Windows 10 will get a new way to manage storage – but some people aren’t happy

(Image credit: Microsoft)

Windows 10’s latest preview build comes with one important fresh feature: a new disk management area within the operating system’s Settings panel.

Build 20197 is now out in the Dev Channel, and it introduces a new Manage Disks and Volumes screen under the Storage part of Settings (Settings > System > Storage).

In a blog post, Microsoft describes this new feature as a “modern experience built from the ground up with accessibility in mind”, and it features better integration with other new introductions for Windows 10 like Storage Spaces, compared to the current Disk Management MMC (Microsoft Management Console) snap-in.

The software giant notes that you can use the feature to view all manner of information on your disks, as well as to assign drive letters, and create/format volumes.

Windows 10 disk management

(Image credit: Microsoft)

At the moment, this is pretty rough and sparse looking in terms of the design and interface, and it has attracted some flak from testers as a result. Microsoft’s Brandon LeBlanc, who heads up the Windows Insider team, took to Twitter to remind us that this is very early work on the feature.

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Tweaks and fixes

As well as this disk management change, Microsoft made various other tweaks – including Alt+Tabbing with Edge tabs being limited to display five tabs at the most by default, which sounds sensible – and a bunch of the usual bug fixes.

The company also announced that the Your Phone app now lets you run Android apps directly on your Windows 10 desktop, at least if you have a supported phone from Samsung (fortunately, there are a fair few models supported).

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).