C Drive almost out of space

Question

My C Drive is almost out of space, which is 400-AKWC : 128GB M.2 SATA 6Gb/s SSD (Boot )

I've removed everything possible and I only have a few gigs left.

I'd like to purchase a larger, compatible SSD and move the data to that. How can this be done? What are my options in both hardware and how to actually do the data transfer?

Thank you for any information.

I have an Alienware 17 R3

jphughan · Accepted Answer

At this point if you did everything the way I specified earlier and still have an unbootable system, unfortunately I don't know what to suggest next, because having used Reflect to clone many systems over the years, I've never still had issues after doing all of that, and that 0xc0000001 error seems to be rather generic. As I noted earlier, one thing on your system that I haven't seen before is having two of what appear to be Windows Recovery Tools partitions on your disk (Partitions 4 and 5) both located immediately after C, but I don't know if that might be responsible for Fix Boot Problems not being able to fix this, and obviously your original drive is managing to boot despite having that unusual partition setup.

As a side note though, it's interesting that your system is currently configured for UEFI boot with Legacy OPROM. That's why your boot menu is showing both Legacy and UEFI boot options for your USB device. If you don't need to boot Legacy BIOS environments, you should configure your BIOS to enable UEFI Secure Boot, which will disable Legacy OPROM. Not only is UEFI Secure Boot a nice additional security feature, but restricting boot options can minimize the chances of confusion and issues that arise. For example, the steps attempted in the Fix Boot Problems routine of that Rescue Media depend on how the Rescue Media itself was booted -- so if your installed OS is set up to boot in UEFI mode and you accidentally boot your Rescue Media in Legacy mode, as it seems you initially attempted to do, then Fix Boot Problems will attempt the wrong fixes. However, looking at your Rescue Media photo, the title bar at the top shows "[UEFI]" at the end, so that doesn't appear to be the issue. But that's another thing -- even though that first USB Device option you tried would have resulted in the wrong Fix Boot Problems routine running, it should still have booted, because Rescue Media supports both Legacy and UEFI booting. I'm not sure why that would have completed failed.

I'll post again here if I think of any other things to try, but nothing springs to mind. I suppose one thing you could try since you're cloning to a Samsung SSD would be Samsung's own "Data Migration Software for Consumer" (link here). It's not as powerful as Reflect, but it's fine for a "clone with partition resize" operation, and I've read good things about it.

AlienwareDave · Answer

Thanks - I've already moved all the program stuff from the C drive. At this point, it seems I need to clone it to a larger drive.

Just not sure what SSD drive to get in terms of compatibility (would like a 250, or 500G SSD), and how I would go about cloning it.

JOcean · Answer

You do have the ability to add a second M.2 drive and a 2.5' SATA SSD. If you want to take the easy route you can add that second drive, leave the 128 GB M.2 as your boot drive and move some of your programs over to free up space on the boot drive. Then in the future simply install programs, games, etc. on the 2nd drive. It saves you from having to either clone the drive or clean install to a larger drive. And that 2nd M.2 drive can be up to 1 TB or a 2 TB 2.5' SSD.

jphughan · Answer

@AlienwareDave wrote:

Thanks - I've already moved all the program stuff from the C drive. At this point, it seems I need to clone it to a larger drive.

Just not sure what SSD drive to get in terms of compatibility (would like a 250, or 500G SSD), and how I would go about cloning it.

For best performance, get an NVMe SSD like the Samsung 960 Evo. There's also a newer 970 Evo that would be easier to find, although some Dell systems seem not to work with it even though those same systems work with the 960 Evo. No fix or even underlying cause has been determined, although I don't remember if the Alienware 17 R3 has this issue. Some Dell systems work fine with the 970 Evo. If you're interested, you might want to do some searching to see if anyone has tested one in the 17 R3 specifically.

As for cloning, Macrium Reflect Free is a popular tool for this purpose. It's free (and the free version is sufficient for cloning), pretty easy to use, and comes with solid online documentation if you need it. Since you have two M.2 slots, you could install the 970 Evo, perform the clone directly, and then remove the original SSD. Worst case, after the clone completes and you remove the old SSD, if the system doesn't automatically start from the new SSD, you MIGHT have to boot the system into the Reflect Rescue Media (which Reflect will prompt you to create) and run "Fix Boot Problems", after which it should be fine. Alternatively, you could capture an image of your current hard drive to a file on an external drive somewhere, then remove your old SSD, insert the new one, boot your system from Rescue Media, and restore the image onto your new SSD. Whatever you do, I would recommend that at least your INITIAL boot attempt from the new SSD occur when you don't still have the old SSD installed.

Lastly, since you're increasing capacity, make sure that as part of staging the clone, you specify to increase the size of the C partition. If you don't do that during the clone itself, then Reflect will clone partitions exactly as they are and simply leave unallocated space at the end of the SSD, and depending on the partition layout on your system, you might not be able to allocate that to your C partition very easily after the fact. Macrium's "Cloning a disk" KB article shows how to specify custom cloned partition sizing.

AlienwareDave · Answer

Awesome information! Thank you SO much!

AlienwareDave · Answer

Well, I have some problems. The cloning worked fine. But I ended up with unallocated space. So I used a tool to "wipe" the new drive, and I started over.

I'm using the tool you suggested. And when I go to clone the drive, I select to use the maximum space on the cloned drive, but again, it ends up with unallocated space.

Not really sure what to do at this point.

Also, even with the new drive removed, and the old drive in, when booting, it asks which Win10 boot volume do I want to use...? Very weird.

Any help, again, much appreciated.

jphughan · Answer

@AlienwareDave wrote:

Well, I have some problems. The cloning worked fine. But I ended up with unallocated space. So I used a tool to "wipe" the new drive, and I started over.

