Managing Disks in Windows 7

In Windows 7, Vista and XP disk management is used to manage drives installed on a computer, such as hard disk drives, optical drives and flash drives. You can use disk management to partition drives, format drives, and assign drive letters, among other things.
The easiest way to access disk management is through the control panel, and administrative tools.



If you are looking at the control panel in category view you will need to go to System and Security and then select Administrative Tools.
Once you have selected Administrative tools you will need to select Computer Management


You then need to select Disk Management in the sidebar.


From here you are able to create new partitions on a hard drive, or delete existing partitions. You can also change the drive letters and paths, and extend and shrink the size of volumes. When you right click on the partition that you want to modify, a list of options will appear. You can also open the partition to browse the files and folders.


If you click on Properties, on the general tab you can perform actions such as cleaning up the disk, choosing whether or not to compress the drive to save space, and choosing whether or not to index files contents on the drive, as well renaming the volume. You can also see a graphic representation of the space on the hard disk.


On the tools tab of the Properties box, you can choose to check the disk for errors, defragment the disk in order to speed up performance and back up the disk.


The hardware tab shows all of the available disks, including optical disks and flash drives.


The sharing tab gives you options for sharing the volume, along with setting a password to protect the share.


The security tab allows you to choose which users should have access to the drive, in the same way you give permissions to users for files and programs.


The previous versions tab allows you to restore a backup of the disk.


The last tab is the quota tab. You can enable quota management in order to only use a portion of the disk.


To change the drive letter and path of the drive, you need to right click Change Drive Letter and Paths.

From here you can add, change or remove a drive letter.


When you click add, the default option is to mount an empty NTFS folder.


When you click change, the default option to assign a drive letter chosen from the drop down list.


To shrink a volume, you need to right click on the partition and select Shrink Volume.


The system will query the amount of space available for shrinking.


You can then select the amount of space you'd like to shrink.


Once the volume has been shrunk you will be left with an unallocated portion of space.


You can use this space to create a new volume. Right click on the space and select "New Simple Volume"


First you need to select the amount of space you would like to use.


You then need to select whether to assign a drive letter, mount an empty NTFS folder, or not assign a drive letter.


You then choose how you would like to format the volume


Once you are done you need to confirm the options you have chosen, and a volume will then be created.


You will then see the partition in the disk management console.


It is also possible to extend a volume. First you need to right click on the volume you would like to extend and select "Extend volume"


If you have multiple disks with free space, you can use one or more of them to extend volumes. You need to select which disk(s) you would like to use.


You then need to confirm you choices and select finish.


And there we go, a (not so) quick run down of all the ways you can manage disks in Windows 7.