System reserved on the same drive as my HDD ???

Started doing some cleaning and guttering of the system today and found that my HDD which is just used for mass junk storage like movies, Shadowplay recordings etc etc has 2 drive letters assigned to it.. And thought thats weird. then looked in dis management and seen that it had the system reserved on the same drive as my HDD (disk 0)

After seeing this im wondering if this was to do with the boot drive ssd upgrad i did a couple months ago, Going from a 120gb ssd > 240gb



So first and foremost, should i be looking at getting the system reserved moved over to the ssd. just in case this is potential cause for concern in the future,

Second, what is the meaning in regards to showing it as being the "Primary Partition"

Third, im now confused if if my boot times have been slow this entire time because of the fact that the system reserved is on the hard drive or if it is infact going off the SSD. as its clearly marked as boot.

any insight regarding this matter and if its a cause for fixing, any suggestions would be greatly appretiated!

Looks ok. Disk1 partition1 is system and disk1 partition2 is boot.

dalchina said:

Please post a screenshot of your partitions using a 3rd party partition manager such as Minitool Partition Wizard.

It looks somewhat as if you may have a GPT installation on Disk 1 whilst Disk 0 may have had an O/S on it at some time.

As a very crude check, if you remove/disconnect Disk 0, does your PC boot?
Also check
reagentc /info
from an admin command prompt.

If ok, 1st and last partitions on Disk 0 seem redundant.

unable to check atm regarding 3rd party software. but in regards to cmd here is the results, and for if disk0 were to be disconnected will the PC boot. i would need to double check that which i cant do atm. but im fairly certain it would.



disk 0 hasnt been used as a boot drive since late 2017, and its been formatted multiple times.disk 1 has been swapped once for a higher capacity boot SSD. either this is a left over instance regarding that swap out tho im still confused on how those both managed to combine. or it may still be using that as in somewhat or another. but then the question is if its even possible to migrate that out of disk0, or if the PC does boot while the drive is disconnected. will simply formatting the partition be sufficient enough or is it still intergral to keep but migrate to disk1.

SIW2 said:

Looks ok. Disk1 partition1 is system and disk1 partition2 is boot.

still the potential worry as when i was partitioning the drive for installing windows surely it would have made a system reserved for disk1 but its not properly showing even with its own drive. so now im confused and potentially worried that if disk0 fails will i no longer be able to boot. and that if its possible to migrate that over to disk1 if needed!

dalchina said:

Hence the check to see if it boots alone, and the value of a screenshot with a 3rd party partition manager..

Disk Management doesn't show the smallest partition (I thought I'd read it was going to, but still not in 21H1).

I think what you're looking at on Disk 0 are relics of an old O/S.

will follow up with the remaining results when i get back from work. which should be in about 4-5 hours.

- - - Updated - - -

took a nap when i got home so appologies for a little onger than expected update. took the back panel off the pc and unplugged the HDD.. and it still boots fine. so whats the process to take now.. id assume its fine in just formating the partition thats assigned to the drive ?

Run the following script and post the output:

DiskParInfo.bat

Sources: Batch files for use in BSOD debugging

Use MiniTool Partition Wizard Free:
Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Wizard Free

It will allow you to delete the first and last partitions on disk 0 and expand G: to fill the entire disk.

dalchina said:

Good... still await 3rd party partition manager screenshot.

Also run
reagentc /info
from an admin command prompt to check the Recovery partition is functional.

On Disk 0 you can delete the 2 unnecessary partitions and recover the space.

Caveat: before making any significant change create a disk image saved to external storage - e.g. Macrium Reflect (free/paid) - should be used regularly and routinely to image at least all partitions comprising your O/S.

That way you have a full backup, can recover even if your system drive fails. Recommended endlessly here.

sorry about that went to bed straight after. but here is the minitool SS as requested