Deleting an empty partition also deletes a partition with data.

bogeybunky · 15 Sep 2014

I recently cloned my HDD to a new SSD and that seemed to go okay. The original HHD had 2 partitions named Miscellaneous 1 and Miscellaneous 2. I honestly do not know where those 2 partitions came from. I guess I could have created them some years ago, but I just do not remember. As you would expect after the cloning I had those same 2 partitions on my new SSD. When I check partition properties they both show up with about 100 MB used space and 39 GB of free space. I want to clean up that drive (as well as my new drive) so I deleted them on the HDD using Disk Management. For some reason when I did that it also deleted 2 partitions that had data and pictures in them. That was okay since I have that information on the new drive, but I would like to get rid of the 2 Miscellaneous partitions on the SSD, but am afraid to do so. When I run Disk Management it does not show the missing files on the HDD (as I would expect) and does show them on the SSD (again as I would expect).

I learned about Partition Wizard Mini-tool from this forum. I ran the Partition Recovery Wizard and it shows the 2 miscellaneous and 2 data files as lost/deleted on the SSD. I have attached screen shots that hopefully will help to explain what I am trying to describe. Any comments or suggestions about what may have happened and what I need to do will be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much.

bogeybunky · 15 Sep 2014

One other thing I forgot to mention in my original post is I tried to run the Partition Recovery Wizard and it always tells me that at least one partition will be deleted. I don't understand that and it scared me away.

This is my first post here. Why do all the other post thread titles appear in bold and mine does not?

jumanji · 15 Sep 2014

Please don't get confused and confuse us also running both WDM and Partition Recovery Wizard.

Partition Recovery Wizard should be run for a specific purpose and if there is no necessity, there is no need to run it.

(Since you had cloned the 1.5TB HDD onto the 500GB SDD whatever partition manipulations you had done on the 1.5TB HDD since its inception in the system are bound to leave an imprint on the SSD and Partition Recovery Wizard will bring up that old history. But the fact is we are not interested in it.)

To make things clear I would like you to do the following:

1. Remove your 1.5TB HDD from your system by disconnecting the power and data cables to it. Please remove any other external drives/pen drives. We don't need to see those.:)

2. Boot your system and check that everything is fine, confirm that all data you need is there.

3. Now post a screenshot of Windows Disk Management and tell us what you want to do with this SSD drive further and what your problem is. You will be advised appropriately by other experts here taking into account that it is a DELL OEM machine. ( I normally shy away from SSDs for I had never touched one.:))

Once this is done, tell us what you want to do with the 1.5TB HDD. You can reconnect it to the system and confirm that it has no data in it that you may be interested in , you may wipe it clean and format it as you like.

Where is the need for Partition Recovery Wizard at all?

Imrankhan · 16 Sep 2014

bogeybunky said:

Why do all the other post thread titles appear in bold and mine does not?

Read threads are shown as Normal font.Threads with unread posts are shown in Bold font.

bogeybunky · 16 Sep 2014

Thank you Imrankhan

bogeybunky · 16 Sep 2014

Thank you for your suggestions jumanji. I will do as you requested and post back here as soon as I can. It will take a little time as I have just had rotator cuff surgery and essentially have only one hand to work with as far as disconnecting the internal HD. As to Partition Recovery Wizard I obviously did not know that I did not need it. I will stick with DM as you suggest.

jumanji · 16 Sep 2014

Take your time and do it at your convenience. We are always here - someone or other. :)

bogeybunky · 16 Sep 2014

Okay have done as jumanji suggested and screenshot of Disk Mgt is attached. Everything seems to work fine.

Now what I would like to do is reattach the internal HDD, totally remove everything on it and create new partitions for backing up my SSD. Would appreciate suggestions for the best way to do this.

On my SSD I still have 2 partitions labeled Misc 1 and Misc 2. I would like to remove them, but when I just deleted them on my of HDD 2 other partitions were also deleted. I still do not understand how that happened. At any rate am reluctant to do that. I have everything from my SSD backed up, but just trying to avoid any unforeseen problems. Thanks again for everyone's help.

gregrocker · 17 Sep 2014

Since you say you have your data backed up adequately I'm not going to deal with your mystery partition deletion. Likely something to do with the excess Primary partition anomaly. You can have four total Primary partitions only, or three Primary before you convert one to Logical and then have as many adjacent Logicals to that one as you want. MBR disks can't support as many Primary partitions as you show there.

But somehow the clone ended up with all Partitions as Logical except protected OEM, with Recovery still marked Active. This is impossible too since no Logical partition can be marked Active or contain the System boot files booting Win7. So again you have an anomaly that an MBR disk cannot support at all and which will not function as it is marked.

You can try to convert the Recovery on SSD to Primary using Partition Wizard Convert to Logical/Primary then assure it is still Partition Marked Active to run Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times with the HDD unplugged to see if it can be correctly marked System Active and boot itself. But Recovery may not run from a clone so you'd need to test that to see if you want to even keep Recovery on the SSD, since it contains the inferior factory install and might not even function.

It would be much better given these critical issues if you'd delete all partitions on the SSD during a booted Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 with the HDD unplugged. You really don't want to clone a grossly inferior factory install when you have the chance to do a perfect install to enjoy on the SSD.

Short of that I would make the Recovery bootable as given to test if it will boot to run, and if not convert the SSD's Win7 partition to Primary, mark Active and run the 3 Repairs with HD unplugged until the SSD is booting itself as signified by the System Active flags on C. Hopefully with the HDD unplugged the SSD Win7 will boot as C if it was correctly cloned using the OS Auto drive letter selection.

Then I'd delete the Recovery leaving it on the HDD only, or copying it to the HDD for backup using Partition Wizard, resize the new C on SSD to the left and as far to the right as you want. PW will work with the Free Space which results from Logical partitions being deleted, while in Disk Mgmt you must delete it again to make it Unallocated first. Partition Wizard Resize Video

All in all, you have one of the bigger messes ever seen here where we have dealt with tens of thousands of these. Best to start over following the steps in Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 which will assure a perfect install every time.

TVeblen · 17 Sep 2014

It would be helpful to know if the drives are in MBR format or GPT format.
Could you check them as described here: Hard Drive - GPT or MBR and tell us which they both are?