What is Disk Management?
Disk Management is an extension of the Microsoft Management Console that allows full management of the disk-based hardware recognized by Windows.
What is Disk Management Used For?
Disk Management is used to manage the drives installed in a computer – like hard disk drives (internal and external), optical disk drives, and flash drives.
Disk Management can be used to partition drives, format drives, assign drive letters, and much more.
How To Access Disk Management
The most common way to access Disk Management is via Computer Management:
How To Access Disk Management in Windows.
Disk Management can be opened in various Ways.
If you open up the search box in Windows and open diskmgmt.msc this will open the following screen. Alternatively if you right click on My Computer / This PC, this will vary depending on your operating system and then go to Manage this will open the Computer Management Screen and Under the storage screen you will be able to access disk management.
How To Use Disk Management
Disk Management has two main sections – a top and a bottom:
- The bottom section of Disk Management contains a graphical representation of the physical drives installed in the computer.
- The top section of Disk Management contains a list of all the partitions, formatted or not, that Windows recognizes.
Performing certain actions on the drives or partitions make them available or unavailable to Windows and configures them to be used by Windows in certain ways.
Here are some common things that you can do in Disk Management:
- Partition a Drive
- Format a Drive
- Change a Drive’s Letter
- Shrink a Partition
- Delete a Partition
- Change a Drive’s File System
If you make any Changes Be cafeful as all changes cannot be reversed.
Disk Management Availability
Disk Management is available in most versions of Microsoft Windows including Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows 2000.
Note: Even though Disk Management is available in multiple Windows operating systems, some small differences in the utility do exist from one Windows version to the next.