the space reserved by the system and the logical partitions (C, D, E, F, etc.). If you have only one drive C and it is full, then you can try “Shrink Volume” (see above). If you have several logical partitions, then move on.

The principle of disk division.
The principle of action is this: we must expand drive C at the expense of the adjacent logical partition. This could be drive D, E, and so on. In the same way, you can increase not only section C, but also others, if you have such a need. So, delete the adjacent disk, for example, D. Right-click on it and select the “Delete Volume” option. Click OK. Immediately after this, this volume should appear in black. The message “Volume is not allocated” should appear on it. Now we can add the space we need to drive C. To do this, right-click on partition C and select “Extend volume”. Click "Next" and select the size you want to add. Can be used maximum size , as will be suggested by default, or choose at your discretion. Click "Next" and then "Finish". If no additional windows pop up, then the operation was successful. You have learned how to expand a disk using Windows 7 tools. The main thing to remember is that system partition

can only be enlarged if there is free space to the right of it. Otherwise, nothing will work.

What other difficulties could there be? Let's say we have five volumes. We want to configure them in such a way that part of the space is added to drive C, and the other to drive D. When deleting one of the partitions, the “Delete Volume” function may not be active, and the “Extend Volume” function may not be available on volume C.
The whole point is that the section style can be used MBR*. This is an outdated style. In this case, two adjacent volumes can be connected by a green frame. This means that you cannot create more than four volumes with the MBR partition style.

Windows 8 provides the same tools for increasing space. Therefore, this method is also applicable on this operating system.

Breaking down the hard disk into partitions in the Windows 7 operating system is very simple thing. You can see this for yourself if you partition and create a new partition according to the described algorithm.

*MBR (Master Boot Record) master boot record in a PC - table in the first sector boot disk, which stores data about the physical and logical organization of the disk. If this record is corrupted, loading the OS becomes impossible.

That's all. Thank you for reading the article. I hope it was useful to you.

In this article I will tell you how to change the disk size on your computer. To implement this method, I will use one simple and free program, which can be downloaded here, and I will show you how to use it and what capabilities it has.

The method we will discuss is suitable for any Windows versions and all types of hard drives. Immediately, I'll get to the point.

How to change disk size

First of all, download AOMEI Partition Assistant from the link below. It is in Russian and free.

Install the program and open. You will see an interface in which you can perform various operations with the hard drive.

On the left side of the program are the hard drives that are detected on your computer, as well as their graphical representation. On the right are the operations that can be done with them. At the top are the control buttons.

AOMEI Partition Assistant works simply: select the disk, select the operation, and click "Apply" at the top of the program.

The program has the following features:

Can change the size of the disk - increase or decrease, and also move content from one part of the hard disk to another. Perhaps this is the most main function this tool.
Copying the contents of the hard drive. Useful for backup archiving.
Can rename local disk.
Change drive letter.
Hide a hard drive partition.
Checking the hard drive for errors and fixing them. Occurs by means

To make it clearer how to use this, I will show you an example. Let's say you need to change the disk size.

Select with your mouse the disk whose size you want to resize.

Click on the "Resize" option.

A window will appear with a scale on which you can change the disk size with the mouse or write the desired value in the appropriate field. Select the size you need and click "OK".

Please note that if you want to increase the size of the disk rather than decrease it, then on the right side of the scale there should be free space that is not occupied by another adjacent partition. If this space does not exist, then you first need to perform a procedure to reduce the size of the adjacent partition.

Once all operations have been created, click the Apply button.

While working with a personal computer, it may be necessary to change, add or delete hard disk partitions. If at the initial Windows installation 7, while the creation of sections takes place interactively and is intuitive, making changes to the created sections requires a certain skill. Due to the lack of any experience in these matters, the user may incorrectly perform the necessary actions, which will subsequently lead to complete loss of data or even failure of the hard drive. The Disk Management utility will help facilitate the process of creating and changing disk partitions.

Disk Management utility and its functions

The Disk Management utility is a tool for performing various operations with hard drives and their partitions.

With its help you can:

create, delete, merge volumes on a disk;
compress volumes;
format volumes;
assign letters for volumes;
add volumes without rebooting;
manage local and remote disks on the network.

Opening Disk Management

There are several ways to launch the program.

