Do I need this partition?

Cornishman said:

Created a Macrium Reflect Rescue disk, deleted the E partition again, put the boot files in C as per the instructions, but it didn't work.
My computer was stuck on the boot up. Managed to recover everything using Acronis again.
I am going to leave it as it is!
It is very stressful not knowing if your computer will start or not, I need a drink!
Thanks for your help Guys!

If you are wanting to get rid of all the recovery stuff you don't need on that partition and shrink it down to 350mb, when I get home, I'll post what is in my partition for booting and you can delete everything but what is required for booting.

NavyLCDR said:

If you are wanting to get rid of all the recovery stuff you don't need on that partition and shrink it down to 350mb, when I get home, I'll post what is in my partition for booting and you can delete everything but what is required for booting.

Thanks NavyLCDR I appreciate that!

Word Man said:

Did your attempt go as described here: http://knowledgebase.macrium.com/dis...+boot+problems ?

It may be only a rhetorical question until or unless you recover and change your mind.

Yes Word Man, what I attempted certainly looks like the information in that link.
Thank you for your advise, but it didn't work for me.
Acronis has saved my bacon once again.

MikeHawthorne said:

Hi

Your making this too complicated.

Did you install EasyBCD?

It will remove the entry for the drive E boot option and let you create one on Drive C.



It's easy to use, it's just a graphic way of editing the boot setup files, instead of doing it through the command window.

All you have to do is use Add New Entry to create a boot option for your Windows 10 install on C:\.

Move it to the top of the list and make sure it boots, then you can remove the second entry.

Windows won't try and boot to the E drive once the entry is removed from the list, but as long as it's there the computer won't boot if you remove the drive.

I found this out the hard way a long time ago.

Mike

NO.... that will only edit the boot files that are stored on the current E: drive boot partition. It will NOT move the boot files themselves to C: drive.

Cornishman said:

Thanks NavyLCDR I appreciate that!

First, you have to enable viewing "protected operating system files" by UNCHECKING the box highlight below. Those options are from the Options menu of Windows Explorer:



Now when you look at your E: drive partition (system reserved partition) the hidden boot files will be visible:



My System Reserved partition has 311mb of boot files on it and it is sized to 350mb total, which is what a clean install of Windows 10 will create. I am not sure if the Recovery folder in mine is needed to boot or not - it's got some really tight permissions attached to it and the only way I could get into it was to make an image of the partition with Macrium Reflect Free, mount the image file and explore it that way

Now, in the past, I have been able to set my C: drive partition as the active partition, delete the system reserved partition, and use the Macrium Reflect Free rescue disk to recreate the boot files on my C: drive partition. Maybe it is a limitation of your bios that is keeping that from succeeding with your computer, but it worked on mine, in the past with Windows 10.

Merely editing the system bcd store with EasyBCD will only change where the boot files point to to find the operating system, but it won't change where the actual bcd store is physically located - which will still be in the system reserved partition.

If you don't want to see the system reserved partition as a drive letter - just go into disk management in Windows and remove the drive letter from it. I normally don't have a drive letter assigned to mine.

NavyLCDR said:

First, you have to enable viewing "protected operating system files" by UNCHECKING the box highlight below. Those options are from the Options menu of Windows Explorer:



Now when you look at your E: drive partition (system reserved partition) the hidden boot files will be visible:



My System Reserved partition has 311mb of boot files on it and it is sized to 350mb total, which is what a clean install of Windows 10 will create. I am not sure if the Recovery folder in mine is needed to boot or not - it's got some really tight permissions attached to it and the only way I could get into it was to make an image of the partition with Macrium Reflect Free, mount the image file and explore it that way

My boot files total 733Mb
The "boot.wim" file inside the sources folder is 328Mb alone
I'm a bit scared of deleting anything just is case it's needed.

Cornishman said:

I'm a bit scared of deleting anything just is case it's needed.

You can absolutely remove the drive letter from the partition in Windows Disk Management for sure, if it bugs you seeing it in Windows Explorer. And the drive letter can always be added back if you do want to get into it for some reason.