Limitations and possibilities of a 32GB eMMC drive

To be specific, many tutorials tell you to simply open Disk Management and right click on the partition you want to work with. When you do that, ordinarily you have 9-10 options, including Help. This machine gives you only one: Help. When you click Help, it tries to open up online and I cannot afford to let this machine connect to the internet due to auto-updates. I have the network adapters temporarily disabled.

Available free space on this machine is 0.

I also forgot to thank you in advance for any help you can give. I always do that and I guess there's a first time for everything because I forgot.

Make the recovery media to a flash drive:

www.dell.com/.../create-windows-10-recovery-media-for-your-dell-computer

Then you can reclaim the space used by the recovery image (delete the partition with the disc manager and enlarge the C: partition).

It's going to require constant vigilance to run Windows in 32 G -- that's just not enough disc space for any modern OS.

Thank you for stepping up to help, ein63. It's really appreciated.

This brings us to Fit #3 or 4, of those 40 kinds of fits I mentioned. Prior to opening this thread, I tried that. As long as the box is checked for "Back up system files to the recovery drive" (which I, of course, need), the process fails. I get this error message:

    "We can't create the recovery drive.

    A problem occurred while creating the recovery drive.

    Finish"

If I untick the box, it proceeds and creates a 314 MB recovery drive, but without system files. So  I have one of those, but I suspect it's useless.

For the next part of your directions, the Disk Manager doesn't give me any tools to work with on this machine. Right clicking any recovery partition only gives one choice: Help. On the C: drive and also on the (NTFS file system Lexor 32 GB) USB drive, I have 10 options -- even if some are greyed out. So, how do I delete the large recovery partition if the only option for that drive is Help?

The C: drive options won't allow me to Extend. My choices for that one are:

-- Open

-- Explore

-- Change Drive Letter and Paths

-- Shrink Volume

-- Properties, and

-- Help.

And, believe me, I know how thin this machine is. The good news is it will never go online and will only be used for one program (which drives/manages 3-4 USB peripherals). That program needs less than one GB to run. No need for antivirus, nothing. (Updates for that program and from Dell for this machine will be downloaded on a separate computer and installed via USB drives.)

I hope that's enough extra information to answer any questions you might have in order to go forward from here.

Thanks again!

Lauren

P.S. Trying to reset this machine to factory condition didn't work. It said "Preparing" for 15 hours and then said there was a problem resetting the computer and no changes had been made. I forget which # of fit that one was.

Try making an image of the system using something like Macrium Reflect (the free edition is fine).

www.macrium.com/reflectfree

The main question in my initial post was how do I run a program off a USB drive. The two programs I wanted to run were Macrium Reflect and Revo Uninstaller. Later, I wanted to use Easeus Partition Master when working a different approach.

Bact to MR in specific: I tried to download and install Macrium Reflect as my first move on this computer, planning to save a mirror image before I did anything at all to it. It wouldn't download MR, saying there was not enough room. (Properties shows MR ver 7.1.2646 to be a 3.58MB file and it wouldn't fit?) So, on another computer, I downloaded the program to a USB drive which was formatted in advance and set up with NTFS to match the PC, then tried to run it on the 3452 laptop. It wouldn't.

I just went through my notes, trying to find where I'd written down what the machine reported as to why it wouldn't/couldn't run MR, but can't seem to find them. Would it help if I wrote out a list of what I've already tried?

Hi, annain ~ Thanks for coming along to help. I searched Easeus vs Aomei before getting back to you and it seems they're fairly comparable. Since I've used Easeus for years, that's probably the one I'll stick with.

I just can't get this machine to accept any downloads to the main drive; the largest block of free space isn't free due to it being allotted to recovery; the built-in partition features don't work; and I don't know how to run a program from a USB or SD card. It might be the easiest thing in the world, but I'm unfamiliar and the things I've tried haven't worked...so far.

There are three "recovery" partitions and I just don't think the one containing15.63GB is actually needed for recovery.

I agree with the need to make a copy of the disk. However, here too the built-in tools don't work and there isn't room to download Macrium Reflect, which I usually use to make copies of drives.

I'll try to figure out how to post a screenshot of the disk management screen, although it will be one taken by my phone, so I apologize in advance for how it will look.

The D: drive is an SD card I got to increase storage. I'm hoping I can install and run software there that will let me 1) make mirror images of the drive, 2) reallocate space in the partitions, 3) and run REVO uninstaller.

Good grief! Forgive me. I forgot to re-space the columns to give you a full view of what's in each partition. I couldn't see a way to remove that image, but I'll replace it momentarily or at least post a new one.

When I try to run Macrium Reflect from the SD card (or a USB drive), I get:

One or more files failed to download, WinPE components can be downloaded automatically in the main application. 

Error code: 1

When I try to set it up without the PE, it also fails.

When I try to run Easeus Partition Master, I get:

Unable to create a temporary file. Setup aborted.

Error 112: There is not enough space on the disk.

My edit: In Settings > System > Storage, I changed the Locations settings to have everything saved to the SDHC (D:) drive, but Setup for those programs isn't utilizing the available space on the card. As I've mentioned a couple of times, I don't know how to install and run a program from an SD card or USB drive. And, trust me, I'm spending hours online trying to find out how to do that.

Should I convert the file system of the SD card (FAT 32) to NTFS to match the system of the C: drive? Could that have anything to do with why I can't install or run the programs on that card? In this case, Macrium Reflect and Easeus Partition Master.

If you used generic Windows 10 download from Microsoft, doesn't it ask you for a product key to activate Windows?

I am thinking about buying one of these 32GB laptops as a gift but running out of hard drive space scares me.