How can I partition a 6TB HDD in Win 10?

I have a new system running under Win 10 on which I want to use an SSD as the boot drive with all my s/w and a WD 6TB Black HDD for my data. However, when I format the 6TB drive it shows up as two unallocated segments, one of 2048.00 GB and the other with 3541.03 GB. The smaller one is available for a simple partition under Win 10 Disk Management, but actions for the larger one are all greyed out. When I make a simple partition in the smaller one the option to extend the partition is greyed out. Does anyone know the secret to using the full 6TB under Windows 10?

topgundcp said:

You need to initialize the disk as GPT disk type. MBR disk type only allows to create partition of 2TB max.

Thanks to you and JohnC. I should have thought of that myself. One reason I didn't may be because Disk Management shows no option to convert to GPT. I wonder whether this could be because I have the "home" Win 10 rather than the "pro". Any further suggestions?

woneil said:

Thanks to you and JohnC. I should have thought of that myself. One reason I didn't may be because Disk Management shows no option to convert to GPT. I wonder whether this could be because I have the "home" Win 10 rather than the "pro". Any further suggestions?

MiniTool Partition Wizard Free:
Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Free

You can also do it via diskpart commands, but I would have to look that up. MiniTool partition wizard won't destroy any data already on the drive, if you have data on it.

Yes thanks, I'd already remembered about Diskpart and used it successfully to convert to GPT, after which Disk Management made me a 5.6TB primary partition without any problem. Diskpart is worth knowing about, see DiskPart Command-Line Options for its commands. You can do most of this via Disk Management, but not all.