How to Shrink / Resize Hard Disk Partition without Data Loss

If you want to resize C: drive or any other partition on your computer’s hard disk but don’t want to lose or destroy saved data, this article will help you in re-partitioning your HDD without using any 3rd party software and without losing any data.

You might have noticed that almost all computer manufacturer companies provide their computers with only a single hard disk partition. Even if your new device’s HDD/SSD size is 500 GB or 1 TB or more, you’ll find that it contains only one system partition or drive taking full disk size.

Personally I never like this decision. Since these PC manufacturer companies provide a single partition, user’s personal data such as downloaded files, photos, videos, documents, etc is also stored on the same C: drive which contains the installed operating system i.e. Windows.

Following screenshot shows a single partition i.e. C: drive available on our newly purchased ASUS laptop:

A single partition can cause serious problems. If Windows gets corrupted or if the user decides to format and reinstall Windows OS in the device, he’ll lose all stored data. In such situation, he’ll need to first take a backup of his personal data on an external hard disk or pen drive before formatting the hard disk or reinstalling the operating system.

Also many people like me immediately format and reinstall Windows OS after purchasing a new laptop or Desktop PC to re-create partitions on the hard disk drive.

Although there are many 3rd party partition management software available on Internet which can assist users in managing hard disk partitions. Users can shrink, extend, resize, delete partitions using these software but most of these software are paid. Some free partition manager tools come with advanced features or UI that might be difficult and complicated for basic users. Also I have noticed that 3rd party software take lots of time in resizing or shrinking a partition.

Did you know Windows operating system allows users to resize their hard disk partition without losing any data? In fact you can shrink the system C: drive and create extra partitions from the extracted hard disk space.

Almost all Windows versions including Windows 10 and Windows 11 come with a built-in hard disk management tool called “diskmgmt.msc” which can be used by users to perform various hard disk operations such as following:

• Shrink partition to reduce partition size and extract free space
• Extend partition to increase size
• Resize a partition
• Delete a partition
• Format a partition
• Change drive letter or path

So we can take help of this native disk management tool to shrink C: drive size and create new partitions on our computer’s hard disk to store our personal data.

Following screenshot shows C: drive size reduced and new partition created in our new ASUS laptop which came with a single hard disk partition by default:

If you also want to shrink a partition and create new partitions on your computer’s hard disk drive without data loss and 3rd party tools, following steps will help you:

STEP 1: Press WIN+R keys together to launch RUN dialog box. Now type diskmgmt.msc and press Enter key. It’ll open Disk Management tool.

STEP 2: Now right-click on the partition which you want to shrink and select “Shrink Volume” option.

STEP 3: Windows will show a Shrink partition dialog box asking you to enter the amount of space to shrink.

Remember you need to enter the space amount in MB that you want to take or extract from the existing partition and not the new size. For example, if your existing partition size is 475 GB and you want to resize the partition to 100 GB by extracting 375 GB from it, then you’ll need to enter 384000 MB (375 x 1024) in the text box.

Click on Shrink button and Windows will immediately shrink the partition. It’ll take a few seconds only.

STEP 4: Now you can create new partitions using the extracted disk space. Right-click on the unallocated space and select “New Simple Volume” option.

Enter the desired space amount and click on Finish button. It’ll create new partition on your hard disk drive. You can create multiple partitions according to your requirements.

The whole process doesn’t require any restart or data movement. It’s the fastest and easiest way to resize hard disk partitions in your Windows device.

Also Check:

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