FORUM

With that warning given, let me give some examples of why you would want to delete a partition. Lets say that you have a 60 GB hard drive in your computer that was originally partitioned into a 20 GB partition and a 40 GB partition. The only way to do that would be to delete both of the existing partitions and recreate a new one using all the available space. Finally press the Next button and you will come to a summary screen. Review how the partition will be created, and if you are satisfied, press the Finish button to complete the creation and formatting of your new hard disk partition.

Now you can use that drive to start storing your data. At the following screen, determine if you need a primary or extended partition. For more information about these partitions you can read our partition tutorial listed above.

WD external HD 1TB has red arrow in the disk management

(Even if you are paying an expert recovery company they can't give you a guarantee). Right-click on the partition you would like to delete and choose the Delete Partition option. When the Computer Management screen opens, click on the Disk Management option under the Storage category. You will now be presented with a wizard as to how you would like the partition to be created. At the first screen press Next.

In this step you will determine how you would like the new partition to be formatted. For the most part you are advised to use the NTFS file system. If you need a file system that can be readable by older operating systems like DOS, Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows ME, then you should instead choose the FAT32 file system. File duplication like you describe can be common when recovering files that have been deleted, particularly files that have been modified many times. Recovery software is always somewhat of a last ditch attempt option and results cannot be guaranteed.

How to partition and format a hard disk in Windows

At the next screen select the drive letter you would like assigned to it, Webroughtbeer or use the default one given. When done, press the Next button. The drive letter that you assign here will be how you access the partition later. In order to use a hard drive, or a portion of a hard drive, in Windows you need to first partition it and then format it. This process will then assign a drive letter to the partition allowing you to access it in order to use it to store and retrieve data. Eg.

A confirmation box will come up asking if you are sure you would like to continue. If you press the yes button, all data on this partition will be deleted. If you are sure about deleting this partition, press the Yes button.

Before you can partition a hard drive in Windows, you must have installed a new unused hard disk, deleted an existing partition, or have some unpartitioned space available on an existing drive. In the example in this tutorial I will take the unused space from one of my hard drives and partition/format it. The steps shown here will work whether you are working with a brand new hard drive, deleting an existing partition and reusing it, or partitioning available space on an existing hard drive. If you have existing partitions on your computer that you would like to delete in order to use its space for other purposes, then you first need to delete this partition. It is important to note that by deleting a partition you will lose all your data on that partition.

The partition will now be deleted and you can either create a new partition or exit the program. Right click on the space listed as unallocated.

To make a partition from the unused space you would do the following. This will present you with a screen similar to the one below. Of course we all know that recovery is no substitue for having a backup. But I guess that we all have some data that we don't/haven't backed up for various reasons. If the data is truly considered valuable/necessary...my suggestion would be to contact a reliable data-recovery service. I have employed this procedure once but generally I have come to backing up as the best protection method I have employed.

Most people will be fine selecting Primary Partition. Select Primary Partition and press Next. It has been close to 5-10 years since I tried Recuva and other data-recovery software, so I have no opinion on any of these because my knowledge/experience level is too dated. I've tried a few and free Recuva did better than the others, but it did not recover everything, and it was a mess with lots of duplication. In my case, I had accidentally formatted the wrong drive, which was my storage for files I had moved off my PC.