Windows 10: My hard drive

I recently looked at Disk Management on my windows 10 and it confuses me, Ive attached a screen shot of what is there.
Questions and observations
The SYSTEM RESERVED bit 100mb I understand as a bit of the hard disk that the computer uses - but what for?
As for the others bits (partitions I suppose) what are they?
I'm assuming that C: is my hard disk but why do I have two recovery partitions and the size that they are is quite big.
These questions came up after I realised that I was running out of storage space on my hard disk, can one of the recovery partitions be deleted - if so how. What does the recovery feature actually do?

Nick

:)

 

making a USB hard drive my primary hard drive

The internal SATA connection is significantly faster than USB read/write speeds. I'm no expert so I can't say how this would slow down the OS.

 

making a USB hard drive my primary hard drive

Hi Tristan,

About your question, i wouldn't say that it is a good idea but you can actually do it. The best thing about what you are thinking is if ever your file is been corrupted, you do have a back-up on it.

Don't hesitate to get back to us if you have other concern.

 

Right click on the drive that you want to remove the files from. Click on format. Reformatting will remove all of the files from that drive. I removed the files from my recovery drive using that method.

 

I tried that, a little apprehensive because format deletes files and I cant afford to lost stuff on this hard disk. Right clicking on either of the recovery partitions shows a button for help, when it is clicked it opens a webpage about the Overview of Disk Management.

 

Just to put things in perspective.... even if you delete both recovery partitions and expanded your C: drive to fill the space - your free space would go from 4.38% free to 4.57% free. So... I would start thinking about a bigger hard drive or doing a lot of cleaning up of what you have on C: drive that is using so much space.

Also, only formatting the recovery partitions won't add any space to C: drive. You have to delete the partition and then extend your C: drive partition into the free space.

 

Ok but why do I have 2 recovery partitions?

 

One is probably from the manufacturer of the computer, and the other was probably created by Windows 10 (or some other Windows installation in the past). The 100 MB system reserved partition either does contain, or at one time contained the files required for booting.

 

Did you get this Windows 10 install via an upgrade?

I expect the 450 MB one is from prior OS and the upgrade would have carved out the 481 MB one for Win 10 from the tail end of your C: drive.

 

I was on w7 pro, joined the insider programs, got builds until now, am on the slow ring. One thing confuses me the sizes of these recovery partitions (481mb and 450mb) can this space be reclaimed and if it can how? The one recovery partition was probably originally created by the manufacturer and the other by windows 10. Does this mean that my hard disk is 100mb+464mb+481mb+450mb= 1495mb in size?

 

You're off by a factor of 1024 on your C: drive size: 464.75 GB

If you open an elevated (admin) cmd prompt and enter: reagentc /info , it will tell you which partition is the recovery partition being used by the active OS. I would assume the other is from prior OS and would only be needed it you rolled back the OS to the version that came from. As it is, if the 450 MB is the old one, it's not in a very convenient position to reclaim for C: drive. Again, considering that the size is roughly only 1/1024th the size of C:, is it worth it?

 

I'm trying to understand this, Id love to be right but I'm asking because I just don't know. The sizes in mb with the recovery partitions what do they mean? if those partitions arnt really that size why is that size in there?

 

They are that size: 481 MB and 450 MB. Don't let the 100% free fool you, it's a lie. Your C: drive is at 464.75 * 1024 = 475,904 MB.

Not sure why you're questioning the size of the recovery partitions?

 

Thanks for the help. I still don't understand it, perhaps somethings arnt meant to be understood.

 

Your hard drive partitions are being shown in two different units. C: drive is in Gigabytes. 1 Gigabyte is 1024 Megabytes. The other three partitions are being shown in Megabytes. So... sticking with Gigabytes.

System reserved is 100 MB / 1024 = .098 GB (Gigabytes)
C: Drive is 464.75 GB (Gigabytes)
First recovery is 481 MB / 1024 = .47 GB (Gigabytes)
2nd recovery is 450 MB / 1024 = .44 GB (Gigabytes)

Your hard drive is a total of 465.758 GB (Gigabytes) (probably sold as a 500 GB drive)

Thats why even if you reclaimed all of the space of the hard drive in the three other partitions, you would only gain 0.2% (.0002) free space.