I'm using the tool you suggested. And when I go to clone the drive, I select to use the maximum space on the cloned drive, but again, it ends up with unallocated space.

Not really sure what to do at this point.

Also, even with the new drive removed, and the old drive in, when booting, it asks which Win10 boot volume do I want to use...? Very weird.

Any help, again, much appreciated.

This link is Macrium's page for how to specify a custom partition size. Basically, if the C partition you want to expand is NOT the last partition on the disk, you need to drag and drop the individual partitions from source to destination, working from left to right, then after dragging down the C partition, resize it BEFORE you drag down the remaining partitions. Make sure the new size you specify leaves enough unallocated space to drag down the remaining partitions. There isn't a generic "Use maximum space" for the entire drive; it's a per-partition decision.

Can you take a screenshot/photo of the boot menu you're seeing that lists multiple Windows options? That shouldn't be happening unless you somehow ended up with multiple BCD entries, but if your source drive doesn't have that issue, then cloning it again to the destination should resolve that.

AlienwareDave · Answer

That's what I was doing wrong - the partition where I needed the space was not the last one. So again I wiped the new drive and started over. I believe I did this correctly this time - you can see the screenshot of the top (original) drive, and the bottom (new) drive, and the arrow indicated the partition that was expanded.

So after this was completed, I removed the original drive, and moved the new drive into the slot the old drive was in (not sure if this was even needed).

Now when it boots, it get caught in a constant loop, never making it to Windows.

I took the new drive out, and put the original back in, and it works, but it now asks which OS to use during boot up (see below):

So for now, I just have the original drive in, and I have to select the top OS choice or I get a boot error.

Yikes.

jphughan · Answer

I won’t be able to see the screenshots you’ve uploaded until they get approved (until then, only you and Dell moderators can see them), but did you try running the Rescue Media’s 'Fix Boot Problems' routine while the new SSD was connected?

AlienwareDave · Answer

no...I couldn't get into Windows to run it...or do I need to create that rescue boot media thing first?

[EDIT] Oh wait, I think I see what you're saying - put both drives in and run the fix boot issues function...I will try that.

AlienwareDave · Answer

I'm about to go mad...seriously, I will pay you to Facetime or Skype me to help - I can't risk messing this up any further.

The new drive in by itself won't boot into Windows - even after using the "fix boot problems".

If I put the original drive back in (by itself), it does get to Windows, but now you always have to select the OS you want (see screen shot below).

Screenshot of completed clone:
https://www.lehighvalleywebdesign.com/clone.JPG

Screenshot of original drive, now making you pick an OS during boot:
https://www.lehighvalleywebdesign.com/os-choice.jpg

I want to first fix the original drive of the OS choice problem - then try again with the cloning procedure.

I'm also serious about your help - I'm willing to pay you for a Skype session.

jphughan · Answer

Ok, that's Windows Boot Manager in that second screenshot, not a motherboard-level boot selection interface. I don't understand how you can have multiple entries there even when only one SSD is installed, unless maybe that occurred because at some point you tried to boot your system and/or run Fix Boot Problems with both disks installed. I also don't understand why this is proving so problematic, because normally this is quite straightforward with the occasional exception of needing to run Fix Boot Problems. It's also a bit strange that your disk seems to have two partitions after C that both seem to be Windows Recovery Tools partitions judging by their size. But at this point I'd suggest this:

1. Remove the new drive and reinstall the old one. Boot into Windows.

2. Run "msconfig" and go to the Boot tab. You should only see one boot entry here. If you have more than one, it would be best to figure out which one you actually need and then delete the other one before you clone it.

3. Make sure you have Macrium Reflect Rescue Media and that you can boot your PC from it, because you'll need it later.

4. Run the clone again, once again specifying a custom size for the C partition. The photo you posted still shows 7.55 GB of unallocated space after the final partition on your new disk, so try to avoid that this time around since that's just wasted space. Since you've already run a clone to that disk, at the first step of the clone wizard, select each partition on the destination and click "Delete existing partition" until it's clean, then do the drag and drop method to copy source to destination and resize the C partition on the destination.

5. After the clone completes, shut your system down, disconnect the old drive entirely, and install the new one internally (if it isn't already connected that way).

6. Boot your system from the Reflect Rescue Media and run Fix Boot Problems, again with only the new drive connected.

7. Reboot your PC and allow it to start normally. At this point your new drive should be booting properly without any duplicated boot menu options.

Weep gaming · Answer

You might want to put the new drive in the old drives slot. (At step 5 in the post above.)

That worked for me when I had a similar issue on a different PC.

Hope this helps, and that you resolve this issue. I hate it when an expensive PC just doesnt want to cooperate.

AlienwareDave · Answer

Steps 1 though 3 complete!

I installed the bootable media on a USB stick. Just to see if it works, I shutdown, and left the USB drive in. Booted up, and it went right to Windows - no option to boot from the USB drive....is this something that need to be tweaked in BIOS?

I want to make sure this works before proceeding.

jphughan · Answer

@AlienwareDave wrote:

Steps 1 though 3 complete!

I installed the bootable media on a USB stick. Just to see if it works, I shutdown, and left the USB drive in. Booted up, and it went right to Windows - no option to boot from the USB drive....is this something that need to be tweaked in BIOS?

I want to make sure this works before proceeding.

When your system is booting, press F12 to access the one-time boot menu to select a USB device. I usually just tap the F12 key repeatedly as soon as I power on my system because some systems these days boot so quickly that they're past the point where you can press an "interrupt key" before the display even wakes up.

How did you run Fix Boot Problems earlier if you didn't know how to boot your system from the Reflect Rescue Media?

Alienware

C Drive almost out of space

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