Partitioning Woes

Hi Folks...

I'm trying to partition a 1 TB drive on my new HP Pavilion 17z, and discovered that Win10 Home set Partition D for Recovery before the computer arrived.

I'd like to:

1. CHANGE D to R, but Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Disk Management won't let me do that -- so how do I accomplish this?

2. THEN shrink C to about 250 GB which I'll only use for programs, fonts, software and normal file processing (no big graphics, movies, or animation, and no docs, no publications, not data), but Win10 says I can't shrink below 463.93 GB. My goal here is to get as much space as possible on a new partition to store backup files from two desktops and my wife's laptop.

I vaguely recall from another thread a few years back that some keen advisors on this forum discussed free third-party software that was pretty reliable for all sorts of partition juggling and renaming, including the ability to move protected files so more space would be usable for shrinking. But my dumb brain can't recall the name of that software or where to get it.

Am I remembering correctly, or am I just in a fog?

Any help would be greatly appreciated as setting up this laptop is vexing to say the least.

Thanks.

We need screenshots from disk manager showing the paritions and details so we can see the layout disk type etc

Thank you. I'll have to figure out a way to do that since I haven't loaded any software at all yet, preferring to wait until partitioning is done.

But I'll figure it out, then transfer the images to my desktop to respond. Back at you shortly...and thanks.

Got it, I think.
https://www.tenforums.com/images/attach/png.gif

spunk said:

You can only shrink the C: drive so much, because the unused space is actually used for System Volume Information (ie) System Restore, The Windows Registry, and the Paging File (Virtual Memory) As well as the space they may take up in the future.

I vaguely recall from another thread a few years back that some keen advisors on this forum discussed free third-party software that was pretty reliable for all sorts of partition juggling and renaming, including the ability to move protected files so more space would be usable for shrinking. But my dumb brain can't recall the name of that software or where to get it. This would be so useful. Does it exist? Where can I find it?

Rather then Shrink the C: drive, why not use the 3TB My Passport E: drive for your backups. If you need more space, then get another external HDD. if you backup to Disk 0 and it ever fails, you will loose Windows and your backups to that disk.

Of course! And that is what I'm doing with the 3TB. But being in the heart of hurricane country, we're looking for redundancy. Hence the idea of also having backups on the 17z Laptop means having everything available and ready to go. Just grab the satchel with the laptop and we'll have everything with us in operable, immediately useful shape.

CountMike. That Recovery partition (D) doesn't need or should have a letter. Most likely it's factory system restore partition.

Ah, now it makes sense...but how do I remove that D letter?

cereberus said:

Disk management, right click on partition, choose option to change drive letter and remove it.

Thank you, but as my initial post said "Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Disk Management won't let me do that". The right click only yields "help" for that letter. Help does nothing.