System partition on one drive; boot partition & Windows on another?

I have a 4 year old Dell XPS 8700 running windows 10 (2004 though I don't think that matters).

I had used MiniTool Partition Wizard to clean up some partition issues on an old laptop and ran it on this machine. I see that 3 months ago when I added an SSD drive as the primary drive for Windows and kept the old HD as a data drive, the HD is listed as the System partition though the SSD is designated as the C drive, and has both the boot partition and Windows installed on it.

My question is whether it matters at all, and if so, what's the best thing to do about it? The system is running fine so I don't want to do anything unless I need to but also don't want to set myself up for future problems.

Did you leave the HD connected when you installed Windows to the SSD?

ignatzatsonic said:

Did you leave the HD connected when you installed Windows to the SSD?

I did.

I suspect the PC would not boot if the HD failed.

Avoidable by disconnecting the HD during the install. That would have forced ALL files to the SSD.

You can correct it or live with it.

I'd think you'd be OK as long as the HD did not fail.

Depends on how anxious that might make you.

ignatzatsonic said:

I suspect the PC would not boot if the HD failed.

Avoidable by disconnecting the HD during the install. That would have forced ALL files to the SSD.

You can correct it or live with it.

I'd think you'd be OK as long as the HD did not fail.

Depends on how anxious that might make you.

I added the SSD for performance reasons...the HD seems to be in fine shape (famous last words).

What would be involved in correcting it?

I've never made the correction.

I'm sure someone here can direct you.

Maybe use a tool like BCDedit. Shouldn't be complicated---it's just that I have no personal experience.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/win...d-line-options

You might want to considering imaging to make a good copy of your installation after you get it straightened out. Maybe you already do that.

cereberus said:

Very easy using minitool partition wizard free.

Shrink C drive by about 105 MB (preferably in left).

Copy EFI partition using minitool from hdd to ssd to newly unallocated space.

.Disconnect HDD and check pc boots ok.


If it boots ok, reconnect hdd and delete EFI partition on the HDD.

Normally the partition sequence on Ver 2004 GPT drive is:
EFI - Fat32 - 100M
Reserved - Other - 16M
C: - NTFS
Recovery - NTFS - 600M

You have two options:
Option 1 (easy task but not the ideal)
- Shrink the C: partition on the right side in 700M (leave unallocated)
- Create a 600M NTFS partition on the 700M unallocated space (don't assign a letter to it)
- Copy the EFI partition from the HDD to the remaining 100M unallocated space (don't assign a letter to it)

Option 2
With a disk image program like Macrium reflect free:
- Create a partition image from the HDD Efi partition (save on disk 3)
- Create a disk image from the SSD (save on disk 3)
Boot from a USB drive with Macrium reflect free and then:
- Clean the SSD till you have one and only one unallocated space.
- Restore the image from the HDD Efi partition to the SSD
- Restore the image from the SSD Reserved partition to the SSD
- Restore the image from the SSD C: partition to the SSD
- Shrink the C: partition on the right side in 600M and create a 600M NTFS partition (don't assign a letter to it)

Using option 1 or 2
Disconnect HDD
Boot from a Win 10 installation drive and do a boot repair on the SSD (to set correctly the partitions IDs)
See if the SSD boots normally
Connect the HDD, make sure you boot from the SSD and with Mini tool partition delete the EFI partition on the HDD.


I did basically option 2 to get rid of the old recovery partition
Win10 2004 upgrade created a second recovery partition

cereberus, You're right, the partition order doesn't matter. That is why I gave two options. One easy and the other to prepare for future upgrades.
All suggestion will work.

I don't like the idea of creating a partition on the left without creating a backup image.