Windows 10: How to partition external hard disk?

I hv window vista business edition OS. I purchased 500 GB seagate external hard drive as I wish to transfer my collection of songs and photos from my laptop to hard drive. How do I partition the hard drive in three parts. It comes with integrated software for backup and I have registered on net with seagate.I am not been able to backup my files. No funny answers plz.

:)

 

Creating partitions for removable disks in Windows.

See this article for instructions how to partition an external drive:

Partition a Hard Drive for macOS Time Machine and Windows 10 Backups

https://www.groovypost.com/howto/partition-hard...

 

how do I get rid of three partitions on a external hard drive

how do I get rid of three partitions on a external hard drive

 

Minitool Partition Wizard will make it easy for you.

Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Free

 

*Ditto Best Partitioning software on the Planet *Thumbs


What happened when you 1st plugged in the drive ?

You should have gotten at least 1 or 2 popup messages.

Please post a picture of Disk Management with the external drive plugged in and powered up.

Use the paperclip icon at the top of your next reply to add the pic *Smile

 

Hey,

And welcome to Tenforums,

So If I understood correctly you are looking for a way to partition an external drive for backing up your PC. Here is how to partition a drive using Windows Default Partitioner, although there are many many many third party ones that might do the job better, but I usually stick with the original default windows one.

1st Make sure the Drive is indeed installed an connected to your PC
2nd Open Run with "Windows Key+R" and type or copy in: "diskmgmt.msc" without the -"- markings and press ok
3rd In order to partition your drive you must make sure you have backed up everything thats currently on it.
4th Select your drive you would like to partition and right click it
5th Shrink The volume by as much as you would like your second partition to be
6th Once the partition has been shrunk make sure to select the unallocated space and right click New Simple Volume
7th Set up your new volume by assigning a letter and a format FAT32 or NTFS (NTFS recommended) and click next
8th Set up the additional settings and make sure to select format with these settings.
9th Once finished you will have your new "drive" available for file storage or for backing up

Repeat this process for your other partition make sure to shrink the main volume instead of the already shrunk volume. That should be it. Report back afterwards

 

Why can't you backup? To backup, all you have to do is drag and drop files to the new drive once it is plugged in and recognized on the computer.
As stated, go to Disk Management, if you have saved all the files you want off of this new HDD to another drive, and are not planning on using their backup program, then you can Right click the partition in the lower pane of this window and Delete all the partitions on the drive, Now that the drive is all Unallocated Space, you can right click that and choose to make a new Simple Volume. Here, choose 1/3 of the size of the External HDD (ie) 160GB or whatever size you want a partition to be and choose Quick Format NTFS, now create two more 160GB Partitions or whatever size is left.
You can also use a 3rd party app, as have been suggested, like Minitool.

 

Can i follow these steps ? anyone tried ? are they authentic

 

Hi,

It should be fine but you should or could use the minitool mentioned in the #2nd post which might have a better way of formatting, because usually windows formats the drives to a minimal state and with probably the mini-tool could do much better, but its your choice.

 

OK downloading it, I hope mini tool will make it easy for me.

 

The process and the format are the same, it's no better or worse, whether you are using the Windows tools or thru a 3rd party app.

 

Well I personally, only use Windows Diskmanagement but there is one HDD that I got from a friend which was formatted via a software and it seemed like it had just a tiny bit more space on it, but still it was not really noticable.

 

Yes the process maybe the same but sometimes the third party softwares makes it easy to perform the task, just saying.

 

Well it mostly depends on who you trust with doing the "work" windows which is using the drive 24/7 or a third party software that only formats once and you might even get rid of it afterwards, but yes its mostly just to make it "easier" I guess, (but imo. it is pretty easy to do even without an extra software).

 

If the hard drive is biggest in size(TB) and we format it through external software , can we save some space as compared to partition it through windows disk management.