Added SSD to Laptop. What's the Best Way to Reclaim Space on HDD

Happy New Year all!

So I just added an SSD to my ASUS laptop. I removed the HDD when installing a fresh Win10 on the SSD. I installed the SSD in the original slot the HDD was in as recommended on the ASUS forums. Once Win10 completed installation, I added the original HDD into the secondary hard drive slot. The HDD already had Win10 on it.

So now obviously the original Win10 partition on the HDD with the OS on it is showing as 'System Reserved ( D: )' and the usable partition with all my previous files are showing as 'Local Disk ( F: )' (with my dvd drive as E: )

I did not clone my HDD to the SSD as my SSD is much smaller and I really only wanted it for the OS and maybe a couple programs and games that I want there for faster booting and loading.

Basically I'd like to get rid of the original OS partition on the HDD and have the entire disk show as the D: drive. And although I did a back up of my files from the HDD before starting this process, I now already have access to them. Is there a simple way to accomplish this within Win10? I see I can format the partition by right clicking on D: but I'm not sure that'll accomplish what I want as formatting typically doesn't delete the partition and obviously I'd like not to create a bunch of registry errors.

How should I proceed?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Disk Management may be able to delete most partitions on that secondary drive but there's at least 1 that can't be removed. To get a truly clean [as-shipped] drive I boot to a GPARTED LiveCD and delete the partitions with it. If I can get the drive into a dock made for the purpose such as Thermaltake's BlacX box I'll use my Linux Mint computer that has GPARTED to do it.

okay, so I just went into Disk Management and deleted the D: partition with the old System Reserved OS. I renamed F: to D: And the new D: now has an unallocated partition of 351 MB. It also has a 450 MB Recovery partition. Do I need a recovery partition on my secondary hard drive, or is the one on the C: drive all I need? Is there a way within Win10 (Disk Manager or similar) to merge the unallocated partition('s) with the rest of D: or do I need install something like Mini Tool partition wizard?

I also realize we're talking about a combined 800MB on a 1TB drive. So if there's a simple way to merge the unallocated space, I'll gladly do it just for cleanliness and thoroughness, but if it's more of pain to go through, I have no issue just leaving it as is.

And with swapping the SSD into the previous HDD slot, it appears the C: drive is on Disk 1 and D: on Disk 0. Apparently this is normal according to the ASUS forums. They all recommend to do it this way. Not sure if having C: on 1 is an issue or not really.

Do you need anything on Disk 0 ? (D drive) if not just delete the partitions and then re-create one large partition.

Have you already copied over your Documents/music/pics etc ie basically the old Users>YourName Folder from D: to the new C: Drive? then you can just wipe the drive as above and recreate as one large Drive.

Minitool is a good program for doing this or a Merge if needed....it will also show the MSR partition (16mb) that Disk Manager does not...

Rysdan said:

I also realize we're talking about a combined 800MB on a 1TB drive. So if there's a simple way to merge the unallocated space, I'll gladly do it just for cleanliness and thoroughness, but if it's more of pain to go through, I have no issue just leaving it as is.

And with swapping the SSD into the previous HDD slot, it appears the C: drive is on Disk 1 and D: on Disk 0. Apparently this is normal according to the ASUS forums. They all recommend to do it this way. Not sure if having C: on 1 is an issue or not really.

@Rysdan

What you've deleted wasn't the OS (old windows), but just System reserved partition (350 or 450 MB). So Old Windows system is still there, with all the Programs installed (in that large D: partition).

If you just want to merge partition, I would recommend Minitool partition wizzard (free). Delete also that recovery partition on old drive, you don't need it. In Minitool free you can than expand D: partition to full size (could also be possible in WIndows disk management)

AndreTen said:

@Rysdan

What you've deleted wasn't the OS (old windows), but just System reserved partition (350 or 450 MB). So Old Windows system is still there, with all the Programs installed (in that large D: partition).

If you just want to merge partition, I would recommend Minitool partition wizzard (free). Delete also that recovery partition on old drive, you don't need it. In Minitool free you can than expand D: partition to full size (could also be possible in WIndows disk management)

This is exactly what I was looking for. Worked like a charm. Thank you!