How to modify the Disk Partitions sizes and creating new Disk partition in Windows 7

The task of expanding and shrinking the partitions in Windows 7 is done by Disk Management utility. Open the disk management utility by typing the partition in the search bar of the control panel. There will be an option of ‘create and format disk’ in the window. Click on it and disk management tool will open.

Creating a new partition

There are two ways of creating a new partition – one is to use unallocated space and the other is to shrink an existing volume. For the creation of new volume using unallocated space, use right click on the unallocated space and select New Simple Volume. Creation of new volume should be according to the disk size.

Shrinking the existing volume

In order to create a new volume by shrinking the existing volume, use right click on the volume and click on the option ‘Shrink Volume’. Then a dialog box appears regarding the available space for the shrinkage.

In the dialog box that appears, there will be the details of the maximum available space, space selected and the remaining space after shrinkage. You can select the option ‘Create a new volume’ and it shows the size of the existing volume after shrinkage.

Extending a volume

Extending the volume helps to increase the size of the volume. This can be done only when there is scope for extending i.e. unallocated space is present. Select the ‘Extend Volume’ option in the right click of the drive. This will open a wizard. Unallocated space should be selected in the next step. This will be used for extending the volume. Now the drive selected gets extended. Using this procedure, one can create 4 drives at the most.  Third party tools are to be used if one wants to go for advanced features.