williamdry
New Member
- Messages
- 33
Hi All,
I want to format my external hard drive into two partitions so that I can use one of them as a recovery drive for my Windows PC and the other one for my personal data. I am using Windows 8.1.
It is a 1TB WD Elements hard drive currently formatted into one exFAT partition. It is about half full. I don't want to delete the partition and then create two new ones because I have nowhere to backup the files currently on the drive. So I want to shrink the existing partition and then create a new smaller partition but for some reason I can't do that in Windows Disk Management. When I right-click on the drive (E The option "shrink drive..." is grayed (as shown in the screenshot).
Does anybody know why this could be? When I right-click on my Windows (C drive this option is not grayed out. (I tried doing the same thing using Partition Wizard but I had the same problem - the "split" option, along with a whole lot of others, is grayed out).
Also, another strange thing which might help you to understand. In Partition Wizard, when I right-click on my external hard drive (E and click properties it shows that the hard drive is full (first screenshot) even though Windows File Explorer shows that it still has about 500GB of free space (second screenshot)
Why does Partition Wizard (and obviously Windows Disk Management as well) think that the disk is full?
Any help on this would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
William.
I want to format my external hard drive into two partitions so that I can use one of them as a recovery drive for my Windows PC and the other one for my personal data. I am using Windows 8.1.
It is a 1TB WD Elements hard drive currently formatted into one exFAT partition. It is about half full. I don't want to delete the partition and then create two new ones because I have nowhere to backup the files currently on the drive. So I want to shrink the existing partition and then create a new smaller partition but for some reason I can't do that in Windows Disk Management. When I right-click on the drive (E The option "shrink drive..." is grayed (as shown in the screenshot).
Does anybody know why this could be? When I right-click on my Windows (C drive this option is not grayed out. (I tried doing the same thing using Partition Wizard but I had the same problem - the "split" option, along with a whole lot of others, is grayed out).
Also, another strange thing which might help you to understand. In Partition Wizard, when I right-click on my external hard drive (E and click properties it shows that the hard drive is full (first screenshot) even though Windows File Explorer shows that it still has about 500GB of free space (second screenshot)
Why does Partition Wizard (and obviously Windows Disk Management as well) think that the disk is full?
Any help on this would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
William.
My Computer
System One
-
- OS
- Windows 8.1 Single Language 64-bit
- Computer type
- Laptop
- System Manufacturer/Model
- Dell Inspirion 3521-3829
- CPU
- Intel Pentium CPU 2117U @ 1.80GHz
- Memory
- RAM: 4.00GB
- Graphics Card(s)
- Intel HD
- Sound Card
- Realtek HD
- Screen Resolution
- Resolution: 1366x768 Refresh Rate: 60p Hz
- Hard Drives
- Internal hard-drive: 500GB
- Internet Speed
- D: 3.15Mbps U: 0.46Mbps
- Browser
- Google Chrome
- Antivirus
- avast! antivirus