Hard drive 1MB & 101MB unallocated/unusable space

I have a 500GB hard drive that has 2 unusable bits of space. My obvious question is. Can it be fixed so they can be used or is this stuck like this?

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You can do it with the bootable CD of Partition Wizard. But it is really not worth doing? It is such a minute portion of your disk - make the math.

If you really want to venture into it, make sure you image your C: partition first before you start. It is very easy to lose it with the slightest little mistake.

whs said:

You can do it with the bootable CD of Partition Wizard. But it is really not worth doing? It is such a minute portion of your disk - make the math.

If you really want to venture into it, make sure you image your C: partition first before you start. It is very easy to lose it with the slightest little mistake.

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Yes it is rather a small amount and i am not in a hurry for the space. My only main issue is.

Is this due to a problem that therefore could in the long run cause unwanted minor errors or problems with the hard drive?

Nah, that used to be the active system partition and someone transferred the bootmgr to the C: partition and deleted it. This is how you got the little unallocated space. It is completely harmless. If I were you, I would just leave it - forever.

whs said:

Nah, that used to be the active system partition and someone transferred the bootmgr to the C: partition and deleted it. This is how you got the little unallocated space. It is completely harmless. If I were you, I would just leave it - forever.

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Would make sence i suppose. I not long got it re-formated at my local computer repair store.
Its why when i got it back and spotted it, it got me slightly confused.

Cheers for the help, its a worry off my mind

Your computer store people were smart. The original setup with the 100MB active system partition (which is the default during an installation) is nothing but trouble. Nobody understands why Microsoft introduced that concept with Windows7.

The 100 mb unallocated space that was once perhaps the System Reserved Partition as whs has pointed out, can be easily merged with the C Drive with a good Partition Manager Boot Disk.

As for the 1 mb unallocated space I too have it in one machine, and I have moved heaven and earth to merge it with a bigger partition, including deleting an adjacent partition and creating a single block of unallocated space and then creating a single partition but without success.

As I write a thought has just struck me that had I created a FAT32 partition out of the unallocated space I might have succeeded and then converted it into NTFS. But then why go through the hassle for 1 mb except that disk partitioning doesn't look neat.

Secure said:

I have a 500GB hard drive that has 2 unusable bits of space. My obvious question is. Can it be fixed so they can be used or is this stuck like this?

Picture:

Click to expand...

Whenever you use a Windows utility to format a hard drive Windows will always leave some little chunk of unallocated space at the end of the drive. This is because Windows wants to use that little bit of real estate when creating Dynamic Disks.

Third party programs will allow you to format the entire drive because other OS's do not need or use that space.

Like WHS says, just leave it alone.

TVeblen said:

Whenever you use a Windows utility to format a hard drive Windows will always leave some little chunk of unallocated space at the end of the drive. This is because Windows wants to use that little bit of real estate when creating Dynamic Disks.

Third party programs will allow you to format the entire drive because other OS's do not need or use that space.

Like WHS says, just leave it alone.

Click to expand...

What you say is ok. But that here is a different cause. The people in his computer store were smart and moved the bootmgr.

Oh, understood. I was just referring to the 1MB at the end of the drive.

But I use Acronis Disc Director Boot Disk to partition the hard disks and still can't get rid of that little 1 mb bit. I wonder why?

TVeblen said:

Whenever you use a Windows utility to format a hard drive Windows will always leave some little chunk of unallocated space at the end of the drive. This is because Windows wants to use that little bit of real estate when creating Dynamic Disks.

Third party programs will allow you to format the entire drive because other OS's do not need or use that space.

Like WHS says, just leave it alone.

Click to expand...

Acronis forums is where I got my information, from one of their gurus. Given that, it could be that Acronis utilities maintain Microsoft standards.