Page 874 - Windows 10 May 2019 Update The Missing Manual: The Book That Should Have Been in the Box

Note

Partitioning is an advanced kind of surgery that involves erasing disks and moving lots of files
around. Do not proceed unless you have a backup and you’re a technically confident soul.

Creating a partition

In the Disk Management window, free space (suitable for turning into a
partition of its own) shows up with a black bar and the label “Unallocated.”

To create a new partition, right-click one of these unallocated segments.
From the shortcut menu, choose New Simple Volume (if this option isn’t
available, right-click the disk and choose Initialize Disk). A wizard appears;

its screens ask you to make some decisions:

How big you want the volume to be. If you’re dividing up a 500

GB drive, for example, you might decide to make the first volume
300 GB and the second 200 GB. Begin by creating the 300 GB

volume (right-clicking the big Unallocated bar). When that’s done,
you see a smaller Unallocated chunk still left in the Disk
Management window. Right-click it and choose New Simple

Volume again, this time accepting the size the wizard proposes
(which is all the remaining free space).

What drive letter you want to assign to it. Most of the alphabet

is at your disposal.

What disk-formatting scheme you want to apply to it. Windows

10 requires NTFS for the system drive. It’s far safer and more
flexible than the old FAT32 system.

Consider FAT32 only if, for example, you plan to dual-boot

Windows 10 with Linux, Mac OS X, or an old version of
Windows. (FAT32 might be the only file system all those operating
systems can recognize simultaneously.)

When the wizard is through with you, it’s safe to close the window. A quick

look at your This PC window confirms that you now have new “disks”