Free to Set Active Partition in Windows 11/10/7/Server [3 Ways]

What Is Active Partition?

An active partition refers to the partition on a hard drive which contains the operating system and all related files to boot your computer. On all Windows computer, an active partition is usually known as the system partition C drive by default.
Sometimes, you may want to set another partition as active partition. This article will share all methods to set active partition on Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8 and Windows 10/11/server.

Something You Should Know before Set Active Partition

Before setting active partition on any computer, you should pay attention to following points in case of leading your computer to be unbootable after setting active partition:

1. You can only set one active partition on a hard drive on your computer. If there is an existing active partition, the original active partition will become inactive after setting a new active partition. If there are two or more hard drives on your computer, you can set an active partition on each disk, but only the active partition on the first hard drive can start up on your computer.

2. You can only set a primary partition as active partition. A logical drive or extended partition cannot be set as active partition. Otherwise, the computer may fail to start after changing the active partition.

3. The partition you want to set as active partition should contain boot files for the boot of Windows operating system. If you set a partition which does not contain boot sector and files as active partition, you may be unable to boot Windows OS and access your computer normally.

3 Free Methods to Set Active Partition in Windows

Knowing all points above, you can set an active partition in Windows operating system with the following methods:

Method1: Disk Management to Set Active Partition on Windows XP-11

This method can be used in Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10 to set active partition. You can follow the steps below:

Step1. Open Disk Management on your computer

==> There are different methods to open Disk Management under Windows operating system, please refer to Disk Management resources at the end of this article to learn how to access Disk Management in different Windows platform

Step2. Right click the partition you want to set as active partition and select Mark Partition as Active

Tip: Windows XP Disk Management does not have the ability to set partition as active, so you may need to use other method if you want to set an active partition on Windows XP.

Method2: CMD Diskpart to Mark Active Partition on Windows

You can run Command Prompt diskpart to mark a partition as active on Windows computer by following the guide below:

Step1. Type Diskpart after running Command Prompt on your computer

==>> Please refer to this page to get methods to access Command Line: How to access Command Prompt

Step2. Type list disk and then type select disk 0 (0 refers to the disk number)

Step3. Type list partition and then type select partition x (x refers to the partition that you want to set as active)

Step4. Type active

Free to Mark Active Partition with Partition Software

In addition to the methods mentioned above, you can use partition software IM-Magic Partition Resizer to mark active partition on your computer by following the steps below:

Step1. Right click the partition that you want to set mark as active partition and select "Set Active" option.

Step2. Confirm to mark the selected partition as active and then click "Apply Changes" button.