How in the Tech

Resize partitions for free in Windows 7

By Adam Myers ⋅ January 28, 2010 ⋅ Tags: Windows 7

For years there did not exist a free utility that allowed for disk partitions to be resized, either larger or smaller. Probably the software that most have heard of for this problem was Partition Magic, now owned by Symantec. The software was painless in it’s methods but of course, it was not free. Eventually, as Linux continued it’s growth in the desktop arena tools based on gparted garnered attention. Gparted is a Linux utility that manipulated partitions, generally for the purpose of splitting a single partition with Windows installed into two partitions for a dual-boot Linux and Windows hybrid. Gparted was free, but it wasn’t the most user friendly – often intimidating new users.

Finally, Microsoft introduced partition resizing natively in Windows, starting with the Vista release but most recently included with Windows 7. Logically, all things disk related can be accessed through Disk Management utility. Using Disk Management it is trivial to resize a partition.

1. From the Start Menu search for disk manage and launch the returned result – Create and format hard disk partitions.



2. Now inside Disk Management you will see all the attached drives on your computer; the hard drives are broken down by partition in a clean graphical presentation.



3. To shrink a partition, right-click on the one in question and choose Shrink.



4. In the box next to Enter the amount of space to shrink in MB provide the desired amount. This is a bit counter-intuitive, if you want to eventually create a new partition of 50GB, you would put 50000 as number here. It is not the size you want to shrink to!



5. Finally, click Shrink to begin the process.

Alternatively, if you wished to extend a partition to encompass an un-utilized portion of the disk, you would select Extend Volume instead of Shrink in Step 3.

As it always should be said, ensure you have a back-up of any data on the partition in question. While I’ve never had an issue myself, there is always the risk of disaster!