Macrium Clone of Windows 10  

WilliamP said:

Thank you for your information.

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I have run a clone of my System disk and now when I go to this computer it shows a System Reserved (E) drive. If I click on it there is nothing there.What is it?

That would be a clone of the system reserved partition from your original drive.

Thank you Sir. I didn't even know I had such a thing. I am new to Windows 10.

WilliamP said:

Thank you Sir. I didn't even know I had such a thing. I am new to Windows 10.

The system reserved partition is what your computer boots from. It normally does not get a drive letter. That's why you didn't see it before, if you don't know where to look for it.

WilliamP said:

The computer assigned it an E Drive and the system doesn't have that many drives. I only have 4 A system drive,a photo storage drive,Video storage drive ,and a backup or clone drive. If it isn't on a drive where is it??

You are confusing physical disks with drive volumes. Each physical disk can have multiple partitions on it. When the partition is formatted with a file system, it becomes a volume. Each volume may or may not have a drive letter assigned to it. Look at your disk management screen, this tutorial shows how to get to it:
Disk Management - How to Post a Screenshot of



This computer has 3 physical disk drives. My drive 1 is the "system disk". The computer boots from the EFI System Partition. On your computer it is called the system reserved partition because you are booting in legacy BIOS mode, and mine is booting in UEFI mode. The computer boots from the system partition, and loads Windows from the partition marked as "boot" in parenthesis - usually C: drive. There are two partitions or volumes on my system that don't have drive letters, so they will not show up in file explorer.

When you cloned your drive, Windows recognized the new cloned system reserve partition as just a new partition and it automatically assigned a drive letter to it. In disk management you can right click on the square representing the E: drive, select change Drive Letter and Paths, and then remove the E: drive letter from it, and it will no longer show up in File Explorer. Also, that volume does contain files, it is just that the files are marked as system files, so you won't see them until you turn on the option to show system files in file explorer.

In summary, each physical drive installed in the computer is a "disk". Each disk can have multiple partitions and/or unallocated space. The unallocated space is not a partition - it is empty space in which a partition can be created. When a partition is formatted with a file system that the computer can read, it becomes a volume (except some very special partitions, such as the recovery partition, will not become a volume). Each volume may or may not get assigned a drive letter.

Here is my diskpart, list volume output:

Code:

C:\Users\Administrator>diskpart

Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.18362.1

Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: DESKTOP-CCS46II

DISKPART> lis vol

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
  Volume 0     D   Storage      NTFS   Partition    931 GB  Healthy
  Volume 1     C                NTFS   Partition    118 GB  Healthy    Boot
  Volume 2                      FAT32  Partition    100 MB  Healthy    System
  Volume 3     P   Portable     NTFS   Partition   2701 GB  Healthy

Volume 2 is the volume the computer booted from because it is marked System in the info column. Volume 1 contains the Windows that was loaded because it is marked Boot in the info column. My recovery partition showing in disk management does not get assigned as a volume (although it might if I gave it a drive letter?) The unallocated space shown in disk management also will never get a volume because it is not a partition - it is just empty space.

UPDATE: I just assigned the recovery partition drive letter R: and it still did not become a volume.