Request help with a new Acer laptop HDD configuration

ineuw · 25 Dec 2020

After following and verifying Acer's instructions to unlock and display their drive for partitioning access, I still cannot see the drive when booting with a Live Gparted USB. No one should use a single 2TB C:\ drive partition. I am really stuck. What are my options?
It's a Windows 10 Home 2004, new laptop.

Samuria · 25 Dec 2020

What do you want to do that you can't do in disk management or software?

Paul Black · 25 Dec 2020

Hello @ineuw,

ineuw said:

After following and verifying Acer's instructions to unlock and display their drive for partitioning access, I still cannot see the drive when booting with a Live Gparted USB. No one should use a single 2TB C:\ drive partition. I am really stuck. What are my options?

[1] I don't quite follow what you are trying to do!
[2] Can you explain it in a bit more detail please?

ineuw · 25 Dec 2020

I want to partition the disk to separate the system from the data, using gParted or any free partition software from a live USB drive.

ignatzatsonic · 25 Dec 2020

You should be able to do that from Windows Disk Management, using its menus.

You'd shrink C, which would leave "unallocated space".

You'd then partition and format that unallocated space. Then give it a drive letter; possibly D.

ineuw · 25 Dec 2020

ignatzatsonic said:

You should be able to do that from Windows Disk Management, using its menus.
You'd shrink C, which would leave "unallocated space". You'd then partition and format that unallocated space. Then give it a drive letter; possibly D.

You're a prince. My thanks and gratitude. Reduced the system drive to 128GB and installed MiniTool. It accessed the drive and allowed me to partition the rest and move the data from C: drive.

ignatzatsonic · 25 Dec 2020

OK;

Most likely you didn't need to use Minitool....although its excellent and could have done it all.

Shoulda been able to partition and format right there in Windows Disk Management.

Minitool is more advanced than WDM and can do things WDM can't, but in this case WDM was likely all you needed.

ineuw · 01 Jan 2021

ignatzatsonic said:

OK;
Most likely you didn't need to use Minitool....although its excellent and could have done it all.
Shoulda been able to partition and format right there in Windows Disk Management.
Minitool is more advanced than WDM and can do things WDM can't, but in this case WDM was likely all you needed.

I had a number of free Minitool versions, even version 9 Pro, which they gave away free some years ago, but now they update it to later versions, currently 12. These are blocked from seeing the disk drive, and the creation of a bootable USB option is available only in the pro version.

As for using Windows tools I don't feel confident enough, and mess up.