Initializing Drives and Creating Partitions in Windows

How-To use Windows Partition Editor

The entire process of preparing a new drive for your computer, from partition initialization to the creation of the partition volume and your options in all cases.

Episode #9-38 released on May 5, 2019

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Note: I am retooling my show, and hopefully, every episode will be shorter and teach you basic tools that can be useful in your everyday computer lives. Back to basics, each computer problem has a solution or a methodology.

Now, we all buy new hard drives and SSDs every once in a while, and one of the most basic skills you should have is the ability to initialize and partition your new drive, and this is where the Windows Partition Editor comes into play. It is an easy graphical user interface that allows you to get the drives prepared, as needed.

How to access the Windows Partition Editor in Windows?

From the search bar you can look up disk management. This will give you access to all your partitions for every connected drive.

How to edit or create partitions?

If the new drive or cleaned drive isn't initialized, right click the drive name tag that says the drive number, then initialize it. You can choose between MBR and GPT. MBR is the most compatible partition table for drives that may be portable between devices.

Once, a drive has been initialized with a partition table, then you can create a partition. Right click and select new simple volume. Follow the wizard now and click next. You will be able to specify a volume size, by default the entire drive size may already be indicated, if it is then click next. You may select a drive letter if you wish, and that will make things easier in the future. You will be presented with information to format the drive now. The best solution is NTFS if you are going to be using the drive within Windows only because it supports files greater than 4 gigabytes, or exFAT, if you plan on using the drive outside of windows.

Which partition table to use?

Typically, people use the more compatible MBR partition table which allows virtually any Windows client and many other operating systems the ability to access the drive, however, for drives bigger than the 2.2 Terabyte limit for MBR, it is definitely only possible to use the GUID partition table to take full advantage of the drive itself. GUID partitioned drives can only be used as a boot device with Windows 8.1 or higher on EFI enabled mainboards.

Best advice for portable drives

If the drive must be portable, you may have to use the MBR partition table with an exFAT partitioned volume to increase the number of devices you may connect to.

Host : Steve Smith | Music : | Editor : Steve Smith | Producer : Zed Axis Dot Net

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