Delete Partition Between Disks In Windows 8.1

[chiangrai]

Hi,

I'm trying to decide how to arrange the disks on windows 8.1.

I had windows 7 before this and because I don't use the Users files I just deleted the partitions between the disks and only had a disk C.

This was really conveniant and I would like to do it

to my windows 8.1 aswell.

So I have 2 questions.

1-would this afect the performance(is it a good idea}......and

2- how do I do it.

Thanks in advance

[lostinisaan]

There's a program called "Mini Tool Partition Wizard", first choice for me.

But I wouldn't run it with only one disc, as it would slow your computer down. Let's say you've got a drive C and D. The drive you're using when doing something, where your Windows is installed should be separated.

Why don't you just create two partitions and let all download copy on your drive D? You can find the program on the web, takes you only ten minutes to create the partitions you'd like to have.

[chiangrai]

Right,

I got mini tool partition wizard and found that I have a disk C and a diis D which was nearly full and in the red.

I extended my disk D and it's not red lining any more.

I also found that I have 5 more drives--WINRE DRIVE

SYSTEM DRIVE

(OTHER)

NEW VOLUME NFTS

PBR DRIVE NFTS

Is there some way that I can tidy all that up and make more space on D,disk C is only 28 percent full.

Thanks for the help so far.

[RichCor]

Can you provide the actual size of the Physical Drive, and the size of the Partitions you've found?

How you resize your partitions will really depend on future use. Do you plan in installing any more applications? How much space will they need?

If you have additional external drives you could potentially move any full system backups offline.

[NeverSure]

I sincerely think you should either leave this alone or get someone who really knows what he's doing.

The system partition is your %system% partition, commonly C:.

The PBR is necessary to boot as is the MBR.

And so on.

[chiangrai]

WINRE DRIVE 1000mb 28 percent used

SYSTEM DRIVE 260mb 12 percent used

(OTHER)128mb

C windows 120GB 28 percent used

NEW VOLUME Nfts 8.2 GB 1 percent used

D new volume 323 GB 65 pescent used

PBR DRV 12.5 GB 59 percent used.

I would like to make everything as simlpe as possible and to get as much space as I can on disk D.

I won't ever be adding anything to disk C except a few apps and small programs.

I have a 500GB external drive aswell.

If I don't do this myself I will have to go 5 hours to find someone I would trust to do it and that probably wouldn't happen.

Thanks

[DogNo1]

How large is your physical disk? Who set up the disk and installed the OS? It seems as though some spurious volumes were created. I would not mess with it. You do not mention where on the drive the various partitions are located. You would obviously have to resize one partition after deleting the others. If the partitions are below the one assigned the drive letter D:\ you will not be able to increase the size of the partition down. Leave well enough alone. Just go in to Computer Management/ Disk Management and rename the volume associated with D:\ to something appropriate like "Secondary Drive" and be content with your 323 GB. If you need more space for storage, put it on your 500 GB external drive. If you mess around with your volumes without visualizing where they are on the drive and not understanding how to delete volumes and the limitations of what you can do with the one is left, you may be left with an unusable machine.

[NeverSure]

That is confusing. Can you go into Disk Management and post a screen shot please?

[KittenKong]

WINRE DRIVE 1000mb 28 percent used

SYSTEM DRIVE 260mb 12 percent used

(OTHER)128mb

C windows 120GB 28 percent used

NEW VOLUME Nfts 8.2 GB 1 percent used

D new volume 323 GB 65 pescent used

PBR DRV 12.5 GB 59 percent used.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

WinRE is the Windows Recovery Environment.

PBR is an image for the one-button reset tool.

System drive is probably the manufacturer's boot partition.

It looks like you have one physical 500Gb hard drive that has been partitioned into a C drive (for Windows) and a D drive (for data), which is quite common with some manufacturers.

Altering those partitions may upset the way the manufacturer's recovery tools work and should be avoided, unless you have a proper (authentic) Windows installation DVD and activation key, or have made a system restore disk as instructed by the manufacturer to replace the one-button reset tool.

If you do have that then you could make the C partition smaller and the D partition larger by using a partitioning tool like Easeus, or even merge the two if you are careful with your data. At the same time you could incorporate the (apparently) unused 8Gb new volume.

But all of that is best left to an expert.

[WhizBang]

You have a UEFI boot system, not BIOS boot. They are completely different when it comes to booting. It is said UEFI is actually simpler, but as it is so new, it is very confusing when you first encounter it. Your utility disks/USB drives require a different boot than standard BIOS boot. You have to create compatable UEFI boot media.

Get RUFUS to creat the bootable USB of your utilities, but the utilities have to be capable of UEFI boot first. There is another utility that you can use to yourself create UEFI bootable media that will allow you to run your utilities.

Confusing, yes. I am still learning as I have been battling a UEFI system for the past couple of weeks.

[chiangrai]

O.K...........I took a few chances..........the drives noe read from left to right............

