shrinking volume with OS on it

Howdy,

I've inherited a desktop with Windows 10 installed on a 1TB, single partition drive. For better or worse I belong to the "partitions" school, and would like to partition this physical drive into 2 or maybe even 3 logical partitions.

From what I've found thus far, it appears that this is possible. However, using the Windows 10 disk management tool, when i try to shrink the volume with the OS on it, i just get a blue spinning circle, and after a few minutes i grow weary and abort.

I also have minitool partition wizard installed, and it has similar (but somewhat more...vague?) functionality. I'd like to think it would give me some pretty strongly-worded warnings like: Are you sure you want to do this? You're going to wipe out your OS!!!

But before I shoot myself in the foot in a major way, I want to be certain that I can shrink the volume down with the OS on it, and then partition the remaining space.

Or should i just let sleeping dogs lie and use a 1TB drive as a 1 TB drive?!?

Thanks in advance, Neal

When you use the installed MiniTool Partition Wizard to shrink the OS partition, when you click apply it will reboot the computer into a command line and shrink the partition before the OS loads, then reboot again back into Windows.

AddRAM said:

What would be your purpose for partitioning the drive ?

For an HDD there are speed advantages in using two partitions, which is probably why many OEM's routinely format their PC's with a second Data partition. There's no advantage for SSDs though.

For optimal system performance, you need to place your OS and all of your most commonly used applications and files in the fastest areas on the drive. Accomplishing this goal involves creating a primary partition of the correct size on the drive and then installing your OS and apps there. You can partition and use the remainder of the drive, too, but you should store only infrequently accessed data there.

How to Partition Your Hard Drive to Optimize Performance | PCWorld