How to Allocate a Drive

Microsoft Windows operating systems include a number of tools that enable users to configure new storage drives. The operating system automatically recognizes new hard drives after they are installed and can display the physical hard drive health and the storage space available. However, the physical hard drive space cannot be used until the drive space is manually allocated. Utilities provided by the operating system handle user directed configurations necessary to allocate new hard drive space, including partitioning, formatting and assigning drive letters or folders as mounting points. Allocate hard drive storage space after installing a new hard drive in a computer using the Disk Management utility in Windows.

• 1

  Select the "Start" button in the lower left corner of the Windows 7 desktop, right-click "Computer" and click "Manage." Click the "Disk Management" item in left pane of the window that appears.

• 2

  Locate the new hard drive to be allocated from the list of drives displayed in the lower half of the "Disk Management" window. Right-click on the space labeled "Unallocated" and click "New simple volume" in the menu that appears.

• 3

  Select the "Next" button in the "New simple volume wizard" window and then enter the amount of space you wish to allocate to the first partition. Click the "Next" button. Select the drive letter drop-down box and click the drive letter you wish to allocate to the new partition. Click the "Next" button.

• 4

  Select the "Next" button to format the hard drive using the default NTFS file system. Select the "Finish" button. Windows will commence partitioning and formatting the hard drive.

• 5

  Repeat the procedure to allocate remaining unused hard drive space to additional partitions.