How can I merge my Boot and System Partition into an unique one?

iguess96 · 05 Dec 2019

Hello everyone.

I recently opened my disk manager and Boot and System Properties are on two different partitions. Here is a screenshot of my Disk Manager.

How can I merge my Boot and System Partition into an unique one?-capture-d-ecran-1-.png

I apologize for the image being in french. The system partition where windows is installed is the second one that doesn't have any path letter for whatever reason. The partition with boot files is the third one (C:) which is also where my program files/user files etc are stocked. HPDOCS is self explanatory and the unnamed partition on the far right is a recovery partition, probably created by the system.

I don't know why the System Partition is 4GB, I thought Windows only needed 100MB or so? In that sense I'd like to have this wasted space merged with (C:)

Under windows Disk Manager, I found the option to mount the content of the unnamed disk (Windows Files) into a folder in (C:), maybe it solves my problem?

If not, I would like to proceed with 2 different options:

1) Ideally, as said earlier; completely merge both partitions so I have windows and boot files in the same partition.

2) If not possible, I would like to make my boot partition active (which is currently not possible as my windows isn't on that partition) without necessarily having to merge/delete anything.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Berton · 05 Dec 2019

This is how my 1TB HDD is laid out, new from ASUS about 4 years ago, 150GB and 780GB:

How can I merge my Boot and System Partition into an unique one?-disk-mgmt.png

The F: and G: drives are 4TB and 2TB External USB drives.

A problem does exist in that some partitions simply can't be moved around by Windows itself. That E: partition is not self-explanatory to me, my guess is they hold documents that came with the HP computer, I've not seen that arrangement on any OEM computer yet.

I have seen several computers in addition to mine that had the Boot/System/OS partition at 150GB and 250GB size with a much larger second partition for data. Have also seen C: drives of 500GB and less with a second drive much larger, 1TB or 2TB and even larger.

If my Windows needed reinstalling on such an arrangement as yours I'd do something different but it usually entails a clean install.

It doesn't hurt to use a clean disk and just let Windows do its 'thing', I've built and worked on computers long enough not to be too OCD about it as long as they work properly.

NavyLCDR · 06 Dec 2019

iguess96 said:

1) Ideally, as said earlier; completely merge both partitions so I have windows and boot files in the same partition.

The following assumes that your computer is booting in Legacy BIOS (CSM mode) and not UEFI mode! Since you system partition is FAT32, that is really confusing. Most legacy BIOS systems have an NTFS formatted system partition.

In a Command Prompt (Admin) run:

bcdboot C:\Windows /s C: /f BIOS

Only ff that command completes successfully, then:

diskpart
select disk 0
select partition 3
active
exit
exit

Reboot your computer. Your boot partition should now also be your system partition. If the FAT32 partition is still the system partition, then your computer is booting in UEFI mode and you will have to keep the system partition separate from the boot partition.

iguess96 · 06 Dec 2019

@NavyLCDR Thanks a lot! That solved the issue! Here is how it looks now.

How can I merge my Boot and System Partition into an unique one?-capture-d-ecran-3-.png

Now I will copy F: Contents into C: before farmatting and merging both partitions.

@Berton Yes, E: contains some HP documentation (mostly pdfs and html), languages as well as some sys and cmd files. I'll probably copy the content in C: as well to be able to delete the partition.

Bree · 06 Dec 2019

iguess96 said:

...Now I will copy F: Contents into C: before formatting and merging both partitions....

Your F: drive looks like it's an old install of FreeDOS. The fdconfig.sys file dated 29/01/2011 is the evidence for saying this, fdconfig.sys is a FreeDOS system file.

FreeDOS reads the CONFIG.SYS / FDCONFIG.SYS file at startup to configure
the DOS system. It is read before the AUTOEXEC.BAT file is run.

FreeDOS command: fdconfig.sys