Windows 10: Do I need this partition?

Well, you don't have to be....it's just a little harder to get rid of, if you really want to. It will take two boot disks/USBs created by two different programs, Macrium Reflect Free and MiniTool Partition Wizard Free.

Or, using just MiniTool Partition Wizard you can certainly shrink the E: drive partition to only the size required, and add the free space to C: drive.

You can also, in Disk Management, remove the E: drive letter from the partition, but leave the partition there without a drive letter.

 

It's not worth shrinking, It's only 2 Gb
When I normally do my monthly image backup, Acronis always does a backup of "C" and "E" so I don't really want to hide the drive.
I might have to live with it.
Is it possible to delete it, then boot from a Windows 10 disk and recover the boot file?

 

I'm glad you noticed that. I wonder if it would work to delete E: then boot from a Windows 10 DVD and run Startup Repair?

 

Hi

You might want to install EasyBCD and see where your computer is booting from.
My guess is that when you did a clean install of Windows 10 it created it's own boot files on drive C:\ and is ignoring the files on drive E:\.

If EasyBCD shows a second option, i.e. drive E:\ you can remove the option there as long as it shows one for C:\.

If there are 2 boot options then it can be important to remove the 2nd option before removing the drive.

Mike

EasyBCD - NeoSmart Technologies

Get the free one at the bottom of the page.

 

Well I wiped drive "E" and my computer wouldn't start up.
Gave an error NTLDR is missing!!!!
I then booted from my Acronis disk, recovered "E" partition from an image and, phew!, it started up again.
Did a search using "Search Everything" and it came up with these files, not sure if it means anything:

 

I don't think so, because I think Windows will only allow a separate partition for the boot files. I've tried it. At one time I had only two partitions on my laptop - both Windows system partitions, one with build 10240 and one with Insider builds. Windows startup repair would not put the boot files on either system partition, but Macrium Reflect Rescue Disk did.

I have since deleted the Insider build partition and have done a clean Windows 10 install to the empty space. When I did that, it created the 350mb system reserved partition again for the boot files, despite the fact that they were already on the first operating system partition.

Told you so! *Cool And you've still got some hidden files on there.... you should be seeing a bcd file.

Now, create a Macrium Reflect Rescue DVD/USB. Delete the E: drive partition again. Boot to the Macrium Reflect Rescue DVD/USB and use the Startup repair utility. See what you end up with. I think it asks you where you want to put the boot files when they are created and you would point it to your big system partition.

Looks like he found out they were on the smaller E: drive partition.

 

Created a Macrium Reflect Rescue disk, deleted the E partition again, put the boot files in C as per the instructions, but it didn't work.
My computer was stuck on the boot up. Managed to recover everything using Acronis again.
I am going to leave it as it is!
It is very stressful not knowing if your computer will start or not, I need a drink!
Thanks for your help Guys!

 

Did your attempt go as described here: http://knowledgebase.macrium.com/dis...+boot+problems ?

It may be only a rhetorical question until or unless you recover and change your mind.*Biggrin

 

If you are wanting to get rid of all the recovery stuff you don't need on that partition and shrink it down to 350mb, when I get home, I'll post what is in my partition for booting and you can delete everything but what is required for booting.

 

Thanks NavyLCDR I appreciate that!

 

Yes Word Man, what I attempted certainly looks like the information in that link.
Thank you for your advise, but it didn't work for me.
Acronis has saved my bacon once again.

 

Hi

Your making this too complicated.

Did you install EasyBCD?

It will remove the entry for the drive E boot option and let you create one on Drive C.





It's easy to use, it's just a graphic way of editing the boot setup files, instead of doing it through the command window.

All you have to do is use Add New Entry to create a boot option for your Windows 10 install on C:\.

Move it to the top of the list and make sure it boots, then you can remove the second entry.

Windows won't try and boot to the E drive once the entry is removed from the list, but as long as it's there the computer won't boot if you remove the drive.

I found this out the hard way a long time ago.

Mike

 

NO.... that will only edit the boot files that are stored on the current E: drive boot partition. It will NOT move the boot files themselves to C: drive.

 

First, you have to enable viewing "protected operating system files" by UNCHECKING the box highlight below. Those options are from the Options menu of Windows Explorer:





Now when you look at your E: drive partition (system reserved partition) the hidden boot files will be visible:





My System Reserved partition has 311mb of boot files on it and it is sized to 350mb total, which is what a clean install of Windows 10 will create. I am not sure if the Recovery folder in mine is needed to boot or not - it's got some really tight permissions attached to it and the only way I could get into it was to make an image of the partition with Macrium Reflect Free, mount the image file and explore it that way

Now, in the past, I have been able to set my C: drive partition as the active partition, delete the system reserved partition, and use the Macrium Reflect Free rescue disk to recreate the boot files on my C: drive partition. Maybe it is a limitation of your bios that is keeping that from succeeding with your computer, but it worked on mine, in the past with Windows 10.

Merely editing the system bcd store with EasyBCD will only change where the boot files point to to find the operating system, but it won't change where the actual bcd store is physically located - which will still be in the system reserved partition.

If you don't want to see the system reserved partition as a drive letter - just go into disk management in Windows and remove the drive letter from it. I normally don't have a drive letter assigned to mine.

 

My boot files total 733Mb
The "boot.wim" file inside the sources folder is 328Mb alone
I'm a bit scared of deleting anything just is case it's needed.