

If you're dead set on partitioning-or you're doing something that requires partitioning, like dual-booting your computer-then read on. If you don't have to partition your drive, consider the pros and cons before continuing. This is convenient, but can cause as many problems as it solves-like if you run out of space on one partition and have too much free space on the other. Similarly, partitioning allows you to allocate one portion of your drive to Windows itself, with another for all your music, videos, and other files-so they don't get deleted when you reinstall your operating system. If you want to encrypt files, for example, it may be easier to create a virtual disk with a program like VeraCrypt instead of partitioning-though partitioning allows you to use Windows' built-in BitLocker to encrypt an entire partition without third-party software.

Partitioning your drive seems convenient, but it isn't always the ideal solution to your problem. If you aren't using all the space on your C: drive, here's how to divide it into multiple partitions for other uses. This process is called partitioning your drive, and in fact, your drive is probably partitioned out of the box: the majority of the drive is occupied by the C: partition, but most PCs also have a small "Recovery" partition that can help repair your system if something goes wrong. It's actually easy to do, and all the necessary tools are built right into Windows.


