Windows 10: Too many Partitions on hard drive

Just a suggestion.
It appears you are using Disk partitions instead of using File Explorer.
Don't use Disk Management as a Windows 10 File Explorer.
I know of no good reason to have that many partitions on a drive.
I believe File Explorer will do what you need.

Jack

 

Thanks Jack.
I need to trim the disk and clone it.
I an just trying to determine what is safe to leave out when I do the clone.

Joe

 

Possibly but that's why lx07 posted about fixing the Recovery environment with reagentc.exe , there are other tutorials here on that, once you get that far , it will not effect or stop windows booting...

If you don't want to deal with that and have ALL you Data Backed Up ( be sure) then do a Clean install of Win 10 On a Cleaned Disk 0 and it will fix is as part of the new install of Win10.

Create Bootable USB Flash Drive to Install Windows 10 Installation Upgrade Tutorials

Clean Install Windows 10 Installation Upgrade Tutorials

You can use F12 during Windows installation and Clean the Disk before Installing windows , just be sure to get the Correct disk or disconnect the other disks during install if Possible.

Erase Disk using Diskpart Clean Command in Windows 10 Hardware Drivers Tutorials

KB

 

If it was my computer I would first go through every partition and save to a external drive what I wanted. (data, pictures, ect.)

Then I would do a Clean Install and let the Windows 10 do the partitioning when it installs. Then if you want a couple extra partitions for whatever you could add them to the drive.
I personally let Windows 10 own my 250 GB ssd. I do not make any more partitions.
Anything I want to save goes to a external drive. In my case I use Hot Swap bays.
Their are many options but I believe in keeping things clean and neat.
Their are many things with many tutorials on how to move things off of the "C" Windows 10 partition. I leave everything that Windows 10 installs on a Clean Install on the "C" partitions. Windows 10 know what it wants where.
Some members with lots of large games will install them on another drive. Some members with huge amounts of data will put the data on several other drives; all the time keeping Windows 10 clean and neat on it's own drive.

When you have several drives with things like 'data', 'pictures', 'movies', ect. you can access them using File Explorer as long as the drives are hooked to the computer in the proper fashion.

We have many members and some will do things a little different but chopping a drive with Windows 10 into a bunch of partition is not one I recommend.

Jack

 

Thanks for the advice and the Links.
I think I may have messed up the drive when I first took it out of the box.
I created D,E and F partitions.

One more question, since most of the partitions (Alignment, System etc. do not have a drive letter, how does Windows find a partition ?
Does Windows use some sort of serial number or partition ID number?







If Windows looks for partition #3 (or whatever) in a particular location on the drive for the recovery image, then it would be useless now.
If on the other hand it uses some other way of identifying the partition, the physical location on the drive should not matter.

In any event, Windows 8 was loaded when I got the PC and I upgraded to Windows 10. I suspect that if I were to restore the Dell image, I would end up with Windows 8. Not what I would want.
Windows is working just fine now.
From what I am seeing, the big problem is with a recovery.
I will have a serious look at merging back all the main partitions leaving the little ones or just cloning all except the 57 GB image backup and expand the other main partitions.
The thought of reinstalling all the Drivers and programs I have is a daunting task.
I know I will have to do that eventually.

Joe

 

Hi, as you can see from my post #2, partitions which are part of Windows but not meant to be accessible by file explorer do not have drive letters. That is how it should be, and they do not need drive letters.

To eventually test your Recovery partition, try booting to a command prompt, for example.

 

You won't have to do that if you follow a strategy like:

1) Use Macrium to make a complete image (not clone) of that disk to an external disk. Make sure you have a MR rescue media to boot from.

2) Do a clean install of Win10, using advanced options in the install routine to delete ALL partitions from the disk. Leave the disk completely unallocated and proceed with the Win10 install.

3) Now boot from your MR rescue media and restore ONLY your original Windows partition (from the external disk, which will include all those programs and user data you're concerned about reinstalling) to the C: (new Windows) partition on the newly partitioned disk.

4) If there are problems booting from your newly partitioned and Windows restored disk, reboot to the MR rescue environment and use the fix boot options.

5) You can then address reconfigure the WinRE pointer if necessary and desired from a command prompt.

6) You can then proceed with shrinking C: partition and recreating and restoring your other data partitions as you see fit. You could actually do all of this step from within Macrium via a restore and shrinking your C: partition on the fly, dragging and dropping D, E, F as part of a restore setup. Here is a link to Macrium instructions on doing a restore within the rescue environment, note that step 4 has a link to a more detailed look at resizing, dragging and dropping partitions on the fly: https://knowledgebase.macrium.com/di...e+Rescue+Media

 

Thanks.
I do have Macrium.
I am going to try and see if the restore drive is accessible.
I'll look in the Boot Options and see what is there.
Also, Dell recovery.

 

That PBR partition, if it is still useable via the normal (Dell) method, would revert you to the way it came from Dell, presumably Windows 8. Is that something you need to preserve?

If so, you could try it after you save in an image everything on the disk (all partitions). If the Dell factory restore succeeds, you can then take a separate image of that "out of the box" state to preserve it and then not have to worry about maintaining the PBR partition and all of the disk space if consumes.

That's what I did with my Dell laptop as soon as I got it almost 2 years ago.

 

I certainly don't want to go back to Windows 8.

Well, I tried several things.
I tried Shift+Restart and the only option was "Turn off your PC".
No Troubleshoot!!
I could not find a way to boot into Command prompt.
I used msconfig to boot into Safe mode and do the Shift+Restart without luck.
I figured that Safe Mode with Command prompt is just starting from Windows.
I will make the clone and see if it boots and works normally.

Dell Backup and restore only gave me the option of restoring my files.

I tried to create a recovery drive in Windows and I got this:







Can't imagine what files are missing.

Thanks again.
I'll post back when I succeed or fail.

Joe

 

I tried Shift+Restart and the only option was "Turn off your PC".

That means you cannot correctly access your Recovery partition.
At an admin command prompt type the command shown here and post the result




I'm going to bet the second line in yours (location) is blank, and it reports 'disabled' in the first.
Also a screenshot of your current partitions.

 

Hi,
I'm doing a clone on that Computer. It will be a while.

50% done

 

Wordman's Method with Macrium will work , ( you need the Macrium Rescue CD ) and if you run the Fixboot Option before Rebooting it will fix and replace the BDC File automatically.

However you need to restore more than just C: for a properly configured System Drive , this is what a Full Clean Install of Win10 would give you. The Recovery, EFI and MSR can even be imaged from another Computer , I have an Image of just them on an External for backup , just in case something gets corrupted, and it works...

KB

 

Just to clarify: clean install just preceding the restore of C: only will have already provided those other 3 partitions. You're simply overwriting the new clean C: with the original C: and all of those programs and data that it includes. Also, if there are any customizations whereby the OS/programs have been writing to or using the other data partitions (that OP originally created and may want to maintain), they'll be operational once the others are restored.

 

Yes that method works too , if you want Win10 to generate the 1st 3 partitions brand new but keep all your existing Data on C:\

KB