Windows 10 Boot Partition Expand problems.

[Atashkade]

I have an ASUS Windows 10 desktop. Originally had 1 single 1 TB drive. I made two partition on it but my C:\ drive is now running out of space. I installed a 3 TB and moved the D:\ drive partition to the second drive. I deleted the old D:\ drive partition and now have enough space to expand the C:\ drive. But the disk manager does not give me the option to expand it. I see multiple small recovery partitions each around 100 MB in between the large partitions. Those are hidden partitions. Question:

1. Are those recovery partition created by Windows OS or Asus BIOS. I read somewhere that those are created by the EFI BIOS?
2. Can I delete the one between the C:\ and the "unallocated partition", and be safe. This is the only way I can think of to bring the two partition next to each other in hope that Disk Manager would concatenate them and expand the C:\ drive.

The Drive allocation are currently as follow:

Disk 0: Dynamic Disk
800 MB, Healthy (Recovery Partion) || 260 MB Healthy (EFI System Partition) || Windows C:\ 149 GB NTFS, Healthy (Boot, crash dump) || 350 MB Healthy (Recovery partition) || 761 GB Unallocated || 19 GB Healthy (Recovery Partition)

I appreciate if anyone can help me with this.

Thanks,

Atashkade

 

[Regedit32]

Welcome to the Forum Atashkade.

EFI System Partitions contain boot loader applications for any OS installed on the same storage device, or alternate storage devices if you have more than one. Deleting that would upset the bootable status of your installed OS.

If you were completely removing the OS, it would be fine to delete that partition, but that ought not be possible normally within the Disk Management, as its a protected partition for obvious reasons.

You'd need to use Diskpart commands to get rid of it, or a third party partition manager.

When you install Windows, or upgrade it via Cumulative updates or ISO images, that too creates System Partitions for recovery purposes. Again, these are protected partitions for similar reasons, and likewise using Diskpart you can remove them, but its generally not wise to unless you are removing the OS and starting over - i.e. a clean install.

While not always true, the general rule of thumb is:

• Installing Windows 7 leaves you with a System Recovery Partition of around 100 MB
• Installing Windows 8x leaves you a protected Recovery Partition of around 260 MB
  • If upgrading to Windows 8x from Windows 7, then you have the 100MB and also the 260MB System Recovery partitions appear
• Installing Windows 10x leaves you a protected Recovery Partition of around 450MB
  • If upgraded from Windows 8x, you'll see both 260MB and 450MB System Recovery partitions
  • If upgraded from Windows 7x to 8x to 10xm you'll see 100MB and 260MB and 450MB System Recovery partitions

I assume that 19GB Recovery Partition is an OEM partition created by ASUS which if used would restore your computer back to Factory settings.


Regards,

Regedit32