Windows 10: Remove pre-installed Win boot partition without formatting whole HDD?

I bought a new PC which only come with a 2TB HDD with Windows preinstalled. (also has a Windows recovery partition)

I decided to put in a 128gb SSD and installed Windows 10 on it.
I kept the 2TB HDD for storage or my documents and photos.

I made a 1TB partition, keeping the pre-installed Windows on 1 partition temporarily and my documents on the other partition (Reason I kept the Windows boot was just in case something went wrong when I installed the SSD).

Now that this was done and the SSD boot is fine, I want to get rid of the 1TB partition with the preinstalled Windows boot and incorporate this with the other partition into a total 2TB. (My question does not relate to the ‘recovery partition’ – I am happy to keep that).

I can’t format the whole drive as I will lose my other data files.
If I remove the partition where the pre-installed Windows boot is, how do I then allocate this space back into my other partition, effectively resulting in no partition?I bought a new PC which only come with a 2TB HDD with Windows preinstalled. (also has a Windows recovery partition)

I decided to put in a 128gb SSD and installed Windows 10 on it.
I kept the 2TB HDD for storage or my documents and photos. I made a 1TB partition, keeping the pre-installed Windows on 1 partition temporarily and my documents on the other partition (Reason I kept the Windows boot was just in case something went wrong when I installed the SSD).

Now that this was done and the SSD boot is fine, I want to get rid of the 1TB partition with the preinstalled Windows boot and incorporate this with the other partition into a total 2TB. (My question does not relate to the ‘recovery partition’ – I am happy to keep that).

I can’t format the whole drive as I will lose my other data files.

If I remove the partition where the pre-installed Windows boot is, how do I then allocate this space back into my other partition, effectively resulting in no partition?

:)

 

Installing Windows 10 on multi-boot system.

So the USB flash drive install would be better than cd-rom boot? I'll have to check if I can boot from USB drive on my system.

I've already got a formatted but otherwise empty partition to install Win 10 into. I tried starting it from Win 7, but it was taking forever and doing all sorts of file copy stuff, so I aborted it and did an image restore of C: (boot partition) and N: (my
Win 7 Pro) partition.

My goal is to clean install Win 10 (not update), on a fresh partition, T:, and without it changed the partition letter from T: to C: and removing C: from the boot drive.

 

Installing Windows 10 on multi-boot system.

It was expensive, but I'm finally able to install Win 10 onto a partition without it changing the partition letter to C:. I bought a second retail version of Win 7 Pro in order to do this.

First I did a system image backup of Win 7 so I could restore my system back it's pre-Win 10 state.

I booted into Win XP X64 and then ran Win 7 setup.exe from Win XP X64 for the second copy of Win 7 Pro that I purchased. This let me specify the partition by letter, and Win 7 did not change the drive letter (I mentioned this previously). After installing
Win 7 on the new partition and activating it, I then ran Win 10 setup from the newly installed Win 7 which did an update install and it did not change the partition letter.

With the now slower multi-boot sequence and all of the snooping by Win 10, I haven't decided if I will switch to Win 10 yet, so I did a system image backup of Win 10 then restored the Win 7 system image backup to restore my system to it's pre-Win 10 state.

What would have been nice would be the ability to do a "clean" install of Win 10 starting from Win 7 so I can specify the partition by letter, similar to the Win XP X64 / Win 7 clean install to a partition by letter.

 

Use MiniTool Partition Wizard Free:
Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Free

 

Thanks for the reply. I will try that.

Wont the inbuilt Windows Disk Management achieve a similar outcome?

 

Using windows Disk management to work on partitions is a PITA, use Partition Wizard as suggested.

I think AOMEI is great too.

AOMEI Partition Assistant: Partition Software & Disk Manager for PC, Laptop and Server

 

great - thanks for the advice