XPS 18, too many partitions on hard drive

Hello Joe,

There is no simple way to post an image on this forum.

So you have to type over partition information as you see it displayed using a partition tool.

My new Dell XPS 8930 has the following partitions for the C: drive on Windows 10 Home

500 Mb EFI System partition
222 Gb OS C: drive
804 Mb Recovery partition
13,53 Gb Recovery Partition
1,13 Gb Recovery Partition
16 Mb unallocated

I think 6 partitions is a lot for an out of the box new PC, but it is what it this.
Deleting partitions or installing Windows 10 from scratch will for sure result in deleting or inabling
Dell / Microsoft provided recovery capabilities.

Please have a close look at the 4 extra partitions with EaseUS Partition Master, I have never
seen different partitions from one tool to the other.

If your PC has UEFI Bios , then deleting or moving partitions becomes really complicated.

My advise is to search for expert support or bite the bullet and reinstall Windows from scratch
after a full backup ( actually two backups ) . Doing this will result in a "vanilla" windows 10 installation
without build in recovery as provided by Dell.

OK, Here’s what I got.

I cloned the drive to a second internal 500 GB EVO SSD.

I cloned all but the Dell 57 GB recovery and the Swap Temp partitions.

Macrion “Trimmed” etc.

I think Macrium might have put a new “Aqllighment” partition.

I then set the BIOS to what I thought was the correct Boot Order.

I discovered you can’t identify which hard drive is which in the BIOS Boot choices.

Two choices, Windows Boot Manager or Windows Boot Manager.

Anyways, I am able to Boot to both drives using the “Boot Options” (F12).

You also can’t identify which drive is which in the Boot Options Menu.

Both Windows options look the same.

Choosing the second “Windows Boot Manager” in the list boots to the second drive.

I changed the Partition labels on the two drives to System a and System b etc.

That way I could see which one I was in using with File Explorer.

Trouble is that the Swap Temp partition, which is only on the old drive, popped up as partition F with both boot-ups.

Windows would not let me change the partition letter for F Swap Temp until I removed the Custom Page File settings I had on F:.

Of course, when booting into the “NEW” drive, Windows rearranges the partition letters and I now need to reset the drive letter for the file History backup drive back to G:.

This will not be a problem because I will only need to use the second Drive if the first drive fails.

I believe Windows will remember the Partition letters after I reset them in each System. It does remember.

I only need to know how to setup a process that allows me to choose which drive I want to boot into.

Thanks,

Joe

Solved

So very true. 

But like any backup, it might be in need of updates when you need it. 

I have been under the impression that Dual Boot usually applies to two OS are on the same drive. 

Here, I have two drives. 

Thanks, 

Joe

I don't know if there is a way that allows you to choose which drive to boot except using F12. You may wish to look into dual booting but usually that is used to boot Windows and Linux. I think having Windows 10 on two drives in the same machine is not a good idea, even for backup. Applications and updates installed on one drive will not be installed on the other. Keeping the two drives updated will be a pain. It would be better to do periodic image backups. 

Kool!!!

Backups can be performed as background process whereas you will have to actually boot the second drive and do the updates.

In the one case I Googled, the dual boot setup involved Windows 10 on a SSD and Ubuntu on a HDD, so not necessarily on the same drive.

You can try to delete those OEM partitions since they are created for system recovery or factory restore. That is to say you can restore your system when system fails. If you needn't to restore your system to factory setting, you can delete them and merge to another partitions.

Actually, That is what I have done. 

I deleted the 57 GB backup partition then used Macrium to clone and extend the other partitions. 

I also removed the 8 GB Swap Temp partition and put the page file back on C: 

I kept the little partitions for now since I'm not sure which might be an alignment partition etc. 

I'll remove most of those eventually. 

I would say the problem is solved. 

Joe

Hi Joe,

I cae to this post because I have a Dell 13 7000 series with more partitions than I think is reasonable.

And I know this is a little late but let me add some information that might help in the future.

