Windows 10: partitions mess after installing Windows 10

Yes and yes.

 

THANKS! All seemed to work, except that D:, E:, and S: are now suddenly called Primary partitions instead of Logical as are F: and G:.

Is that anything to worry about, or is there a way to make them Logical?

And why did S: become Active? Anything to worry about there?

Here's the new Partition Grid...

 

Which partitioning program are you using? I prefer MiniTool Partition Wizard:
Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Free

Logical v. Primary:

MBR type disks, which is yours, can only have 4 primary partitions. The system partition the computer boots from must be a primary partition. In order to facility more than 4 partitions on a disk, they created extended partitions. MBR disks can only have 1 extended partition and it counts towards the total of 4 partitions on the disk.

Your disk 0 now has the maximum of four partitions on it. C:, D: and E: are primary partitions. F: and G: are actually two logical drives inside on extended partition. There are no real advantages to this, but there is one disadvantage. If you, for some reason, want to create another partition then it has to go inside the extended partition which contains the F: and G: logical drives. It cannot go outside the extended the partition because that would be more than 4 on the disk.

MiniTool Partition Wizard will convert the D: and E: partitions into logical drives and insert them into the extended partition, if you want. It's really your decision. I would go ahead and do it, because if a Windows upgrade (like coming out in January or February) wants to create a new partition for something like a recovery partition, then it will have a space available outside the extended partition to do it.

The S: drive being marked active may pose a problem if you want to do something with the partition on that disk. Remember when you tried to delete the SYSTEM partition and it gave you that warning? That's why, because it was marked as active. MiniTool Partition Wizard can turn off the active flag on that partition. There is also a command line function of diskpart that can turn it off too.

 

I was using the partition tools in Disk Management.

Per your suggestion, I've switched to MiniTool Partition Manager Free, and the new Partition Grid now looks like this:





S: is no longer Active.

D;, E:, F:, and G: are all now Logical.

Thank you.

Now, before I start changing the drive configuration, I should point out that C: is 943gb instead of the 400gb that I wanted because Disk Management claimed it could go no smaller due to unmoveable files (probably sys files). So, it has ample room to create nested partitions for rescue or other purposes within the C: area.

That way, I wouldn't have to fret about what happens to files I've already moved into D:, E:, F:, and G:.

Or...am I all wet?

 

You should be good to go. MiniTool Partition Wizard will let you shrink your C: drive further if you want to make the other partitions bigger.

 

Good! Your assistance has been a boon to me!

I guess the only worry is "if a Windows upgrade (like coming out in January or February) wants to create a new partition for something like a recovery partition, then it will have a space available outside the extended partition to do it."

I'll cross my fingers that Win will let me know in advance how much space is needed so I can shrink C and then add the new partition or just leave it as unallocated.

In my previous Win 10 Home, it set up a Drive J: at the end of my secondary HD for future recovery. I think it was 100 mb.
Now that I'm on Win 10 Professional, I guess the world has changed.

Again, many thanks for your gracious help.

 

A note on your comment...

When Win 10 Pro was first installed on my new Primary HD, it created an unallocated space of roughly 100mb at the end of the primary that my tech merged into C:

If I use MiniTool Partition Wizard to shrink C:, should I let it create a 100mb unallocated space and assume that will be enough for whatever is needed in case, as you said, "if a Windows upgrade (like coming out in January or February) wants to create a new partition for something like a recovery partition, then it will have a space available outside the extended partition to do it." Or...should I leave a larger unallocated space?

I always like to be on the safe side and I figure it's better to do this stuff at the outset rather than after my C: is loaded.

 

First, let's make sure you are on the latest build of Windows 10. Click on the start icon, type winver. Run the winver command. What build is shown? Is should be 14393.479. If it isn't, you might already have a problem getting updates.

If it is 14393.479, I would just leave things the way they are unless you want to shrink C: drive to add the space to your data partitions. When the next big upgrade comes out one of three things will happen:

1. It will just install and not change anything.
2. It will resize C: drive for you and create a recovery partition probably between your C: drive partition and your data partitions.
3. It will just fail.

Wait and see if #3 occurs or not and we can cross that bridge if it comes. At this point we don't know exactly what we would have to do to prevent it from happening. Your hard drive is not in the standard partition layout, but it may or may not cause a problem, and there is no sense in messing with it too much without knowing if it is going to be a problem or not.

More info:
BIOS/MBR-based hard drive partitions

 

As usual, your instructions are crystal clear and I appreciate that.

Yes, it seems that I have the right winver.





I'm hoping your option 1 or 2 occurs.

So at this point, I'll probably leave everything as is and await MM (Microsoft Mayhem).

Thank you once again, Commander.