Windows 10: Extra partitions after SSD boot drive upgrade

I upgraded my SSD boot drive from a 128GB to Samsung 850 Pro 256GB. I used the Samsung Migration Tool as instructed. Now I seem to have an new FAT32 100MB partition, a new OTHER 16MB partition, a missing OTHER 128MB partition and a non functioning and I believe much smaller RECOVERY 450MB partition. Everything works except I can no longer reset Windows "internally". I have to use the ISO from the Windows Media Creation Tool.

Attached is a screen cap from Minitool. Can some of these new partitions be deleted? Is it possible to fix the recovery partition?

Thanks





:)

 

When upgrading from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10, update fails and I get 80070002-20009 error

So far, I am very happy my upgrade failed and had it succeeded, a number of my apps would no longer work.

With regards to upgrading Windows 8.1 to 10, what I found was making a clone of a drive somehow leaves off some critical info which in my case were the addition of 2 empty partitions for who knows why were created as they are not used. I cloned my traditional
system drive to an SSD and it mirrored the system drive. It would boot just fine in Windows 8.1 (after unplugging the original system master, then connecting it back after the first successful boot of the SSD). The configuration of the extra partitions do
not match what a fresh install of Windows 8.1 on a blank unpartitioned disk would. I found this by purchasing the upgrade from Microsoft and using it to install a clean copy on a disk with no partitions.

I also used the free upgrade to upgrade a Windows 8.1 VM on my MAC which has an SSD and it worked fine.

 

Two System Reserve Partitions

I have two hard drives on my computer, an SSD with my operating system (Windows 8.1 which I just successfully upgraded to Windows 10) and an hdd for additional storage. After upgrading to Windows 10 I noticed that I now have two System Reserve Partitions.
One partition is on the SSD and the other is on the hdd. Both contain bootmgr and similar files. The files on the hdd have newer file modified/created dates than those on the ssd System Reserve partition. If I set my BIOS to boot from the SSD I get the
blue screen message "no bcd found". If I set the BIOS to boot from the hdd it takes over a minute, but Windows 10 boots fine.

I'm guessing that the System Reserve partition on the hdd (storage hard drive) contains the boot files for Windows 10, but Windows 10 is not installed on that drive, it is installed on the SSD (which I think has the old Windows 8.1 boot files on its own
System Reserve partition).

I've given the two System Reserve partitions drive letters so that I can see the contents of the drives. Can I simply copy the contents of the newer System Reserve partition onto the older System Reserve partition so that Windows 10 will boot from the same
SSD that it is installed on?

Thanks for any suggestions,

Craig

 

Hi, Windows creates several partitions. Yours are typical of UEFI boot. The 450Mb Recovery supports automatic recovery and advanced troubleshooting. The 16Mb System partition is needed for your PC to boot.

Sure, you can delete them. And you could have a bricked PC.

By the way, make sure you have at least 500Mb unallocated space on C: for the next upgrade or in-place upgrade repair install.

A little research suggests this for reference: (should be 'introduction to', of course).
An Introduction of UEFI Secure Boot and Disk Partitions in Windows 10

 

Thanks. Do you know why I suddenly have a FAT32 partition? None of my other machines have one and this machine didn't have one before the upgrade. And any idea why the 450Mb Recovery that supports automatic recovery and advanced troubleshooting isn't working? For any of those options I have to use the ISO from Windows Media Creation Tool.

 

Hi, I don't know anything about that migration tool, and can't imagine how the partitions could have suddenly appeared if they weren't on your original disk.

Can you confirm that SHIFT left click Restart does not offer you a somewhat complex sequence of options via a choice of boot options to the Advance Troubleshooting menus? If the 450Mb Recovery partition isn't present or is inaccessible you will only see one option. What do you see?

You may have luck if you get Macrium Reflect's boot disk and try the repair feature. That attempts to fix issues with the boot record, however I can't say for sure it would fix issues with an inaccessible recovery partition.
Fixing Windows boot problems - KnowledgeBase - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase

One way to do that would be to
a. Create a disk image of your windows partition
b. Wipe the disk and install Win 10
c. replace the Windows partition by restoring the disk image
d. run startup repair.

There may be some other way...

The 100 Mb partition is normal for a UEFI system, not for legacy BIOS. Is yours UEFI? Or in fact is it legacy BIOS, but somehow you've ended up with the wrong partition structure?
(See article in previous post)

 

Incorrect info.

The 100MB EFI (FAT32) system partition is needed,containing Boot code/BCD, without it PC won't boot.

On every GPT disk there's an MSR (Microsoft Reserved partition) partition. For Windows 10 it is 16MB unformatted
For Data disk it is 128MB MSR unformatted partition.

The MSR partition is hidden from disk management but will display using diskpart command.

To get into Recovery environment, as stated above, try: SHIFT+Restart. If it does not work, Open Admin command prompt and type:
reagentc /info
and post the result