Windows Partitioning did a derp?

The simplest and most reliable way forward given I don't exactly know how you got to where you are is to reinstall, wiping everything there.

I'm also wondering why your SSD is so small- if you got, say, a 256Gb SSD or even 512Gb, and installed your OS to that, you would benefit from fast boot times.

Sometimes to avoid complications, people suggest making sure you only have one disk connected when installing Windows. That's not essential at all, but really does make sure you end up with all Windows partitions on the same disk.

I would leave them where they are - they take very little space on the ssd.

What I am unclear about is why you installed it on your hard drive rather tjan the ssd, although admittedly it does have a very small capacity. I am presuming this pc has a fixed non removable as so small. I would use the remaining space on ssd for pagefiling to improve performance.

I don't have the money for a larger capacity SSD as an OS drive (the 32 GB ssd was configured to be a recovery drive containing the OS it shipped with [Windows 7 Pro]), so I have to use an HDD until I get enough money for one

As for the efi partition, maybe I stumbled onto a solution here; you cereberus said this might work on the last post of that topic, plus it did outline a possible way to make the efi partition. So if both methods will work, then maybe it will work on the recovery partition?

and by using the windows installation cd/usb to repair the OS drive, do you mean an in-place upgrade/fix Yvette222?

You shouldn't try guessing.. if you want to consider moving those partitions, do your research (as you've started to do) to assess the implications and exactly what you'd need to do.

For example, if you simply move the Recovery partition, you would lose the ability to boot to Advanced Startup options including Safe Mode. You would have to do more than that.

Whilst you might learn quite a bit by doing that, you could well end up with an unbootable PC, and waste a lot of time.

An in-place upgrade repair has no relevance in this case.

Your Dell ID indicates the device is an XPS 8700 model. This supports something called Intel Smart Response Technology, which combines a small SSD with a larger HD, so that the SSD acts as a fast cache for the contents of the HD. My XPS 2720 came with that configuration, with a 32 GB mSATA SSD paired with a 2 TB Seagate drive. I have since replaced the SSD with a Samsung EVO 850 250 GB SSD (~$150 at Newegg) and it works like a champ.
For the time being until you can get the cash together to buy a bigger SSD (and I can say from long experience that 250 GB is sufficient room for Windows 10 and a fair number of applications), you can restore the Smart Response stuff on your PC to improve performance. Here's a Dell article on how to do this, if you're interested: Intel Smart Response Technology Configuration | Dell US.
HTH,
--Ed--

@EdTittel - thanks- I recall encountering this configuration once before. When I looked at it, the conclusion was that Dell hadn't updated the support software for Win 10, and comments in their forum supported that. What's your view? Thanks.

BrokenDaily said:

so I followed the steps from that last topic I linked to, and it worked. I used minitool partition wizard to delete the efi partition on my SSD, shutdown my computer, set the bios boot options to point to the windows boot manager as first choice, save and restarted, and it booted up perfect. I verified this with EasyBCD

Now the only partition on the SSD was the 499 MB recovery partition, so I figured I could used minitool to copy it to the OS partition and it would work fine. I was wrong; it does not show up on advanced restart, but I can still technically use my Win10 USB as a recovery drive. I don't want to keep the only 1 of 2 drives I have as an OS/recovery drive, so is there a tool or some command prompt/powershell commands I can use to make windows recognize the recovery partition as a valid drive, or did I do a dumb?

Recovery partitions are not that critical. You can do a recovery via a usb drive, or clean install anyway.

I actually delete them on my tablet as 0.5GB is quite valuable when only 32GB to start with.