How To Resize, Shrink And Add A Drive To Windows 8 Or 8.1

Sometimes you need to resize, shrink or add a drive to Windows 8 or Windows 8.1. For example, if you want to create a dual-boot option on your Windows 8 or 8.1 PC, you need to have a free drive or partition. If you have not already one, you first must shrink your primary boot drive to get free drive space for the second boot drive using the Disk Management Utility program. Then you can add a new boot drive.

Here’s the detailed ‘How-to’ resize, shrink and add a new bootable drive to Windows 8 and Windows 8.1, especially for installing Windows 10 (Technical Preview) in dual-boot mode:

Note: Minimum requirement is a 20 GB free disk space for installing Windows 10 (technical preview). If you plan to install apps, the more space you can shrink, the better it is. My recommendation is a free disk space of at least 50 GB.

1. Start the Disk Management Utility of Windows 8 / 8.1. Press ‘Windows Key + R‘, type ‘diskmgmt.msc‘ into the Run dialog and press ‘Enter‘ to launch it.

   

2. Make a right mouse click on your C: drive and select ‘Shrink Volume…‘.

   

3. Enter the amount to shrink the C: drive in MB to define the size of your Windows 10 drive. Minimum requirement is a 20 GB free disk space for installing Windows 10 (technical preview). If you plan to install apps, the more space you can shrink, the better it is. Click ‘Next‘.

   

4. After the shrinking process had ended, a blockofunallocated space, roughly equal to the amount you shrunk, appears.

   

5. Make a right mouse click on the unallocated space and select ‘New Simple Volume‘.

   

6. The ‘New Simple Volume Wizard‘ appears. Click ‘Next‘.

   

7. Click ‘Next‘ to assign a drive letter. It doesn’t matter which letter you choose.

   

8. Select  ‘Format this volume with the following settings‘ and click ‘Next‘.

   

9. Click ‘Finish‘.

   

10. Now you got new partition / bootable drive!

    

Now you added a second bootable drive / partition to Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 by resizing / shrinking your primary partition using the Disk Management Utility program, e.g., for installing Windows 10 (Technical Preview) on your Windows PC in dual-boot mode. Another option to install Windows 10 (Technical Preview) is a virtual machine like VirtualBox.

Stay tuned! 😉