To make the unallocated portion of a hard drive useful, you must create a new volume, one that’s recognized by Windows. You can create three types of volumes:
Step2: As we can see from the graphic view, there is enough unused space on D drive, so we’d like to allocate free space from D drive to C drive. Right-click D drive and select 'Allocate Free Space'. Step3: In the pop-up window, we could specify the free space to be allocated and the destination partition that the free space will be added to.
Simple: This typical hard drive is the type that most PC users have in Windows. If you’re shrinking a volume to create a new logical drive, such as a new drive F (or something), this option is the one you want.
Spanned: A spanned volume combines two or more unallocated volumes, even on separate physical hard drives, creating a new drive. The new drive combines all the space of the various unallocated volumes into a single volume.
Striped: Striped volumes are used to improve disk performance by spreading information between multiple disks. The net result is that several drives are used to quickly access information, which makes all disk operations faster. You need two or more unallocated chunks of disk space to set up a striped volume.
If you’re using the new volume to install another operating system on the PC, do not create another volume in Windows. Just leave the volume unallocated and let the other operating system’s installation program do its thing with the drive.
To allocate the unallocated space as a usable hard drive in Windows, follow these steps:
- Open the Disk Management console.
- Open the Control Panel.
- Open the Administrative Tools window.In Windows 7, choose System and Security and then choose Administrative Tools.In Windows Vista, choose System and Maintenance and then choose Administrative Tools.In Windows XP, open the Administrative Tools icon.
- Open the Computer Management icon.In Vista, click Continue or type the administrator’s password.
- Choose Disk Management.
- Right-click the unallocated volume.
- Choose New Simple Volume from the shortcut menu.The New Simple Volume Wizard appears.
- Click the Next button.
- Set the size of the new volume by using the Simple Volume Size in MB text box.The size is already preset to equal the entire disk capacity, which is recommended. If you need to set it to a smaller size, do so. The remaining space on the drive continues to be unallocated.
- Click the Next button.Windows lets you assign the drive a letter, or you can mount the drive on an NTFS volume as a folder. Or, you can do neither, depending on how you fill in the wizard.
- (Optional) Choose a letter for the new volume.My advice is to use the letter that’s provided.
- Click the Next button.
- Ensure the option Format This Volume with the Following Settings is chosen.
- Ensure that the NTFS format is chosen.
- Click the Next button.
- Click the Finish button to create the new volume.Windows prepares the disk by formatting it, laying down the tracks (or parking spaces) for the files. The amount of time taken to complete the operation depends on the size of the volume. Larger disk drives take longer to format.The display in the Disk Management console shows the drive being formatted; you can watch its progress in the Status column at the top center of the window. The drive isn’t assigned its new letter until after it’s formatted.
- When the operation is complete, you can close the Disk Management console.
The newly created disk drive appears in the Computer window. It’s immediately available for use.
The new volume may have less capacity than anticipated. The missing bytes are overhead, used by the formatting process.
You can't just add stuff to a drive forever, be it your main hard drive, the little flash drive in your pocket, or the giant external hard drive on your desk.
Even an arguably humongous 16 TB hard disk has a limit: 16 TB! As crazy as it sounds, it, too, can fill up. True, it'll take two million high quality photos to do it, but 'only' about 150 feature-length 4K movies.
Regardless, you get the idea — you may need to check the free space on a drive from time to time, especially if it starts to slow down or act funny, which is very often the not-so-clear consequence of too much stuff in a single place.
Unfortunately, especially in Windows operating systems, you don't get a friendly 'Hey, your hard drive is almost full!' warning. Instead, you get strange behavior, cryptic error messages, or serious problems like BSODs.
Fortunately, it's super easy to check how much free space you have on any of your drives, and it only takes a minute or two.
These steps work for Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP.
How to Check Free Hard Drive Space in Windows
- In Windows 10, select the Start button, followed by File Explorer (the small folder icon). If you don't see it, check under the Windows System folder or type file explorer into the search box.In Windows 8 or Windows 10, search for this pc and then select This PC.In Windows 7 or Windows Vista, select the Start button, followed by Computer.See What Version of Windows Do I Have? if you're not sure which you're using.
- On the left-hand side of File Explorer or Windows Explorer (depending on your version of Windows), make sure This PC, Computer, or My Computer is selected (again, based on your version of Windows).If you don't see anything on the left side of this screen, open the View menu and enable the Navigation pane. In older versions of Windows, go instead to Organize > Layout > Navigation Pane (7 and Vista), or View > Explorer Bar > Folders (XP).
- On the right-hand side, find the drive on which you want to know how much free space is left.In Windows 10 & 8, all storage devices are listed in the Devices and drives area. In Windows 7, Vista, and XP, Hard Disk Drives and Devices with Removable Storage are listed separately.
- In newer versions of Windows, you can see right under the drive listing how much free space is left on it, as well as the total size of the drive, in a format like this:If that's all you need to know then you're done! However, there is a bit more information about your drive's capacity buried just a bit deeper:
- To see more, right-click or tap-and-hold on the drive you want more storage space information on, and then choose Properties.
- In the General tab, you'll see all the important details about the storage device you're looking at, reported in bytes as well as rounded GB...free space included:
- Used space: This is the sum total of every piece of data on this device.
- Free space: This is the difference in the total formatted capacity of the device and the sum total of every piece of data being stored on it. This number indicates how much more storage you're allowed to fill.
- Capacity: This is the total formatted capacity of the drive.
- Also there is a pie graph, showing used vs free space on the drive, helpful for visualizing how much space you're using on this hard drive or other device.
You should now know exactly how much hard drive space is available on your computer. If you're running low, delete files you don't need or move them to a different hard drive that has more free space.
Another way to check free space is with Command Prompt. The results aren't as easy to read because the values are represented in bytes instead of gigabytes, but it's still possible with this command:
More About a Drive's Free Space in Windows
Microsoft has historically recommended that, to avoid problems, you should leave at least 100 MB of free space on whatever drive you have Windows installed to. However, because we've seen problems at levels higher than 100 MB, we have always recommended 10 percent free space instead.
To calculate this, just take the number next to Capacity from Step 6 and move the decimal to the left one space. For example, if the hard drive you're viewing has a total capacity of 80.0 GB, moving the decimal one space to the left makes it 8.0 GB, meaning that you shouldn't let the free space drop below that for that particular device.
In Windows 10, much more detail about what sorts of files are using up your drive's capacity can be found in Settings > System > Storage. Just choose a drive you're interested in and Windows will analyze it, breaking it down into categories like System & reserved, Temporary files, Apps & games, Pictures, and more.
There are also several free disk space analyzer tools you can download for Windows 10 and older versions of Windows, that'll show you which files and folders are occupying the most space.
In any version of Windows, choosing Disk Cleanup from the drive's properties (Step 6 above) will start the Disk Cleanup utility, a one-stop-shop for removing files that are no longer needed by Windows.