Best hard drive partition plans or partition hard drive while/after installing OS

How do you partition hard drive? Can we repartition hard drive?

There are some users who just made the whole hard disk to be one large volume, ie just one partition. And after using the disk for a while, the drive became crowded of files and folders and not easy to manage or locate the inside files. Is there any better hard drive partition plan?

Here we would like to show you some of most useful hard disk plans that you may consider.

1 Partition : partition your hard drive into 1 volume as a whole partition - not recommended

Disadvantages: Here are several disadvantages if you just make the whole disk as one volume: files and folders not easy to find if there are more than 100 folders. It slows down the disk if there is no folder at all ie all files were saved onto the root of hard disk. It can be worse if you have installed the OS on the hard disk too since it would become really difficult to find and manage inside files.

2 Partitions: partition hard drive into two partitions - recommend for ssd

Advantage: if it was a ssd, then it is the best to use it the less partition the better since the overwritting of ssd makes its life of length. If it was a ssd, you may arrange two partitions on it,

C: one OS volume, D/E: the other data volume.

3 Partitions: partition hard drive into 3 partitions - better partition plan

C: os volume, D: work/entertainment data, F: personal files

4 Partitions or above: partition the hard drive into at least 4 or more partitions as you wish

C: os volume, D: work data, F: entertainment data, F: personal files, G: other files...

Two free ways to manage hard drive partitions

• Partition hard drive under disk management
• Partition hard drive with free tool
• Repartition hard drive on Windows Server (Paid program but safe)

Steps to Partition Hard Drive while installing Windows 10/8/7

Laptop os install partition plan:

How to partition a new hard drive on a laptop? If you are installing os on a brand new laptop, it is complicated and not easy to choose a partition plan. It does not offer an option to partition the hard drive into several partitions during the installing.

The solution:

Just keep the hard drive into one partition on the laptop since it is the only option and then repartition the hard drive by shrinking c volume and create new hard drive partition later after the installing is finished.

Once the OS is installed, you can manage the disk partition with free tool - Partition Resizer Free to resize disk partition.

Shrink C Partition to Make Free Unallocated Space without Data Loss

Preparations: download and install freeware Partition Resizer Free

Step 1: open Partition Resizer, and you will see your disk is used as a whole partition C, right click the C drive and shrink the volume by moving the border to the left. And click 'Apply' to make the changes done.

Your OS will be booted and the inside OS is safe without losing data.

Step 2: create new partition with free unallocated space with Partition Resizer Free or Disk Management.

You may create partitions as many as you wish if there is free unallocated space after shrinking the c drive.

Partition a new hard drive for desktop or others

If it is not a laptop but just new or used hard drive for a desktop or other machines, the best plan is to make the hard drive into two volumes if its a ssd, if not a ssd just some ordinary hard drive, then make it at least 3 hard drives.

How to partition it?

Connect it as external usb disk to another PC that has already installed OS as an removable media, and then partition the hard drive with Disk Management or freeware Partition Resizer Free.

Step 1:
Download, install and run IM-Magic Partition Resizer. Open Partition Resizer and then right click the disk you want to make partitions. Select 'Create Partition', which almost works the same as it is under Disk Management.

Steps to create disk partition 1

Steps to create disk partition 2

Create partition with freeware Partition Resizer Free:

Create partition by right click unallocate space.

Partition Hard Drive under Windows Server 2003/2008/2012/2016/2019:

If you need to repartition a hard drive under Windows server, then you may use Partition Resizer Server which can let you repartition hard drive without losing data or reinstalling OS when Disk Management fails to work for you.

Download IM-Magic Partition Resizer Server Edition