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Q: I am considering buying a new laptop and I know it will come with Windows 7.  Does Windows 7 have the ability to partition a hard drive or do I have to get 3rd party software to accomplish the task?  If I have to get other software, what do you recommend?  I like to partition my hard drives and store data files on the partition.  The benefits are obvious if the need arises to re-format “C” and reinstall operation system. 

– Michael E.
Navarre, Fla

A: Your opinions and data are spot on, Michael.  I also have good news for you, but before I tell you, let me explain partitioning for the benefit of those readers who may not know what it is.  Partitioning a hard drive is the process of dividing a single physical disk drive into two or more logical drives, or if you prefer the term, virtual drives.  When I say “physical” I mean one unit that you can touch or hold, and I say it that way to avoid confusion between a drive letter and an actual disk drive device, because there is not necessarily a 1-to-1 correlation between the two.  After a drive is divided up into partitions, each partition appears as a separate drive letter to the programs running on the computer.  In other words, it looks like you have multiple hard drives.  Now, unlike network shares, or other logical drive letters, the storage capacity of your hard drive is not shared among the partitions.  When you partition a drive, you assign actual physical portions of the disk to be used by each logical drive, and the magic of the partitioning software does the rest.  In fact, the virtual drives look so much like real drives to the operating system that they need to be formatted before they can be used.

In previous versions of Windows, partitioning was a pretty hairy ordeal.  You had to do it while preparing a drive for use, because doing pretty much ANYTHING with the partitions was destructive to the data they contained.  It had to be done through a cryptic, text-only interface, and you had to know quite a bit of information about your drive in order to get it to do what you wanted.  Then third party companies got in the act, and created software that had the ability to non-destructively create and adjust a drive’s partitions.  Starting with Windows Vista, that capability was built right into the operating system, where it probably should have been all along.

Drive partitioning is a function of the Disk Management utility on the Control Panel.  You can find it fairly easily by opening the Control Panel and typing “partition” into the search box.  You’ll see a link that says something like “Create and Format Hard Disk Partitions”.  If you don’t want to search, you’ll find the link under “Administrative Tools”.  Under the Disk Management utility, you will see the actual physical devices with low-level names you’ve probably never heard of, like “Disk 0”. 

A couple of notes on partitioning:  A partition must consist of contiguous space on a drive.  That means all the space that a partition uses is in a single block with no other intervening stuff from other partitions.   The Disk Management program won’t let you try and do anything that shouldn’t be, or cannot be done, or that violates the partitioning rules.  Also remember not to take too much space away from the Windows partition.  The amount of space Windows requires grows and shrinks depending on what you’re doing – but it usually grows.  If you put it on too small of a partition, you will have trouble down the road.