WINRE DRV (NFTS) 1000MB Used 29 percent

SYSTEM DRV (FAT 32) 260mb 12 percent used

WINDOWS/C 33.9GB 68 percent used

D/NEW VOLUME NFTS 422.9GB used 50 percent

PBR DRV NFTS 7.8GB used 98 percent

I spent about two hours tweaking these little by little with Mini Partition Wizard.

The performance of my 10 inch lenova notebook seems to have improved.

The notebook came with Windows already installed.

I think that I will heed your advice and leave it alone after this.

Final question --is there a recomended percentage of disk C to leave unused

so as not to slow the performance.

[lostinisaan]

O.K...........I took a few chances..........the drives noe read from left to right............

WINRE DRV (NFTS) 1000MB Used 29 percent

SYSTEM DRV (FAT 32) 260mb 12 percent used

WINDOWS/C 33.9GB 68 percent used

D/NEW VOLUME NFTS 422.9GB used 50 percent

PBR DRV NFTS 7.8GB used 98 percent

I spent about two hours tweaking these little by little with Mini Partition Wizard.

The performance of my 10 inch lenova notebook seems to have improved.

The notebook came with Windows already installed.

I think that I will heed your advice and leave it alone after this.

Final question --is there a recomended percentage of disk C to leave unused

so as not to slow the performance.

Once you see your system information you can copy it by using ctrl and PrtScSysRq and paste it on an office word file.

Please keep in mind, once you've got your machine running, as it should to create an image of your drive C using Acronis True Imgae 2014.

It's very simple then to get back where you were before. Okay, I know it's sometimes not that simple.....lol

Edited December 14, 2014 by lostinisaan

[NeverSure]

Windows 7 and 8/8.1 will make a system image. In 8/8.1 it's

Control Panel> System and Security> File History

Now look in the very bottom left of the screen.

Edited December 14, 2014 by NeverSure

[manarak]

O.K...........I took a few chances..........the drives noe read from left to right............

WINRE DRV (NFTS) 1000MB Used 29 percent

SYSTEM DRV (FAT 32) 260mb 12 percent used

WINDOWS/C 33.9GB 68 percent used

D/NEW VOLUME NFTS 422.9GB used 50 percent

PBR DRV NFTS 7.8GB used 98 percent

I spent about two hours tweaking these little by little with Mini Partition Wizard.

The performance of my 10 inch lenova notebook seems to have improved.

The notebook came with Windows already installed.

I think that I will heed your advice and leave it alone after this.

Final question --is there a recomended percentage of disk C to leave unused

so as not to slow the performance.

I got goose bumps reading the thread ...

Firstly - you probably got only one harddrive

Second - nothing of what you do with the partitions is likely to improve the computer's performance, because the main performance gain comes from making small partitions, and your system sits on a partition that is already pretty small (34 GB).

I also think you will sooner or later run into problems with such a small windows partition.

My advice: stop messing around with the partitions, you can really break your system doing this.

[DogNo1]

OK. Go to Control Panel - Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Disk Management and you will get a screen that shows you all of your drives. Right Click on the partition associated with the D:/ drive and select Properties. When the dialogue opens, just type the name that you want to give your drive in the space at the top replacing the words New Volume, then click on Apply then OK. Close all of the control panel items by clicking on the red X at the top of their screens. BTW, changing the size of your partitions does nothing for the speed of your computer. the best way to do that is to image your drive and then replace your mechanical drive with an SSD, restoring the image to the SSD. You must be careful to image all of your partitions since all of them are essential to the operation of your computer. I have made a snip of the Disk Management screen but can't find any way to insert it or attach it to this message. It's a Windows 7 snip so may not be exactly what you would find in Windows 8.1. Good luck!

[DogNo1]

Btw, I just noticed that you decreased the size of your C:/ drive to 33.98 GB. That was a very bad thing to do. The page file exists on the C:/ drive and it expands and contracts dynamically with Windows' need. Also, you will need considerable space on the C:/ drive to install updates (of which there are many) and applications. You are going to run out of space and your machine will slow to a crawl. Your C:/ drive should have been left at 120 GB. Also you probably will not be able to use Windows 8's native imaging service because of the limited space you have given your C:/ drive. It has to write to what is called a shadow partition to create the image which will be saved. If you can resize your C:/ drive to 120 GB, that would be good but resizing partitions has implications which you have not studied and are not straightforward anyway. If you get your drive sizes adjusted properly again, that is, at least 120 GB for the C:/ drive, then leave well enough alone. You will face consternation if your machine stops functioning and you have no backup image of your OS and applications, not to mention your data. You will then have a lot of work that will need to be done by a proficient technician. It occurs to me that you probably haven't made the system restore disks that you should just after you get a new machine so if you mess up your computer, you will have to buy a new copy of Windows and your applications. If that is the case, the first priority for you now is to buy a copy of True Image 2015 and image your drive to an external drive immediately. True Image will let you restore a 33.96 GB image to a 120 GB partition and that would save your bacon.

[DogNo1]

Just to be absolutely clear, if you have not created your system restore disks, you should install True Image 2015 and image your drive to an external drive before you do ANY OTHER THING. You have been warned.