Questions about partitions on system HDD

Hairy Scot said:

3. Let's say I wanted to use the unallocated space to increase the size of one or both Windows partitions, would this be feasible?

Curious as to why - with already 200GB each - you need more space on either/both the systems partitions?

What I see is there's maybe 50GB available and since you appear to be dual-booting and it's most likely working I'd leave well-enough alone. Trying to move things from within Windows has been shown in the past to cause problems.

Hairy Scot said:

Hi,
Not a major issue, I'm just curious about an unidentified partition on my system drive.
I have a dual boot W10 & W11 setup.
Disc Management shows:-



1. What is the purpose of the 517MB partition in the middle?
2. Are the locations of the recovery partitions fixed, or can they be moved or expanded?
3. Let's say I wanted to use the unallocated space to increase the size of one or both Windows partitions, would this be feasible?

You can use Minitool Partition Wizard (free) to perform all kinds of partition wizardry.

Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Wizard Free

But ..... before you do anything, create an image of the existing system (Macrium Reflect freeware) to fall back on.

Better still, put your tin-foil hat on and create 2 images to different destinations, as a precaution.

Ghot said:

You can use Minitool Partition Wizard (free) to perform all kinds of partition wizardry.

Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Wizard Free

You can also use Partition Wizard to view the contents of those hidden partitions to work out what they are for

If you were to use a 3rd party partition manager you will probably find two further small partitions not shown by Disk Management.

Using M. Partition Wizard, you can also explore the content of partitions.. you may learn more, or simply find it's empty.

As said above, it's small, so as you said, purely a matter of curiosity. Remember.. "Curiosity killed the cat"

Hairy Scot said:

1. What is the purpose of the 517MB partition in the middle?

What does the upper part of Disk management have to say?
How to Post a Screenshot of Disk Management - TenForumsTutorials

Denis

That is almost certainly a hangover from a previous recovery partition and somehow label has got removed.

Code:

Reagentc /info]

from an admin command prompt in both Windows 10 and Windows 11 to check which are the active recovery partitions.

I would expect Windows 10 to point to the recovery partition at partition 4 (3rd shown plus 1 hidden).

I would expect Windows 11 to point to the recovery partition at partition 8 (6rd shown plus 2 hidden).

If you use a tool like minitool partition wizard free and add a drive letter to the 517 MB partition, or use diskpart to assign a letter , it will probably have some hidden files (need to set File Explorer to show hidden files) in it like:




If so, you can safely delete this partition.

Then using minitool or similar, you can move recovery partitions and reclaim unallocated space.