Curious about drives in Macrium

Scottyboy99 · 07 Sep 2016

I'm just wondering about all the small drives listed in Macrium. Is this normal to have all these 260, 128 mb and 450 mb listings? I have two hard drives, one SSD with Windows on (500 gb) and one secondary HD (3 TB). Drive letters C and H. Plus a Card reader internally built in and DVD drive. But I don't really understand why these extra ones. Macrium images them all just fine and everything works as expected but these just got me wondering why they are present.

Curious about drives in Macrium-capture.jpg

Steve C · 08 Sep 2016

These are partitions not drives. They are normal hidden partitions required for booting Windows and recovery. You have two recovery partitions at the end of drive 1 since you have probably upgraded from Windows 8.1? It is possible to delete the unused one if you really know what you are doing but the storage freed is minimal. You need to image all of these partitions to be able to recover Windows. You can use MiniTool Partition Wizard to explore the content of these hidden partitions.

For more information see https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/win...ive-partitions

Scottyboy99 · 08 Sep 2016

Thanks for the explanation. I guess I'll just leave it all alone since they are doing no harm. It all just looked strange. The machine was received from manufacturer with Windows 10 pre installed so I've never upgraded but maybe the extra recovery partition is a legacy of the two major Windows 10 updates that have happened since that time in November 2015 and the recent anniversary update.

Cliff S · 08 Sep 2016

@Scottyboy99, if you decide you do want to get rid of the extra unneeded partition, check out my post here, and a bit further down:
Can somebody help me on how to reconfigure boot loader in Windows 10? - Page 3 - Windows 10 Forums

Scottyboy99 · 08 Sep 2016

Thank you Cliff, that's much appreciated

Cliff S · 08 Sep 2016

Scottyboy99 said:

Thank you Cliff, that's much appreciated

You're welcome.:)
It's the easiest & safest way to do it, just a little time consuming.

Steve C · 08 Sep 2016

Cliff S said:

@Scottyboy99, if you decide you do want to get rid of the extra unneeded partition, check out my post here, and a bit further down:
Can somebody help me on how to reconfigure boot loader in Windows 10? - Page 3 - Windows 10 Forums

That would work, but an essential first step is to backup the PC first!

I have two recovery partitions at the end of the disk like the OP. I've used Minitool Partition Wizard (MPW) to explore these and I've worked out which is the old recovery partition. I then plan to delete the old recovery partition and use MPW to move the new recovery partition to the end of the drive and expand drive C to use the free space. I wish MS had a tool to sort out their old system partitions!