Windows 10 is one of the most popular Operating systems from Microsoft. Upon its release, it got a positive response from users across the world and they were impressed with new features that were added from its predecessor, Windows 8.
Installing an Operating system is pretty simple. Insert your bootable drive containing Windows 10 into your system. Follow the wizard for the complete installation process. During the installation, Windows 10 prompts you to select a partition. On most days, installation completes without any glitches.
There are times, however, when you get an error message “We couldn’t create a new partition or locate an existing one”.
If you encountered this error when trying to install Windows 7, 8 or 10, read on for the solutions to fix this error.
- Disconnect all your additional hard drives
- Disconnect all hard drives except your primary hard drive where Windows is installed.
- After disconnection, try installing Windows again and see if you can go ahead with the normal installation process.
- If there are other drives such as your USB drives or memory cards that are connected to the system, Windows might confuse these drives for regular hard drives. Disconnect these drives as well and try to install Windows again.
- Make the Partition active
In order to fix the above error, you should set the desired partition as primary. In fact, the partition you are trying to install Windows on, might not be active.
The partition can be made active using a diskpart tool.
- Insert bootable drive containing Windows 10 to your system.
- On the installation screen, click Repair your computer.
- Now click Troubleshooting -> Advanced Tools -> Command Prompt.
- Once Command Prompt window opens, type diskpart and hit enter.
- Diskpart utility now opens to make the partition active.
- Type list disk to list all the disks on your system.
- Now select the disk where you want to install Windows in.
- If the disk number is 0, type select disk 0 to select the disk.
- Type clean and hit Enter to clean the selected disk.
- Type create partition primary to make the disk primary.
- Now type active to activate the partition.
- Once the partition is active, type format fs NTFS quick to format in NTFS file system.
- Type assign and hit Enter to assign the disk.
- Type exit twice to close diskpart utility and command prompt.
- Once Command prompt is closed, restart your system and try installing Windows again.
- Set your hard drive as the first boot device
If you intend to install Windows from your USB drive, you should set it as the first boot device in BIOS.
During installation of your Operating system, Windows can mistakenly identify your USB drive as a hard drive. To overcome this, just set your hard drive as first boot device from BIOS.
- After selecting your hard drive as the first boot device, connect your bootable USB flash drive and restart your system.
- While the computer is booting, press F10, F11 OR F12 repeatedly and select your USB drive as a boot device.
- Now the installation process should proceed without any hassles.
- Convert partition to GPT format
You can solve the above error by converting your MBR (Master Boot Record) partition to GPT (GUID Partition Table).
MBR partitions only work with drives that are less than 2 TB in size.
GPT doesn’t have any limitations. Note that conversion of MBR to GPT will erase all your data. Take a backup before going for this conversion.
- Click on Windows Type command prompt in the search bar and hit Enter.
- Now type diskpart and hit Enter
- Type list disk.
- Enter select disk Y. You can replace Y with the number that matches your hard drive. Be careful to select the right drive.
- Type clean and hit Enter. This process clears your hard drive of all data.
- Type convert gpt and hit Enter.
Recover data using Hi5 Partition Recovery
If you lost data by mistake or during conversion from one file system to another, you can recover it using Hi5 Partition Recovery software.
If your partition was unallocated when trying to install your Operating system, there is no need to worry. Hi5 Partition Recovery tool shows you in few simple steps on how to restore unallocated partition on your system.
It supports recovery from all kinds of hard drives and arrays. You can also recover data after formatting your drive to a different partition. The data recovery tool also performs lost or deleted partition recovery.
The user interface is pretty easy to use, enabling you to recover data by following some simple steps.
