What is Disk Management?
Disk Management is a Microsoft Windows utility first introduced in Windows XP as a
replacement for the fdisk command. It enables you to view and manage hard disks that
installed in the computer as well as the partitions associated with those drives.
You can initialize disks, create volumes, format volumes as FAT32 or NTFS file
systems, etc with this tool. Many people must be familiar with the earlier version
of Disk Management. Anyway, some new features are added since the appearance of
Windows 7.
Extend and shrink volumes: Shrink a volume to get some
unallocated space which can be used to create or extend another one.
Simpler partition creation: You’re able to choose whether to
create a basic, spanned or striped partition directly.
Convert disk: If you add more than 4 partitions to a basic
disk, it will prompt you to convert the disk to dynamic or GPT (GUID partition
table) style.
How to open Disk Management?
There’s no shortcut to Disk Management in the Windows start menu or on the desktop
because it's not a program in the same sense as most of other software. So here
will display several ways to open Disk Management in Windows PC systems.
● Through Computer Management.
Step 1: Right click Computer →Manage.

Step 2: Choose Disk Management on the left.

● Via Run
Step 1: PressWindows+R.
Step 2: Type diskmgmt.msc → OK.

● By Command Prompt
Step 1: Click start menu → input cmd in the search
box → Enter.
Step 2: Type diskmgmt → Enter.

● From Control Panel
Step 1: Click start menu → Control Panel.
Step 2: Select System and Security.

Note: System and Security is only found in Windows 10/8/7. In
Windows Vista it’s calledSystem and Maintenance while Performance
and Maintenance in Windows XP.
Step 3: Under Administrative Tools, click the option as shown below.
That’s it!

By the way, if you’re using Windows 10 or Windows 8, just right click the Start
button then choose Disk Management option to open the same.
Generally, among these methods, there should be at least one that suits you.
A better disk management tool
As extending and shrinking volumes are often used, many users may find these two
options greyed out in Disk Management sometimes. Why? Actually, some limitations
exist in Windows built-in Disk Management. For example, if you increase the size of
a partition, you can only use the unallocated space next to it and just on
the right side. But the feature "Shrink Volume" always makes
the unallocated space locates behind the volume you shrink. Therefore, in many
cases, you have to delete a partition before you can extend one. What's
worse,you can't shrink a volume beyond the point where any unmovable
files are located. Thus, it seems that you need hire a better disk
management tool.
AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard Editionis a free disk partition management software which comes with a lot of powerful
functions that enables you to control hard disks and partitions easily.

With the concise main interface, it’s convenient for you to view statues of every
partition. Many utilities like Resize
Partition, Merge
Partitions, etc break the limitations that Windows built-in Disk Management
has. Besides, most operations can be completed simply by a few of clicks without
losing data!