Extending Drive issue

agent99 · 05 Sep 2023

I have two drives on my Lenovo T520.
One, an mSATA drive on motherboard hosts Win 10 Pro ver 22H2 system.
The other drive is a 500Gb SSD and is in the usual drive bay.

The 500Gb drive had three partitions - Another OS, a small recovery partition and a data partition (My drive E:)

I deleted all but the data partition E: and this resulted in about 224GB of unallocated space.
I used Disk Management to extend the E: drive partition. This for some reason resulted in two drives, both labeled E:. Opening either of them from Disk management shows the contents as being the same. See attachment.

Is there a way to have E: show as being in a single partition?

Separate issue, but my old D: drive still shows in File Explorer even although it is no longer there. Any way to delete that?

Extending Drive issue-disk-management.jpg

zbook · 05 Sep 2023

The problem is related to the disk 0 dynamic disk.

Manually backup data > plan to convert dynamic disk > basic disk

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/wi...o-a-basic-disk

There are third party software (free? or pay) that can convert dynamic to basic without data loss.

Convert a Dynamic Disk to a Basic Disk | Tutorials

To free up drive letters:

View / Change / Remove drive letters assignment in your system

For disk 1 the system partition displayed 9.67 GB.

A normal sized system partition is < 500 MB.
What happened?

Please run:

https://www.tenforums.com/attachment...p_plus_log.bat

https://www.tenforums.com/attachment...iskparinfo.bat

Batch files for use in BSOD debugging

Post share links into this thread using one drive, drop box, or google drive.

agent99 · 05 Sep 2023

zbook said:

For disk 1 the system partition displayed 9.67 GB.
A normal sized system partition is < 500 MB.
What happened?

Please run:
https://www.tenforums.com/attachment...p_plus_log.bat
https://www.tenforums.com/attachment...iskparinfo.bat
Batch files for use in BSOD debugging

Post share links into this thread using one drive, drop box, or google drive.

Thanks - I think I can do the conversion, but no idea why Disk Management created the Dynamic drive if they are deprecated and no longer recommended. In distant past I used Partition Magic, and I think it just used the unused space to extend the existing volume. I thought this would do the same.

That system 9.67Gb recovery partition goes back to when I bought the computer. It was there in the Windows 7 installation supplied with refurbed computer by IBM, and was still there after upgrading windows 7 to Windows 10. 7.3Gb of that partition is filled with who knows what - all to do with recovery, I guess. Perhaps I could delete it?

I am hesitant to run batch files without knowing what they are for and what they will do. Are you expecting a BSOD after I convert the data drive? Otherwise, what is the purpose?

zbook · 05 Sep 2023

The scripts were created for their use in the bsod forum but can be used as needed.

Tuneup runs scannow, restorehealth, chkdsk, etc,

Diskpar provides information about drives including hidden partitions (partitions not seen in disk management).

Batch files for use in BSOD debugging

Batch files for use in BSOD debugging

If you're able to back up files then clean install Windows 10 then it will have the optimal partition architecture.

agent99 · 06 Sep 2023

zbook said:

If you're able to back up files then clean install Windows 10 then it will have the optimal partition architecture.

That is something I have been thinking of doing. I have a hodgepodge of Desktop, One drive and other files that also need cleaning up. But that would also presumably need me to carefully check what else would be affected and what I would have to re-install - Maybe a winter project!

Right now, I thought I would just convert that dynamic disk. But when I went to back it up, AOMEI (backup utility I use) wanted me to upgrade to their pro version for backup of a dynamic volume. Maybe I should just copy and paste the files and folders directly to an external disk? Then delete, format or whatever the E: drive. Create a Basic partition? Or? Then copy back the files and folders?

Or is there another free backup utility that will handle the dynamic partition backup?

Megahertz · 06 Sep 2023

agent99 said:

That is something I have been thinking of doing. I have a hodgepodge of Desktop, One drive and other files that also need cleaning up. But that would also presumably need me to carefully check what else would be affected and what I would have to re-install - Maybe a winter project!

Right now, I thought I would just convert that dynamic disk. But when I went to back it up, AOMEI (backup utility I use) wanted me to upgrade to their pro version for backup of a dynamic volume. Maybe I should just copy and paste the files and folders directly to an external disk? Then delete, format or whatever the E: drive. Create a Basic partition? Or? Then copy back the files and folders?

