Windows 10: Help with partitions after SSD upgrade

After a clean install of win10, I installed a new SSD on my desktop PC by using macrium reflect to clone the HDD onto the SDD. The computer now boots from the SSD properly, and I use the HDD as a data drive and the default location for libraries (documents, music, pics etc).

After cloning the HDD, there are now some partitions with drive letters on the SSD that did not appear before, as well as a recovery partition (Dell original).




For some reason the recovery partition shows a drive letter (F*Smile in windows explorer and I can access it. However in Disk Management there is no drive letter and I can't do anything with it. Since I can't go back to Windows 7 at this point I have no need of that recovery partition so I'd like to recover the disk space, but I don't know how since I can't do anything with it in Disk Management.

Second, as you can see in the screenshot there are three other partitions on the primary SSD (disk 1): System (G*Smile, Windows (C*Smile, and an unnamed 450mb recovery partition. I believe all of those are necessary partitions, but what I don't understand is why the "System" partition is assigned a drive letter and accessible via windows explorer. In my other Win10 PC's those partitions don't show up in explorer, just in Disk Management.

I'm afraid sometime down the road I'm going to bork my system by messing with the System (G*Smile drive in explorer.

So...
1. How do I use the Recovery partition space?
2. How do I get rid of drive letter G: but retain all the necessary windows partitions?

:)

 

Windows 10 couldn't be installed We couldn't update the system reserved partition

Ok I now understand the source of the problem - the upgrade to windows 10 pro was not the upgrade from windows 7 but the Nov 2015 update to my existing windows 10 pro.

I tried to use the minitool to resize the partition but it ended up wiping both partitions.

I've re-installed from the original media and I notice that it automatically created a new partition that is 450MB and is after the main Win 10 partition. The original install made the partition 100MB and placed it before the partition created which is
why I lost everything on C drive when I tried to resize the partitions.

So this problem has been resolved and the Nov patch/upgrade was installed correctly this time.

I'm still reinstalling applications, and trying to reconstruct data that was lost when the SSD drive resizing of the partitions failed.

Thank you for your help and the last reply , unfortunately received after my drive was wiped, was very helpful.

 

Win 10 won't boot from SSD after HDD removal nor after HDD return. Need expert help

Hi all the good people!

Need help. as the title says, cannot boot from SSD after I removed the HDD, which also had win 10 installed. I was running the dual boot and always chose the win 10 installed on ssd.

Later I removed the HDD and it stopped booting from SSD, however even after I returned the HDD, still it won't boot from SSD. Can still boot from hhd, but that's not what I want. disk part shows 2 partitions on SSD:

Partition 1: type reserved 128 MB was a msr partition, but I formatted to fat32

Partition 2: type system 238 GB. When booting from HDD in disk manage this ssd partition shows as efi system partition.

I would like to boot from SSD ideally if not possible, at least be able to accesses data on ssd when booting from HDD and save data I need, but since it shows as efi system it doesn't have a letter assigned and I cannot assign it manually neither.

Any hope for me?

Thanks!

Victor

 

Install MiniTool Partition Wizard Free.
Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Free

Delete the 11+GB Recovery Partition
MOVE the 150 MB System partition to the front of the disk. Change drive letter for it to none.
RESIZE the Windows partition to fill the empty space that will be created in front of it.
Hit apply. MiniTool will tell you that it needs to restart in order to resize the Windows partition, let it restart and do it's thing.

 

Thanks. I'll give it a try later as I can't restart my computer for the time being.

 

Worked like a charm, thanks so much.

 

Glad to hear it!

 

It is a widely-encountered issue with drives, obtained by cloning. This specific symptom - no drive letter in Disk Manager, yet a drive letter in File Explorer - is a signature trait of this problem.

Unfortunately, drives with this issue usually fail to accept major Windows updates (like 1511 and such).

Apparently, this is also an artifact of cloning.

But what is that "System" partition anyway? Windows installer does not assign names to hidden partitions. Is that "System" partition something that existed on your drive before cloning?

 

I have no idea. I do think it was there before the cloning, but I have since wiped the original drive so I don't know for sure.

 

The 150MB "System" or "System Reserved" partition is created by Windows and contains the boot files. If this partition is deleted, the computer will not boot until the boot files are recreated on another partition. On UEFI systems, this partition will be labelled "EFI" and will be FAT32 instead of NTFS. If you want to see what is on this partition, right click on it in MiniTool Partition Wizard and select Explore.

The 450MB recovery partition is also created by Windows. It contains the Windows Recovery Environment (WindowsRE) which is activated, among other ways, by holding down shift while clicking Restart from the power icon. This partition only contains the Recovery and Troubleshooting menus - it does not contain the image files needed to actually restore Windows. Windows 10 uses files contained in the WinSxS to reset Windows. This recovery partition can also be explored inside MiniTool Partition Wizard. This recovery partition can be deleted as well - but then there would be no built-in recovery and troubleshooting menu available and the computer would have to be booted from a Windows 10 install media to access those menus.

The big recovery partition deleted by the OP contained the image files needed to restore the factory software. Windows 7 and Windows 8 contained image files in the recovery partition instead of WinSxS.