Windows 10 Partition and Licence question

I thought I had set my laptop up for a lifetime of data use but it's obviously caught up with me now.

I attach a screenshot of my partitions below and have a few questions:

1. I don't understand what the 'Disk 0 Partition 3' is?

2. If I wanted to hypothetically reduce C Drive space and add this space to the end of my D Drive (Data) could this be done without reformatting the D Drive? However it looks as though I may have to buy a new 2 TB HDD now...

I can't remember how I upgraded to Windows 10 Professional but it was a clean install.

I can't remember my licence key and am not sure how this was done but in Settings > Activation it says 'Windows 10 Pro', 'Windows is activated with a digital licence'. Can I find this key within the operating system as I think I will have to buy a new bigger HDD and do a clean install of Windows 10.

Hi,

To answer your questions:
1. That is your recovery partition, essential if you want to be able to reset windows if you run into any major problems. Even better would be to download macrium reflect free and image your partitions/drive regularly and use the image to put things back the way you had it, settings and all.

2. For this one, you might try minitool partition free to move partitions around without losing data.

Many Thanks for all this information. The festive season finally gives me the time to eat too much and do some housekeeping on my laptop...

While you were all replying I did some searches in File Explorer using the terms 'size:gigantic' and found a few culprit files in the Data partition which have been deleted. I already saved 30 GB on one file and more to go...

I see no "D" drive, so I'm assuming you mean the "F" drive...the DATA drive partition.

Apologies I meant the F (Data) drive and not D...

does your laptop support adding a second disk?

Unfortunately not. It's a Toshiba L750 from 2011.

Once Windows is activated on a PC it has a digital entitlement to a license tied to a form of hardware id that allows you to swap disks.

If I change the HDD does this also work? Do you mean I would not have to enter a licence key at all during a clean installation?

ShowKeyPlus - Windows 10 Forums

Many Thanks.

download macrium reflect free and image your partitions/drive regularly and use the image to put things back the way you had it, settings and all

Many Thanks for this. I have Macrium already installed and have used it and tested it well.

For this one, you might try minitool partition free to move partitions around without losing data.

Will give it a go...

TreeSize Free - Quickly Scan Directory Sizes and Find Space Hogs

Will try this too...

I am wondering if Restore Points take some HDD space in the C Drive and where? Also Shadow Copy?

As I was housekeeping I came across a LOST.DIR file which I copied from my Android phone in 2016. Can anyone recommend good Windows software that can attempt to recover it?

Enjoy the mince pies, Christmas pudding or whatever your preference may be

Luckily it's all over now but I think the big problem was that cheap Christmas punch yesterday...

You can turn System Restore on or off and set the space allocated from the GUI

Do you recommend it to be on or off?

Restore points can and do take a lot of space, depending on the setup. Again, the TreeSize app would show that easily in the System Volume Information folder.

System Volume Information is currently only 182 MB but last night I went through the instructions on this starting with Disk Cleanup. I don't know if this was really necessary or I should not have done this at all.

In fact the real culprit in the C Drive were Audacity files using 40GB. I found them using TreeSize Free which has been a good find. BTW Windows defragmenter kept showing 1% fragmented after defragmenting and removing Audacity files but I used Auslogics Disk Defrag Free with the 'Defrag & Optimize' option which resolved this problem as well as with the Data partition which previously showed 7% fragmented in Auslogics but not in Windows...

Will try some of the other recommendations such as MiniTool Partition Free when I get the time but some of these recommendations have saved me from a time consuming reinstallation so I don't need to use it for now.

Just tested ShowKeyPlus. Many thanks. Once again my memory fades as to where the product key came from but it shows both a Product ID and Installed Key.