How to delete a drive partition on Windows 10

You can delete virtually any partition (except the ones that make up the Windows 10 installation), and in this guide, you’ll learn how to use three tools to accomplish this task.

On Windows 10, a partition (or volume) is a logical division of the space available on a physical storage drive with a specific file system and settings that the system presents to the user as a separate drive.

As a drive can contain many partitions, and sometimes you may need to organize them, Windows 10 includes several tools to make the process of deleting those easier to remove that you no longer need to make more space available to increase the size of another partition. Or you can also use the tools available to clean the storage to prepare it with different partition system and file system.

In this Windows 10 guide, we will walk you through the steps to delete a partition on an internal or external drive using disk management, PowerShell, and Command Prompt.

Warning : Using these instructions will erase all data stored inside the partition. If you have important files that you want to keep, it is recommended that you create a backup of that data before proceeding.

To delete a partition (or volume) with disk management, use these steps:

1. Open Start.
2. Research of disk management.
3. Select the drive with the partition you want to delete.
4. Right click (only) on the partition you want to delete and select the option Delete the volume.
5. Click on the Yes button to confirm that all data will be erased.

Once you have completed the steps, the partition and its contents will no longer be available on the drive making space available to extend another partition or format the drive with a new scheme.

On PowerShell, you have at least two different methods of removing a partition, including using the drive letter or the partition number with different commands.

Delete partition with assigned drive letter

To delete a partition that has a letter assigned, use the following steps:

1. Open Start.
2. Search PowerShell, clickright on the top result and select run as administrator option.
3. Type the following command to get a list of all available partitions and press Come in:
Get-Volume
4. Type the following command to delete the partition (and its contents) and press Come in:
Remove-Partition -DriveLetter PARTITION-LETTER
   In the command, be sure to replace “LETTER PARTITION” for the letter of the partition you want to delete. For example, this command deletes partition E:
Remove-Partition -DriveLetter E
5. Type Y and press sure Enter to confirm the deletion.

Once you have completed the steps, the partition will be deleted, and the space on the drive will show as unallocated.

Delete partition without drive letter assigned

To delete a partition that does not have a drive letter, use the following steps:

1. Open Start.
2. Search PowerShell, clickright on the top result and select run as administrator option.
3. Type the following command to get a list of all available drives and press Come in:
Get-Disk 
4. Type the following command to get a list of all partitions available on the drive and press Come in:
Get-Partition -DiskNumber DRIVE-NUMBER
   In the command, be sure to replace “DRIVE-NUMBER” for the number of drive with the partition you want to erase (see step # 3). For example, this command lists the partitions on drive 2:
Get-Partition -DiskNumber 2
5. Type the following command to delete the partition (and its contents) and press Come in:
   Remove-Partition -DiskNumber DRIVE-NUMBER -PartitionNumber PARTITION-NUMBER
   In the command, be sure to replace “DRIVE-NUMBER” and “PARTITION-NUMBER” for the number of drive and partition you want to remove. For example, this command deletes partition number 1 in drive 2:
   Remove-Partition -DiskNumber 1 -PartitionNumber 2
6. Type Y and press sure Enter to confirm the deletion. Once you have completed the steps, the command will wipe the hard drive partition that you specified in the command.

How to delete a partition using Command Prompt

You can also use the DiskPart command line with Command Prompt to delete a storage partition in at least two different ways.

Delete partition with volume control

To quickly delete a partition with the volume control, use these steps:

1. Open Start.
2. Search the command prompt,right click on the top result, and select run as administrator option.
3. Type the following command to start diskpart and press Come in:
   diskpart
4. Type the following command to get a list of all available volumes and press Come in:
list volume
5. Type the following command to select the volume you want to remove and press Come in:
   select volume VOLUME-NUMBER
   In the command, be sure to replace “VOLUME-LETTER” for the letter of the volume you want to remove. For example, this command deletes volume number 4:
select volume 4
6. Type the following command to remove the volume from the drive and press Enter:
delete volume

Once the steps are complete, the volume and its data will no longer be available on the disk.

Delete partition with partition command

To delete a specific storage partition with a variant of the DiskPart command, use these steps:

1. Open Start.
2. Search the command prompt,right click on the top result, and select run as administrator option.
3. Type the following command to start diskpart and press Come in:
   diskpart
4. Type the following command to get a list of all available drives and press Come in:
list disk
5. Type the following command to select the drive with the partition you want to delete and press Come in:
select disk DRIVE-NUMBER
   In the command, be sure to replace DRIVE-NUMBER for the drive number with the partition you want to delete (see step # 4). For example, this command selects disk number 2:
select disk 2
6. Type the following command to list all partitions available in the drive and press Come in:
list partition
7. Type the following command to select the partition you want to delete and press Come in:
select partition PARTITION-NUMBER
   In the command, be sure to replace “LETTER PARTITION” with the letter of the partition you want to delete. For example, this command deletes partition number 1:
select partition 1
8. Type the following command to delete the partition from the drive and press Come in:
delete partition

Once you have completed the steps, the partition will be wiped from the drive, making space available to create a new partition with a different file system or extend another volume.