Free/Best Windows 11 Disk Management Tool

by John, Updated on: September 26, 2022

There are many disk management operations to do in Windows 11 computer. For example: C drive becomes full, so you need to add free space to C drive from other partition to expand it. To a brand new disk, you need to initialize it and then create/format partition on it. You may also need to convert disk partition type, copy disk partition, etc. Therefore, a reliable disk management tool is very important to help manage Windows computer. This article introduces native Disk Management in Windows 11 and best free disk manager for Windows 11/10.

How to open Disk Management in Windows 11

There are 2 easy ways to open Disk Management in Windows 11/10 computer:

  1. Press Windows + X keys together (or right click Windows logo), and then click Disk Management in the list.
  2. Press Windows + R keys together, type diskmgmt.msc and press Enter.

Right click any volume or the front of a disk, you'll see all options. Unavailable options are greyed out. Some options can be enabled after making some changes with third party software.

Ability of Windows 11 Disk Management tool

  • Windows 11 Disk Management can convert basic disk to dynamic without losing data, but it cannot convert dynamic disk back to basic without data loss.
  • To convert disk between MBR and GPT with Disk Management, you must delete all partitions on it in advance.

Options to an allocated partition:

Disk Management

  1. Open root directory of selected partition
  2. Mark partition as Active
  3. Change drive letter and path
  4. Format partition
  5. Shrink volume without losing data (in most cases).
  6. Extend volume with Unallocated space behind it.
  7. Delete partition
  8. Add mirror

If you select Add Mirror, there should be 2 disks and both will be converted to dynamic.

Shortages comparing with free disk manager

Comparing with third party disk partition manager, there are 2 major shortages of Windows 11 Disk Management tool:

  1. Lack of many functions. Windows Disk Management can only do some basic operations, it cannot convert partition type, copy disk partition, wipe data, etc.
  2. Although there are "Extend Volume" and "Shrink Volume" functions, Disk Management cannot extend a partition by shrinking another one. Because "Extend Volume" only supports NTFS partition and only works when there's contiguous Unallocated space on the right. "Shrink Volume" cannot make such required Unallocated space.

Best free disk manager for Windows 11/10 

To manage disk partitions in Windows 11 computer, NIUBI Partition Editor is better choice. It has free edition for Windows 11/10/8/7/Vista/XP home computer users. To do any operations to a disk or partition, you just need to click, drag and drop.

Download the free edition, you'll see all storage devices with partition layout and other detailed information on the main window.

NIUBI Partition Editor

Similar with Windows native Disk Management, you'll see available options after right clicking any partition or the front of a disk. Unavailable operations are hidden automatically. As a professional disk management tool, NIUBI Partition Editor has much more options. Better than other disk manager for Windows 11/10, NIUBI has many advantages such as:

Watch the video guide how to use this free disk partition manager in your Windows 11/10/8/7 computer.

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