Via the Start menu

Click on the “Start” menu and right-click on “Computer”. Select "Management".
Right-click on “Computer” and select “Manage”
In the “Computer Management” window that opens, click on “Disk Management”.
Select "Disk Management"
The Disk Management window will open.
Disk Management window

Via command line

Via "Control Panel"

Click on the “Start” menu and select “Control Panel”.
Click “Control Panel”
In the search bar, enter “administration” and click on the “Administration” section that appears.
Click on the “Administration” section
Select “Computer Management” from the list.
Select "Computer Management"
In the “Computer Management” window that opens, click on “Disk Management”.
Click on “Disk Management”

Why doesn't Disk Management open?

There are situations when the Disk Management console does not open or opens but the console window is blank and the warning “Could not connect to the Logical Disk Manager service” appears.

The reasons that caused this problem to appear may be different. To eliminate their influence on the disk management process, you must perform the following steps:

Conduct an anti-virus scan. Launch antivirus program It is recommended to do it from an optical disk or from a protected flash drive. After checking, open the “Quarantine” of the antivirus. If the dmdskmgr.dll library is in Quarantine, then return it to its place.
Run the command Rundll32 setupapi, InstallHinfSection DefaultInstall 132 %windir%\inf\dmreg.inf through the Start menu and the Run window.
Go to “Control Panel” - “Administration” - “Services” and make sure that “Logical Disk Manager” and “Logical Disk Manager Administrative Service” are running. If they are stopped, then enable them.
Enter the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) menu. To do this, when turning on the computer, press Del, F2 or Esc (the choice of key depends on the computer manufacturer). If the launch panel does not contain information about the connected HDD, then check the connecting cables at the points of connection to the drive.

How to create a logical drive

The very first hard drives, first created by IBM in 1973, contained 30 cylinders, each of which was divided into 30 tracks. By analogy with automatic rifles using the .30–30 Winchester cartridge, such discs were called “Winchesters”. Over time, in colloquial speech the word “Winchester” was transformed into “screw”.

Most hard drives are sold already prepared for installing Windows, i.e. the main partition has already been created on them.

If the hard drive was not prepared for immediate installation of the system before going on sale, then all operations will have to be done by the user. This requires a bootable optical disk or USB stick.

Before installation, configure the BIOS (basic input/output system) to boot from a DVD or USB drive:

When forming a partition on a hard drive, all free space is used, and additional partitions are created after installing Windows 7.

If possible, it is better to take advantage loading Windows PE, which has built-in Acronis Disk Director or Partition Magic programs. These utilities are designed to manage hard drive partitions.

Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE) is used to prepare your computer for Windows installation. It is a built-in component of other system installation and recovery tools and is not intended to be used as a primary operating system.

If you don't have a bootable disk like Windows PE, you can:

The created logical drives must be formatted using the format.com utility. Now you can proceed to installing Windows 7.

Hard drive logical drive management

You can manage hard drive partitions through the context menu of each of them. They provide a set of commands necessary for work.

Compressing a Partition

The command to compress a logical drive is specified in context menu.

Creating a section

A new partition is created in a free area of the hard drive that is not yet part of a formatted volume. At the bottom of the Disk Management console, this space is highlighted in bright green, and in the legend line it is indicated as “Free”.

Once the partition has been compressed, right-click on the unallocated space and select “Create simple volume” from the context menu.
Right-click on the unallocated space and select “Create simple volume” from the context menu
The “Create Simple Volume Wizard” will launch.
After launching the “Create a Simple Volume Wizard”, click “Next”
Specify the size of the new volume.
Specify the size of the new volume
Assign a letter (letter) to the disk.
Assign a letter to the disk
We decide on the file system, cluster size and volume label.
We format the partition.
We format the partition
In the last window, click on the “Finish” button and create a new logical drive.
Click on the “Finish” button

After reformatting, the volume is ready for use.

Changing the section letter

Merging sections

When there is a need to reduce the number of logical drives, two are merged into one joint logical drive. Before merging, the necessary information from the logical drive being removed is copied to another drive or removable media.

To merge one drive with another:

Select the volume that we want to attach and call the context menu. Click on “Delete Volume”.
Select the volume, call the context menu and click on “Delete Volume”
A message will appear in the window that appears indicating that all data on the volume will be deleted. Confirm deletion.
Confirm deletion
A partition with the status “Free” will appear in place of the deleted volume. Select it and select “Delete partition” in the context menu.
To attach an empty volume to the desired logical disk, right-click on the section to which the empty partition will be attached, and select “Extend volume” in the context menu.
Mark an empty volume and attach to the main volume

After the merger is complete, restart Windows 7 to avoid errors and information loss.

