Explanation of disk format?

MurrayElliot · 12 Sep 2020

I have a PC which was previously WIn 7, upgraded to Win 10 (currently Windows 10.0.18362), it is my stepson's, so no idea of who set it up and how. (it's Disk 1 because I recently duplicated his old spinning metal drive to an SSD)

Explanation of disk format?-20200909_075310.jpg

Explanation of disk format?-20200909_075019.jpg

As you can see from the images above. The disk is split into 4 partitions...
1) "System reserved" - (100MB in size, 33MB used)
2) The main C: drive partition
3) The recovery partition (419 of 462 MB used)
4) A mystery partition labelled E: (363 of 455 MB used)

When I browse the E: drive, there are no visible files.
As I understand it, the 'System reserved' partition is generally 100MB for Windows 7 and 500MB for WIndows 10.

My questions are:

Can anyone explain what's going on here? Is the system reserved partition the right size for a Win7-Win10 upgraded machine, or is the E: drive some kind of during-upgrade replacement?
Is there anything I could usefully to do clean up this drive and make sure the recovery and system partitions are the right size to ensure I can successfully upgrade in future? There seems no issue right now, but I'd like to understand what I need to watch out for?
Lastly, and not directly related, when I check for upgrades, it tells me I'm at the most recent version - is that because of the age of my motherboard / processor perhaps? Is there some way I can check the compatibility of my hardware against newer versions of the OS?

Thanks in advance for taking the time to read this rambling, and for any advice anyone might be able to offer.

Samuria · 12 Sep 2020

We cant see all the details it may be UEFI partition but leave things alone if its running delete UEFI and it wont boot. You will need to goto https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/soft...load/windows10 to update as your version is so old and no longer supported

dalchina · 12 Sep 2020

Just a note on your build- you're currently running build 1903 (as do I for a particular reason).
This reaches end of service life (no more routine updates) in December.

Where a PC is deemed upgradable, that may well mean, assuming Windows Update is enabled, you will be prompted to upgrade or even have the upgrade start automatically.

I guess you are aware MS does put blocks on delivering feature updates (upgrades)- historically this has applied when upgrading via W Update, but not when using an iso file. Somewhere around build 1909/2004 - the last 2 builds- I understand this check is done even if you download an iso file and upgrade manually using these builds.

If a feature upgrade cannot be delivered to your PC but is available, people have received a message indicating their PC isn't quite ready.. (actually Windows isn't quite ready- or maybe a driver would cause a problem or isn't available or there's a known issue with some aspect of your hardware....)

See:
Windows 10 Update: How To Tell If There’s A Problem With Your PC
How to tell if your device is eligible for the Windows 10 May 2020 update | ZDNet

Note that neither 1909 nor 2004 really add anything startling.. but do offer a less convenient version of file explorer search- 1909 basically broke this initially.

You can read all about their features in the articles on those builds in the News section, where you can find an article per update per build with known issues and download links.

1909 is a comparatively trivial upgrade- more like an update in the way it is delivered- it does not refresh all system files e.g.

I can't tell you what E: is- of the partitions comprising the O/S the normal case is that only C: has a drive letter.
UEFI installations typically have 4 partitions (1 not visible in Disk Management); MBR installations have fewer.