SOLVED Disk Management

[Jim_Bob]

Hello,

Something strange happened.

I installed some new drives into a box I'm building, one of the drives is a Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe 500gb. Start up took ages and then when I went to disk management I get this, (please see attached) Wow I dont understand why windows put another recovery and system partition on the new drive. Could someone please explain why and if it's ok to have it set up like this?

Cheers
Jim

 

[Jim_Bob]

Just to clarify. Disk 0 is the 970 drive, Disk 2 is another ssd (which is now renamed), disk 3 and 4 are 4tb HDD.

Also see the 15mb of unallocated space on the C drive, why is that so?

Cheers
Jim

 

[Saltgrass]

Your OS partition is on Disk 1. You have two System EFI partitions, which contain the boot files and I can't tell from the picture which one is being used to boot the system. You show a Windows 10 partition on disk 2, so I can see how you could be confused and this doesn't even show where the MSR partitions are..

These aren't just normal installs since you have additional partitions which are not normally there. When I install an OS I always remove other drives just to make sure there is no confusion. If you want to know which OS partition is being used, you can open a Admin command prompt window and type bcdedit . It should indicate the partition on drive 0 or drive 1 being used.

The utility Diskpart is also useful in such situations since it will show all partitions in their actual order. If you don't know how to use Diskpart, just ask.

On my system, Disk 0 has 3 partitions, counting the MSR so Disk 1 partition is the 5th partition.

C:\WINDOWS\system32>bcdedit

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier {bootmgr}
device partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume5
path \EFI\MICROSOFT\BOOT\BOOTMGFW.EFI
description Windows Boot Manager
locale en-US
inherit {globalsettings}
default {current}
resumeobject {b1cf68ec-5e07-11e8-8874-ecc6bb4bbc79}
displayorder {current}
toolsdisplayorder {memdiag}
timeout 30

DISKPART> lis dis

Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 953 GB 1024 KB *
Disk 1 Online 953 GB 1024 KB *

DISKPART> sel dis 1

Disk 1 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> lis par

Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Recovery 900 MB 1024 KB
Partition 2 System 100 MB 901 MB
Partition 3 Reserved 16 MB 1001 MB
Partition 4 Primary 952 GB 1017 MB

 

[Saltgrass]

One more thing, depending where you placed the M.2 drive, one or two of your SATA ports may be disabled, so watch out for that.

 

[Jim_Bob]

Thanks for your reply.

Yes I had only one drive when I installed windows which is now the c drive. Why would windows put those partitions on a new drive that I installed after the initial installation of windows?

 

[Jim_Bob]

One more thing, depending where you placed the M.2 drive, one or two of your SATA ports may be disabled, so watch out for that.

Yeah the m.2 is up high in the PCIe

 

[Jim_Bob]

Can I just wipe Drive 0 if its not the os?

 

[Saltgrass]

You are the only one who knows how the system got the way it ended up. Doing a normal Windows install, with only one physical drive available, would not have done what you show. If you cloned a drive, that might have gotten messed up or some partitions may have been left over from a prior install. It looks like the initial install was on disk 1.

The 15 MBs may have been an old 16 MB MSR partition.

 

[Jim_Bob]

I had trouble with a bad usb and had to try a few times before the installation worked, but that doesnt explain why windows partitioned the new drive the way it did.

 

[Jim_Bob]

Yeah disk 1 was the initial install

 

[Saltgrass]

You don't know where the boot files are, so no, don't just wipe a drive with an EFI system partition. I would reinstall with only the NVMe drive. When you have protected any data you want to keep, then when the system is running with just the primary drive, you could clean drive 1 to get rid of the extra partitions. Just make sure the system boots normally with just the NVMe drive.

Windows isn't doing this, your process is.

 

[Jim_Bob]

Ha yeah my process is not good I know.

I dont want windows on the nvme drive, thats my drive for images and vids.

I might install it again on the ssd.

If i get a good install on my ssd how do I delete the partitions from the nvme to get it back to a bare drive? Use Ccleaner?

 

[Saltgrass]

In my attachment, Disk 1 is the NVMe drive since normal SATA ports will take priority over the NVMe drive.

Why would you not want you OS on the drive which is 4 times faster than your other drives? You could have gotten a much cheaper drive for such a purpose.

Diskpart will clean a drive but you have to make sure you have a good configuration before you start messing with it.

 

[Jim_Bob]

I want the drive to be a dedicated image and video processing drive seperate from an os drive.

 

[Jim_Bob]

Thanks for your help

 

[Saltgrass]

Whatever you want but just make sure and get the OS drive installed and stable before you start adding different drives.

If the system was already booting from the System EFI partition on Disk 1, you could just wipe the M.2 drive, but you have to know where it is booting from first.

When you install, the process can remove partitions from any drive, so you may be able to remove the EFI System and Recovery partition on the M.2 during that time also. Make sure you know which drive you are working on. But if you already have a System EFI partition on another drive, the install will try to use that. So, it easier and safer to disconnect other drives. You may be able to disable the M.2 drive in the bios until your finish the primary install.