Video: Disk Management in Windows 7

Disk management programs

To manage disks, in addition to the standard Disk Management utility, there are several programs. They have become widespread due to their clear and user-friendly interface. Such programs include:

Acronis Disk Director is a program that provides management of logical disks and is responsible for servicing “hard drives”;
Provides logical disk management and is responsible for maintaining hard drives
Partition Magic is a program that has fewer functions compared to Acronis Disk Director. This utility is outdated and not supported by most manufacturers, but is included in the package software on old boot disks;
This utility is outdated and not supported by most manufacturers, but is included with the software on older boot disks
AOMEI Partition Assistant is a lesser-known program for working with hard drive partitions. One of the advantages of this program is the ability to convert the main boot entry from MBR format to GPT format without loss of information. This feature can be useful when migrating from Windows 7 to Windows 8, and is necessary for users working with these systems.
One of the advantages of this program is the ability to convert the master boot record from MBR format to GPT format without losing information

In addition to these utilities, you can find other developments on the Internet designed to work with hard drive partitions.

Despite all the variety of utilities for working with hard drives, it is better to choose one, study it and use it in your work, since incorrect use of programs can lead to the deletion of important data accumulated over many years of work. Restoring lost information will take a lot of time and effort, but may not lead to the desired result.

For normal and stable operation of any operating system personal computer or laptop, you need to properly divide the space on the hard drive (partition the HDD). Often, when buying a computer in a store, you may encounter the fact that the entire hard drive space is allocated to only one system drive (usually the system drive “C”). This setting for HDD memory allocation is not entirely correct. In addition, this may negatively affect the operation of the computer, because important documents and system files(for such data it is recommended to use separate section on the hard drive).

Therefore, in order to avoid any troubles associated with improper use of the computer’s HDD memory, it is customary to split it into several additional partitions (disks), one of which is usually allocated for the needs of the operating system. Nevertheless, it should be remembered that the process of partitioning a hard drive itself is a very responsible and scrupulous procedure. Before starting, it is recommended to backup all important documents onto a USB flash drive or other storage medium, and then proceed directly to changing the size of the disk space.

So, in order to partition a hard drive, you have to go through several step-by-step procedures. First of all, you should select the disk partition that needs to be divided into subpartitions. After this, you must specify the size of the new partition that you want to create, indicating the type file system. Having gone through all these points, you can start the HDD partitioning procedure itself. As a result of successful completion of this operation, the program will display a list of changes made. It is also worth noting that most modern programs for working with hard drives will help you not only partition the HDD, but also merge them, perform deep formatting and other complex procedures.

Probably, every user has encountered such a paradox that no matter how huge the volume of the C drive is, the day comes when there is a catastrophic lack of space on it.

And then the question arises: is it possible to increase the volume of drive C painlessly for the system and for all stored data and how to do it correctly?

How to increase the capacity of drive C - current problem for many users

This article is intended to answer this question. But first, let’s look at why space on drive C is starting to run out.

Why is there not enough space on drive C?

The fact is that operating system Windows has such an unpleasant feature as an increase in the size of its logical volume after a certain time.

In this case, all files, both temporary and system, are subject to growth. And this happens with all versions of the OS - Windows 7, 8 and 10.

Of course, at first we try to free up space by deleting unnecessary files or cleaning the disk, but still there comes a moment when there is nothing left to delete, and the volume continues to be sorely lacking.

Disk C is completely full - an unpleasant but fixable situation

This situation has a very negative impact on our computer.

There is little disk space left - urgent action needs to be taken

– it often begins to crash and glitch, bringing us a lot of inconvenience, such as a decrease in PC performance and a slowdown in its speed.

The fullness of the disk also affects the security of the system; the risk increases that at the most inopportune moment during hard work at the computer, the program we need will crash.

3 ways to increase the capacity of drive C

Method 1. Free up space on drive C using a system utility

Windows 7, 8 or 10 operating systems have standard utility“Disk Management”, which allows you to view and change hard disk partitions at our discretion.

Finding it is quite simple by following the instructions below:

Right-click on the “Computer” icon and select “Manage” in the dialog box that opens.

