can't turn second unallocated partition into a simple volume

i just bought a 3TB external hard drive. i noticed it reads kind of slowly, especially when i first open it in explorer, so i decided to try to partition it.

i saw the tutorial on shrinking and partitioning hard drives on this forum and used the windows 7 disk manager to shrink and partition the hard drive. it partitioned it into 3 parts; one 1.3 TB, and two 700 GB partitions. the 1.3 TB one is the primary volume so i didn't mess with it. i successfully partitioned and formatted the first 700 GB partition into a simple, but for the second one the option for 'new simple volume' is greyed out.

Could you provide a screenshot of your Disk Management window? Need to see how your HD is partitioned so far before we can address the problem.

here you go.

FYI, i undid the successful partition of the second one.

From the looks of that screenshot, you ended up with an extended partition ( the one in the middle, after G: ) which is then followed by just plain unallocated space. I think - not quite sure on this - Windows won't let you create a primary partition following an extended one and that's what's happening.

The extended partition is still showing up as 'unallocated' because its purpose is to let you create one or more logical volumes within it - but right now there are none.

Just remove the extended partition to gain all the "plain" unallocated space back as a single block, and then you should be able to create a 2nd and 3rd primary partition without any problem. Hope this helps!

I see now you have two primary partitions plus unallocated space.

You shouldn't need any third-party partition editors or .iso images to boot from. Right now, you should be able to turn the unallocated space into a third primary partition in Disk Management without any problem.

Can you do this? Please let us know. If not, tell us exactly what the error message is Windows gives you.

when i right click the unallocated partition the option to create a simple volume is greyed out. the only selectable options are 'help' and 'properties.' also, windows doesn't give an error.

I'm not sure what the problem is then... I would recommend trying EASEUS Partition Master Home Edition.
It's a quick and simple install and runs right inside Windows, and it should let you do what Disk Management apparently won't. (Maybe DM can't deal with drives larger than 2TB?)

Free Download Magic Partition Manager freeware: EaseUS Partition Manager, Disk & Partition Copy and Partition Recovery Software.

i downloaded EASEUS Partition Master Home Edition and got it to create a new partition out of the one unallocated one.

thanks much guys!!