How Do I Assign an Unassigned Portion of Hard Drive?

Assign portions of your hard drive.

Unassigned portions of your hard drive contain no formatting or partition information. Formatting and partition tables are small sections of the hard drive that allow your operating system to save data to the drive. This is configured in the Windows Disk Management utility. The unassigned portion of the hard drive can be assigned a drive letter, so you can use it to store important documents and install software applications.

Instructions

1. Click the Windows "Start" button and select "Control Panel." Click "System and Maintenance." Click "Administrative Tools" and then click "Computer Management." This opens a utility window that includes "Disk Management."

2. Click "Disk Management" in the "Storage" section of Computer Management. It takes a few minutes for Windows to detect and list the details of your hard drives. Right-click the section of your hard drive labeled "Unassigned" and select "New Simple Volume." This starts the partition wizard.

3. Click "Next" in the opening window. Enter the size of the unallocated space you want to partition. Windows defaults the size as the total amount of free space available on the drive. Click "Next."

4. Enter the volume letter for the drive. Windows also gives you a default that is the next letter available on your system. Click "Next."

5. Select "Format the drive," which is set as the default, and click "Next." The next screen displays your choices. Click "Finish" to assign a partition letter to your unallocated disk space.

References

• Microsoft: Create and Format a Hard Disk Partition (To create and format a partition (volume))