Windows 10: Win 11 SSD Partition

Should I partition a 1 TB M.2 PCle NVMe SSD on a new Win 11 Dell Inspiron laptop?Specs: 11th Gen IntelR CoreTM i7-11390H @ 3.40GHz 2.92 GHz, 16gB RAM.

:)

 

Saving free space on SSD (Regarding multiple obligatory partitions on main drive)

Gerry Here just copy-paste some irrelevant response.

Well, **I've figured it out**. Here my solution (I Take no responsibility from any damage that might arise from this process, and I do not guarantee it to work for u.)

We'll assume u have 2 disks; SSD and HDD.

Also NOTE: I Work in a GPT-Disk partitioning scheme, I don't know if it's applicable on dos-style MBR partitioning.

General-methodology wich we are going to work with (or TL;DR).

• Delete all partitions on all drive
• Install Windows on the HDD Drive
• Install Windows on the SSD Drive (yes, twice!)
• Repartition the HDD to free up and reallocate as we wish (The only parition that HAVE to be there is the EUFI System (Fat) )
• After freeing up HDD space, move user folder to the HDD
• PROFIT

And in more detail:

THIS GUIDE ASSUME THIS IS A FRESH PC - THAT U DO NOT HAVE ANYTHING U NEED ON EITHER DISKS.

* - Asterisk, not a real step, just additional information

• Boot into windows 10 installation
• Clear ALL partitions on BOTH drives
• Let windows install itself onto the HDD, We'll call this installation win-hdd
  • There is no need to actually boot into this OS.
• Boot into windows 10 installation
• Let windows install itself onto the SSD. We'll call this installation win-ssd
  • *What would happen now, Is that windows detects the recovery and eufi partitions and does not need to create such additional partitions on your ssd. It would only create a 16MB windows reserved partition.
  • *Your boot partition would be hdd/eufi; But since windows detect it's own bootloader it would allow you to duel-boot between win-hdd and win-ssd(default)
• Optional: During windows-ssd first run wizard switch to audit mode (CTRL+SHIFT+F3)
  • *We would use audit mode to:
    • * Optional1: Repartition hdd
    • * Optional2: Change "Users" folder to the hdd.
    • * If u do not want to move Users folder, u can do 6.2 After win-ssd fully boots instead
  • Repartition hdd & move Users folder:
    • Using a 3rd party tool such as "MiniTool Partition Wizard" you can do the fallowing *as you wish*:
      • Delete win-hdd partition
      • Delete recovery-hdd partition
      • Delete windows reserved (16 mb) partition.
      • You can also later move the EUFI to the start of the hdd disk, if needed
      • Create new partition (free to use) on hdd.
      • Make sure to properly assign drive letters to all drive as u wish
      • Fallow
        this guide to relocate the User folder (Starting from Step 2)
• Boot into windows-ssd; If u do not know which one (int the OS selection screen) It's safe to assume that the automatically-selected one is the win-ssd.
• If u have not performed 6.2 Yet, this is the time to do that now.

GLHF.

 

Recovery Partition vs System Reserved Partition

Thanks for all the info guys.

Both original & target SSD's are listed as MBR as opposed to UEFI. I may have created a partition unknowingly in getting the original/new unformatted drive recognized, but I don't recall taking any steps that Windows did not step me through.

Not that an upgrade to WIN 10 Pro is contemplated, but I suspect that having no System Reserved partition will not allow that to happen, after seeing how the original WIN 10 upgrade created a problem for some WIN 7 users that had a smaller 100mb vs 500mb System Reserved partition.

 

W7 Hard drive partition issue

to get rid of that 100 meg windows partition that setup creates for you on a new install on a blank hdd:

- press shift+f10 when on the partition management screen in setup <-- this opens a command prompt
- diskpart <-- start the windows command line partition management tool
- list disk <--- list the installed hdds in this computer for the next step
- select disk 0 <- might have to replace 0 with the number of the correct disk
- clean <-- this will erase all data on the disk you selected one step up- dont use the wrong disk!
- create partition primary <- creates a primary partition taking up all space on the drive, adjust the command if necessary
- exit, exit to exit diskpart and the command prompt
- click refresh in partition manager and select your newly created partition and install to that