If you add a range of different containers into this bin for different types of rubbish such as plastic, glass, cardboard, and others, all of a sudden, your bin becomes a lot more organized and easy to manage. To put it simply, imagine your external hard drive as a bin. This is when users who like to stay organized begin to create on average 2-5 partitions on their HDD. When you purchase and begin using an external HDD, chances are that it only has one primary C drive for you to use.
Why Would You Partition an External Hard Drive? So, if you are wondering why you should partition your external hard drive, continue reading as we explore the topic in more detail below. While all these different regions operate under the same hardware, they are completely independent of each other.ĭespite having evident benefits, it is a very overlooked tool not just for performance but also for security purposes. When it comes to external hard drive partitioning, the term refers to segmenting the hard drive as a whole into different storage regions where you can safely store, organize, and optimize your data. For more info, see Convert an MBR disk into a GPT disk, or Convert a GPT disk into an MBR disk.How to Partition an External Hard Drive What is Partitioning? To convert a disk from MBR to GPT or vice versa, you first have to delete all volumes from the disk, erasing everything on the disk. The older Master Boot Record (MBR) disk type is used by 32-bit PCs, older PCs, and removable drives such as memory cards. GPT is more robust and allows for volumes bigger than 2 TB. Most PCs use the GUID Partition Table (GPT) disk type for hard drives and SSDs.
Windows uses the partition style to understand how to access the data on the disk.Īs fascinating as this probably isn't, the bottom line is that these days, you don't usually have to worry about partition style - Windows automatically uses the appropriate disk type. Each partition - even if you have only one - has to have a partition style - GPT or MBR. Specify the file system you want to use (usually NTFS), select Next, and then Finish.ĭisks can be divided up into multiple chunks called partitions. Specify the drive letter you want to assign to the volume and then select Next. Select Next, specify the size of the volume (you'll likely want to stick with the default, which uses the whole drive), and then select Next.
Select and hold (or right-click) the unallocated space on the drive and then select New Simple Volume. If initializing fails for some reason, see A disk's status is Not Initialized or the disk is missing entirely. The disk status briefly changes to Initializing and then to the Online status. If you need to change the partition style (GPT or MBR) see About partition styles - GPT and MBR. In the Initialize Disk dialog box (shown here), check to make sure that the correct disk is selected and then click OK to accept the default partition style. Note that some USB drives don't have the option to be initialized, they just get formatted and a drive letter. If the disk is listed as Offline, first right-click it and select Online. In Disk Management, right-click the disk you want to initialize, and then click Initialize Disk (shown here). If you can't open it as an administrator, type Computer Management instead, and then go to Storage > Disk Management. To do so, in the search box on the taskbar, type Disk Management, select and hold (or right-click) Disk Management, then select Run as administrator > Yes. Open Disk Management with administrator permissions. If you prefer using PowerShell, use the initialize-disk cmdlet instead. Here's how to initialize a new disk using Disk Management.
Instead we recommend troubleshooting the disk to see if you can read the files - see A disk's status is Not Initialized or the disk is missing entirely. If your disk already has files on it that you care about, don't initialize it - you'll lose all the files.