How to Partition Hard Drive Disk without Formatting

The methods on this page can be applied to partition hard drive in Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7, Windows XP/Vista. 

Why Need Partition Hard Drive

Disk partitioning is a process of dividing a hard drive into several partitions - managing the hard disk drive by shrinking, extending, deleting, creating partitions and change partition size, label, even location, etc. Why do we need to partition a hard drive? Here are the common reasons to partition a new/existing hard drive:

• To make full use of hard drive space, splitting it into several partitions.
• Operating System update.
• The changes in computer and hard drive usage.
• The change of computer users needs.

Hard drive partitions first being prepared for saving data, games, system, etc., normally, will be resized, moved, split, merged or created into new partitions in a new format or new size in Windows 11/10/8/7 or dual boot system.

Partition a new hard drive: If you buy a new hard drive and want to partition it, you need to initialize it before using it. Then follow the step-by-step tutorial to split it up.

Partition an existing hard drive: You'll need to resize/move disk space for drive partition.

But to partition a hard drive without formatting it is very important for some specific purposes. How to partition hard drive disk without formatting it? Here, a third-party partition manager software, EaseUS Partition Master, can work. 

Solution 1: Partition hard drive without formatting using EaseUS partition manager

Professional partition manager software - EaseUS Partition Master can partition a hard drive with its advanced partition operations on your hard drive without formatting it, including resize and move partitions, convert partition, split partition, merge partitions, resize dynamic disk, etc.

See how to partition a hard drive without formatting with EaseUS Partition Master on your own:

Moreover, EaseUS Partition Master can extend or resize partition when there is no unallocated space behind it that Disk Management can't.

How to partition a new hard drive

Step 1. Open EaseUS Partition Master and got to Partition Manager.

Step 2. Right-click the target disk - HDD or SSD and select "Initialize to MBR" or "Initialize to GPT". Click "Execute Task" and "Apply" to save the changes.

0:00-0:18 Initialize to MBR; 0:19-0:44 Initialize to GPT;

After the initialization, So the next step is to partition hard drive in Windows 10.

How to partition an existing hard drive

Step 1. Locate the Target Partition.

Go to Partition Manager, locate the target partition and select "Resize/Move".

Step 2. Extend the Target Partition.

Drag the partition panel rightward or leftward to add the unallocated space into your current partition and click "OK" to confirm.

Extra Option: Get Space from Another Drive

If there is not enough unallocated space on your disk, right-click on a big partition with enough free space, select "Allocate space".

Then select the target partition that you want to extend at the allocate space to column.

Step 3. Execute Operations to Extend Partition.

Drag the dots of the target partition into the unallocated space and click "OK".

Then Click the "Execute Task" button and click "Apply" to keep all the changes. 

In addition, you can also apply some advanced features  as listed below to manage your hard drive in all Windows OS:

• Extend or resize system partition
• Recover lost or deleted partition
• Convert MBR to GPT or GPT to MBR
• Migrate OS to SSD/HDD
• Optimize SSD/HDD performance

If you think this hard drive partitioning software is useful, why not apply it to manage different Windows OS partition problems with ease.

Solution 2: Partition hard drive with Disk Management

Before you start partition hard drive with Disk Management, you should first understand that it has different features in different Windows OS.

• In Windows 10/8/7, Vista and Windows Server 2008, Disk Management can shrink volume, extend volume, shrink volume, create volume, delete the volume, format volume, etc. on a hard drive.
• In Windows 2000/XP and Windows Server 2003, Disk Management can only create a partition, delete partition, format partition, change the drive letter on a hard drive.

So how to partition hard drive with Disk Management? Let's see:

How to partition a new hard drive

Step 1: Open Disk Management

Right-click on This PC/My Computer > Click "Manage" > Enter Device Manager and click "Disk Management".

Step 2: Initialize the new hard drive

Step 3. Right-click on the unallocated space and select "New Simple Volume" to create a new partition.

You’ll then enter the New Simple Volume Wizard to choose the volume size, drive letter, and file system. 

How to partition an existing hard drive

• Step 1: Open Disk Management
• Right-click on This PC/My Computer > Click "Manage" > Enter Device Manager and click "Disk Management".
• Step 2: Partition hard drive
• Shrink partition:
• 1. Right-click on the partition that you want to shrink and select "Shrink Volume".
  2. Adjust the partition size and "Shrink" to confirm.
• Extend partition:
• 1. Shrink partition next to the target partition that you want to extend in advance.
  2. Right-click on the target partition and select "Extend Volume".
• 3. Click "Next" to continue, add the unallocated space to extend the target partition. Click "Next" and "Finish" to complete.
• Create partition: (formatting required)
• 1. Right-click on the unallocated space, select "New Simple Volume".
• 2. Click "Next" to continue, set the new partition size, drive letter, file system, click "Finish".
  Wait for the formatting complete.
• Delete partition:
• Right-click on the partition that you want to delete, select "Delete Volume" and select "Yes".
• Change drive letter:
• 1. Right-click on the partition and select "Change Drive Letter and Paths".
  2. Click "Change" to set a new drive letter for your partition.

Although, Disk Management is capable of dealing with most simple partition management tasks. It still has cons to solve some complex problems that you'll need a third-party partition manager like EaseUS Partition Master for help:

• It can't re-partition hard drive especially create a new partition without formatting. 
• It can't extend system partition when the unallocated space is not behind the system partition. 
• It has no "Move Partition" feature to move the unallocated space next to the volume which you want to extend.
• It can't convert disk to MBR/GPT.
• It can't convert Dynamic disk to Basic disk.

In all situations, a third-party partition manager software is highly required since Disk Management has so many limitations when partitioning a hard drive. EaseUS Partition Master can always be your best choice.

The Bottom Line

This article focuses on how to partition a hard drive without formatting via EaseUS Partition Manager and Disk Management. For partition a new or existing hard drive, the third-party software provides more convenience than Disk Management.

Hard Disk Partition FAQs

Is it important to partition hard disk?

Most computer users partition their hard disk for two primary reasons: to logically organize their files and to improve system performance. If you want to running more than one OS on your system, it is important to partition hard disk.

What are the types of partition in hard disk?

Partition types include:

- Primary: A primary partition can contain only one operating system. You can create multiple Primary partitions but maximum it depends on Operating System you are using. In Windows you can create 4 Primary Partition but in Linux Operating System you can create as many as you want(Depends on File Allocation Table - MBR). Each hard disk must have at least 1 primary partition.

- Extended: An extended partition does not hold an operating system or boot records, but it does allow for logical drives within the extended space. This allows for more than the four-partition limit of primary drives by allowing numerous logical drives within the extended drive space. Usually we create only one Extended Partition in a hard disk and store all other Logical Partitions inside that so if any Logical Partition got corrupted then it will not affect other Logical Partitions data stored outside the Extended Partition.