Or is there another free backup utility that will handle the dynamic partition backup?

As the E: drive is a data drive, just use robocopy to copy all files and folders to an external drive.

Ex robocopy E:\*.* X:\Backup /e /copyall (replace X with the external drive letter)

Once the data files are on the external drive, use diskpart to clean the drive

Open a CMD window as administrator and type:

diskpart
list disk (it will list all drives. Identify the data drive number)
select disk n (replace n by the data drive number obtained with list disk)
clean
convert mbr
create part primary
select part 1
format fs=ntfs quick
assign
exit (to exit diskpart)

Then use robocopy to copy the data file and folders back to the drive.

You don't need to reinstall windows just to have the recovery partition back

Open a CMD window as administrator and type:
reagentc /info
Paste the results here

agent99 · 06 Sep 2023

That robocopy command at first didn't work. I moved the *.* to between backup and /e and it then seems to be working.
robocopy E:\ G:\backup *.* /e /copyall. Slow because backup drive is only usb 2.0? May redo it using spare drive in DVD drive caddy which help when copying back.

Just finished. It had a few errors (not sure which files didn't copy)

Code:

              Total    Copied   Skipped  Mismatch    FAILED    Extras
    Dirs :       942       941     1         0           0         0
   Files :     20330     20325     0        0            5         0
   Bytes :  49.547 g  49.030 g    0         0        528.62 m    0
   Times :   0:41:40   0:39:35                       0:00:00   0:02:05

Speed : 22163451 Bytes/sec.
Speed : 1268.202 MegaBytes/min.
Ended : September-06-23 5:06:52 PM

OOPS - I can't find any copied files on G: drive or anywhere else! Yet Robocopy listed all files as they were copied! Maybe Windows 10 cant read the files on my exFAT backup drive directly? Or perhaps they were never written because of different format? OK, I just tried using windows to send a file from my E: drive to the G: drive and it copied there no problem. So, I have no idea why Robocopy didn't work!

- - - Updated - - -

OK, I got it done. Partition Wiz 4.2 wouldn't work because it saw my Dynamic drive as a logical drive. But Ithe diskpart commands helped a lot! Thanks for that.

I first installed a spare drive D: in a caddy in my DVD slot. Deleted some files from my E: data drive just to reduce time in copying. Then did a copy and pasted to D:. Deleted contents of E: drive. did the diskpart clean and convert. Copied D: back to E:. This all went quite fast.

This was the result:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1jcmn...ls6nhza1g&dl=1

- - - Updated - - -

By the way, I tried that reagentc /info command and all I got is a sound and no display as whatever tried to display flashed away.

Sorry, no results to post.

Megahertz · 06 Sep 2023

agent99 said:

By the way, I tried that reagentc /info command and all I got is a sound and no display as whatever tried to display flashed away.

Sorry, no results to post.

Sorry for the Robocop. It has been some years I have used and don't remember the syntax.

Open a CMD window as administrator and type:
reagentc /info

Then you should have some information about the Recovery environment.

agent99 · 07 Sep 2023

Megahertz said:

Open a CMD window as administrator and type:
reagentc /info

Then you should have some information about the Recovery environment.

That is what I did (several times) and had the Command page disappear into thin air! Today I changed the way I ran CMD as administrator and got it to work. Not sure if result is meaningful to you.

How would Windows use this for recovery? I assumed I would recover or re-install windows using USB media. I have one USB stick for system backup using AOMEI, another that says W10 Recovery and another that says Windows 10 Install Media. Problem is that I don't remember exactly what each is for! I think the AOMEI boot USB plus system backup on backup drive would get Windows back working. How would that recovery partition be of use?

C:\WINDOWS\system32>reagentc /info
Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) and system reset configuration
Information:
Windows RE status: Enabled
Windows RE location: \\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk2\partition1\Recovery\WindowsRE
Boot Configuration Data (BCD) identifier: 581f572c-378b-11ee-9ef5-83b3d44f4dfe
Recovery image location:
Recovery image index: 0
Custom image location:
Custom image index: 0

REAGENTC.EXE: Operation Successful.

FreeBooter · 07 Sep 2023

Try using disk management software like MiniTool Partition Wizard Free helps manage disk space safely on Windows 11/10/8/7.

Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Wizard Free