Partitions on laptop

topgundcp said:

Seriously I don't understand what you are trying to do. On GPT disk, you suppose to have 4 partitions and that's how it looks when you perform a fresh install of Windows 10.

And the OP has six partitions.

topgundcp said:

Seriously I don't understand what you are trying to do. On GPT disk, you suppose to have 4 partitions and that's how it looks when you perform a fresh install of Windows 10.

Just trying to get rid of old and unneeded stuff, minimize. Don't care how many partitions, just don't want Win 8 leftovers or manufacturer stuff

btw- Have Macrium reflect and fresh backup. Have Macrium boot media.

wreckwriter said:

Just trying to get rid of old and unneeded stuff, minimize.

wreckwriter said:

btw- Have Macrium reflect and fresh backup. Have Macrium boot media.

AWESOME! That's life saver!

Do you have, at a bare minimum, a bootable Windows 10 Install USB/DVD? I would create one before doing anything else. I would also highly recommend installing Macrium reflect free and creating a Macrium rescue USB/DVD too.

Macrium Reflect Free


The only use for the first 650mb might be to do a recovery from BIOS. I highly doubt that is what is for - and if you don't care about doing a recovery from bios (you can still always do recovery from a Windows install USB/DVD) even then you can delete it. It is more than likely a previous Windows 8 windows recovery environment which has been replaced by the Windows 10 RE in partition 5.

So, first step, using MiniTool Partition Wizard to delete the first 650mb partition and move the next system reserved FAT32 partition to the front of the disk. Computer should reboot fine.

Once you have the 650mb partition deleted and the FAT32 system reserved partition at the front of the disk, next is that pesky 128 mb reserved space. It's in the way and I don't know of a way to move it. It is only required if you are going to do something special with your hard drive like create a dynamic disk or use Bitlocker to encrypt the hard drive. I've deleted mine and left no extra space on several computers with no ill effects. I won't hesitate to recommend you delete it. You won't be able to expand C: drive to the extra space at the front of the drive with it there.

With that 128 MSR space deleted (using MiniTool PW) you can expand C: Drive into the empty space behind the FAT32 system reserved partition. If you really want to, leave an empty space at least 128mb in size in front of C: drive to recreate the MSR partition later. I didn't.

Minitool will need to reboot the computer to expand the C: drive partition.

Since you have a Macrium Reflect image of the entire hard drive, I assume, you might be able to drag and drop the 128 MSR partition into space after the FAT32 system reserved partition. But I wouldn't worry about it. I don't have that partition or space for it on my GPT disks.

OK, I'm caught up to this point. C is being moved now. I left 135 mb unallocated space in front of C , just in case...

Because MS never does anything that's not needed? oh wait, Windows 8....

wreckwriter said:

Because MS never does anything that's not needed? oh wait, Windows 8....

Exactly. And Microsoft manages to do without it on MBR disks...

The last partition can be deleted. It contains a system restore image from the factory for Windows 8. A Windows 10 installation USB/DVD will do the same thing to restore Windows 10. Windows 8 images are easy to download (at the moment) from Microsoft. And you have your trusty Macrium Reflect Free image made too. Then move the 820mb partition which contains the Windows 10 recovery environment to the end of the disk and shrink it to the lowest size allowed by MiniTool Partition Wizard. In the resize partition window of MiniTool, you can uncheck that block for safe data protection (don't know the exact wording) and that will allow you to shrink the partition even more. I've never had an issue with the block unchecked.

Finally, expand the C: drive partition into the unused space. I would leave the WindowsRE partition there at the end.

When all done, after reboot, run reagentc /info again to make sure Windows RE is still enabled.

You'll be left with the system reserved partition, which most of the time has to be FAT32 to boot the computer from UEFI bios. The free space you left, just in case, to drop the unneeded MSR partition back into. The C: drive partition. And finally the Windows RE environment partition. We can move the Windows RE files to the C: drive partition but I would not recommend it. (Heck, you can even disable Windows Recovery Environment altogether and just delete it, but I would not recommend it.)

That's the way my systems run - except without the space left for the MSR partition - but I also have an expanded Windows RE partition with a Windows 10 install image, a Macrium Reflect Free ISO and a MiniTool Partition Wizard ISO on one computer that I play with Windows installs on a lot.

All good now. Thanks much for the assist!