The AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard might be the best free partition manager Windows 10, 8, 7. It allows you to manage disk partitions more coveniently and flexibly, such as moving partition, cloning partition, merging partitions, formatting partitions, cloning disk, etc.
By
Emily
/ Last Updated February 26, 2021
When it comes to managing disk partitions in Windows 10, most users will turn to the Windows 10 built-in Disk Management tool. It is a system tool in Windows 10, 8, 7, XP. It is free and allows users to view disk information and perform several disk management operations, including initializing a disk, creating volume, formating volume, shrinking a volume, extending a volume, converting MBR to GPT/GPT to MBR, changing drive letter, and so on.
Although the inbuilt Windows 10 partition tool (Disk Management) comes with many features to help manage disk partitions in Windows PC, they have some significant restrictions, and it is not suitable for every circumstance. The following are some common situations where you cannot finish your disk partition managements via Disk Management.
Many users have met the issue that the “Extend Volume” grayed out when they try to extend a volume with unallocated space on the disk. That’s mainly because the “Extend Volume” can only work when the available unallocated space is adjacent to the right side of the volume you want to extend. Otherwise, this option would be grayed out and unclickable.
In this case, you have to delete an adjacent partition to have adjacent unallocated space, and extend a volume with it. But this way is not recommended since you will lose all the data on the partition. If the target partition is followed by adjacent unallocated space, but the “Extend Volume” still greyed out, it might because the partition is FAT32. The Disk Management can only shrink or extend the NTFS or RAW partition. Thus, you will need to convert FAT32 to NTFS.
For some reasons, you might need to convert the partition style from GPT to MBR, or MBR to GPT. However, the “Convert to GPT Disk” or “Convert to MBR Disk” option may be unclickable. The main reason shall be that the target disk you wil convert contains partitions and Disk Management can only convert an empty disk to GPT or MBR. So, to finish the conversion via the native free partition manager for Windows 10, it is necessary to delete all partitions on the disk first of all.
Note: this tool cannot convert system disk to MBR or GPT since the system partition cannot be deleted within Windows environment.
Above are two common restrictions of Disk Management. Besides, some users often find they cannot format a large drive (over 32GB) to FAT32 file system, cannot create a new simple volume for the “New Simple Volume greyed out”, etc.
Luckily, a powerful and free partition manager for Windows 10-AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard makes up those limitations. It can help you manage disk partitions with most ease and flexibility in Windows 10/8.1/8/7/Vista/XP. For example, it can extend both NTFS and FAT32 partition easily even if there is no adjacent unallocated space. Free download this partition Windows 10 manager and see how it extends a volume.
PS: here we take how to extend C drive with with non-adjacent unallocated space as an example. If there is no unallocated space available, you can shrink another partition to have one.
Step 1. Install and open this free partition manager. The main interface is shown in the following picture. Right-click the partition you need to extend, and choose "Merge Partitions".
Step 2. Tick the unallocated space and the C partition, and click "OK".
Step 3. In the main interface, choose "Apply" to save the change.
See? 3 Simple clicks can help get around the “Extend Volume” greyed out issue. Besides, it is able to convert a data disk to MBR or GPT without deleting any existing partitions.
Step 1. Right-click the disk and choose “Convert to GPT Disk” (or “Convert to MBR Disk”).
Step 2. Click on “Yes” to confirm your operation.
Step 3. Click “Apply” and then “Proceed” to commit the pending operation.
So, as the best free partition Windows 10 manager, the AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard can meets different requirements in disk management. Apart from the mentioned features, the free Windows 10 partition manager can also help you format as large as 2TB drive to FAT32, clone partition, clone hard disk, transfer OS between MBR disks, wipe HDD, etc. To experience more advanced features like “split partition”, “convert system disk to MBR or GPT”, “secure erase SSD”, “allocate free space from one partition to another”, you can upgrade to its Professional edition.
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