1) The discrepancy between 10 partitions and 14 partitions is not really a discrepancy. You have been counting Unallocated Space as partitions but they are NOT partitions, and should not be counted as partitions. They are just chunks of unallocated, unused empty space between partitions.

2) You said you wanted to free up some space on your C: drive as if the hard disk drive is C: drive, but the hard disk is NOT "C:".  "C:" is the name of a partition, it is NOT the name of a drive.

Under the Microsoft naming convention the letter C is allocated to the first Primary partition on the first hard drive in the computer. So if you had just one HDD, and it had just one partition on it (which was the case with many old DOS machines) then the partition called C: would occupy the whole drive and it would look like C: was the same as the drive. But if the drive had a second partition on it, the second partititon would be allocated the letter D. Then it will become more obvious that the letter C just refers to one partition on the drive and not to the drive itself.

To summarise - your hard disk (the actual drive that you could see or touch) is called drive 1, and if it did not have any partition on it, it would just be drive 1 - it would NOT be C:.  But as soon as you create a (Microsoft compatible) partition on it, the partition you create will be called C: by the Microsoft Operating System.

Other operating Systems, such as Linux do not use letters of the alphabet to name partitions, so they will NOT call the partition "drive C:", they will call it something else, like "Data" or "backyard" or whatever name you want to call it.

The original Microsoft naming convention went as follows.

The first floppy drive on a PC was called Drive A:.

If the PC had a second floppy, it was given the letter B and it became B: drive.

The first primary partition on the first hard drive was called C:, which is just the next letter of the alphabet after A and B. The letters A and B were reserved for floppy drives, and naming for HDDs started with the letter C.

If a second HDD existed, and if it had a Primary partition on it that primary partition would be called D:

After the BIOS checked all HDDs and allocated letters to all the Primary partitions it found, it would then check for Extended Partitions on the drives and allocate letters to them in alphabetical order beginning with drive 1, and proceeding to drive 2, and so on.

All the Primary Partitions would be allocated letters as names, starting from the letter C, then all the Extended Partitions would be allocated letters as names.

So if you had one HDD with two partitions, those partitions would be called C: and D: and they would look like two different drives, and would act like two different drives, even though they were just two partitions on Drive 1. But if you then added another drive with just a Primary Prtition on it, the Primary Partition on the second drive would take the name D, and the second partition on the first drive would then be named E instead of D.

It was a messy system but it worked most of the time as long as you didn't change drives and partitions too much.

BUT, Windows can only recognise a partition if it is formatted to a Microsoft format (such as FAT, FAT32, NTFS or exFat). Windows will not recognise the existence of partitions created and formatted by other operating systems like Linux, or Mac OSX, and Windows will NOT allocate letters to them.

Mike

jrmwalsh

All that is good information except that the drive would not be known as drive 1. It would be drive 0. Maybe you used the number 1 to avoid confusing someone who seemed already to be confused. Regardless, your explanation was very good and I hope people understood what you were telling them. I came here because I got a message from Windows 10 that I could improve things by freeing up space on my drive. Well, I've got a pretty large drive for a low-grade laptop that I never use to store large files, so I was intrigued. Windows (Settings, System, About) had a BANG next to Device performance and health. When I clicked on See details, I saw that there was "concern" about my storage capacity. So I looked and saw that my C:\ drive (partition) was only 62.4 GB and while it was not dangerously low on free space, it could use a bit of help! So I used Disk Management to see what was going on. Turns out there are three unused partitions totaling about 235GB. Well, for this computer, there is no reason for me to use a big partition as D:\ but I may decide to do that. The other thing I may do is merge that unused space into C:\ and I just have not yet decided which. I'll use a partitioning app that I like to make the change. We used to like "Partition Magic" but there are so many good free ones out there now, that I'll look on one of my other computers to see which one I used last and probably stick with it. What I still can imagine is, "Why did whatever W10 install method I used decide to do THAT with my nice hard drive?" I guess I'll never know!