On the "Computer" icon, right-click and select "Manage"

In the menu that appears, find the “Disk Management” utility and click on it.

Find and launch the Disk Management utility

This program provides us with the opportunity, at our discretion, to manage all devices designed to save data - logical drives, flash memory, CD-ROM.

Using this utility, we can easily transfer the amount of free space from local disk D to drive C, that is, increase the size system disk, on which we have an operating system installed Windows system 7 (8 or 10).

Before transferring free space, let's determine how much free space we have on drive D, how much we need for our local drive C, and how much we can transfer.

Now, in order to transfer this freed space to the system volume, right-click on it and select the “Extend volume” function in the menu that opens.

To transfer the freed space to our disk, select "Extend volume"

Now we press the “Compress” command, after which the system provides us with information about the freed up free space, which we redirect to drive C.

We now have information about the freed up space, which we can now transfer to the system drive C

In the field that opens, indicate the size in MB of the space that we intend to transfer. After this action, the system will poll the volume and provide you with the result in the following form:

We determine the amount of space required for compression and indicate this value in the appropriate field

In order to free up the volume of our disk, right-click on it and click on the “Shrink volume” option.

Right-click on drive D and select the “Shrink volume” function

So we launch special program"Volume Expansion Wizard" Click “Next” and in the proposed window we determine the amount of space that we are going to add.

Launch the "Volume Expansion Wizard" and decide on the size that we are going to add

After all the manipulations done, we reboot our computer.

Method 2. Increase the capacity of the system disk using the Aomei Partition Assistant program

One of the most versatile and proven programs for reliable and simple controls partitions of our disks is free program Aomei Partition Assistant.

Aomei Partition Assistant - universal program for working with hard disk partitions

This application allows the user to do the following:

Aomei Partition Assistant program is a universal and useful program for each user

Create and delete hard disk partitions.
Change the amount of free space.
Format hard disk partitions.
Merge, split and move or copy partitions, including to another hard drive or SSD.

Step 2: Install Aomei Partition Assistant

After launching the installation file, select the language (Russian) and follow the prompts of the installation wizard.

We install the Aomei Partition Assistant program, following the Wizard’s prompts

It should be noted that the program is distributed free of charge for private and commercial use.

Step 3. Launch Aomei Partition Assistant

After the installation is complete, we are faced with a very user-friendly interface in Russian, where all the disks of our computer with all partitions are displayed.

The simple and convenient interface of the Aomei Partition Assistant program allows you to effectively work with all computer disks

Step 4. Increase the size of drive C at the expense of drive D

Let's take a closer look at how you can increase the space of volume C at the expense of volume D without losing data.

So, we carry out actions according to the instructions:

Right-click on drive D and select the “Resize partition” function;

Right-click on partition D and click the option “Resize partition”

In the console that opens, we can easily change the disk volume just using the mouse by hovering the cursor over the control points, as shown in the photo;

Partition size can be easily changed using breakpoints

Click “Ok” and open system volume C in the same way and increase its volume using free space;

By analogy with D, we work with drive C, changing its volume at our discretion

After completing all manipulations with the disks, in the top panel of the main menu, click the “Apply” option;

After all the actions have been completed, click the “Apply” function in the top toolbar.

Next, you may need to perform, as a rule, two reboots, after which we get the desired result - an increased size system C-drive by reducing drive D without losing any data.

Method 3. Resizing the disk with MiniTool Partition Wizard Free

Partition program Wizard is a convenient and easy-to-use application

The program, like the previous application, is shareware and does not require any additional knowledge other than skills regular user PC.

However, it has one small drawback - the lack of a Russian-language interface. Which, however, is compensated by its simplicity and accessibility. In addition, work in MiniTool Partition Wizard Free

is very similar to working with the Aomei Partition Assistant program discussed above.

After installing Partition Wizard, we see the same simple interface, which makes using programs easy even without Russian-language settings.

A simple interface makes it easy to work in the program even without a Russian interface

Resizing disks also occurs in a similar way to the program described above. In the same way, using checkpoints we can easily change the size of the volume, due to the available free space.

Regulation of added disk space occurs in the same way in a simple way

After we have completed all the operations to increase the volume of system drive C at the expense of volume D, the result will be immediately available to us in Explorer.

I hope these simple methods will help you easily and quickly solve the problem of increasing the size of one disk at the expense of another without losing data.