New ssd drive showing unallocated space

Hello. Our little boy has a Fizzbook Spin running Windows 7 Home Premium. The 32GB ssd drive failed and I have replaced it with a 250GB 2.5" Sata drive (that I had planned to use to upgrade my laptop!). Installation of the drive went well, and although the old drive had failed before I had chance to clone it, the Fizzbook has a good back-up program that lets you make a bootable usb image, and that worked a treat, just reloaded the image and all fine. Only problem is, instead of showing 250GB Drive C only shows 30GB (there only is Drive C by the way). I just checked in Disk Management and there is 203.07 unallocated space. Maybe I should have formatted and partitioned the drive before reinstalling - I didn't, because the Fizzbook has no dvd drive.

So my question is - am I going to have to start from scratch, format the drive and reinstall again (and do 6 months worth of Windows updates again!), or can I just partition the unallocated space? Thanks.

Sorted - I extended the C partition and now all seems ok.

You can resize the [C] partition so you don't need to reinstall.
You can use the free Partition Wizard bootable USB flash drive.
Boot partition manager from USB Flash disk directly to manage disk partition - Partition Wizard Bootable Flash Drive.

I was replying and just saw your last post.
Glad you got it sorted.

You still may want to get a PW bootable USB flash drive, just in case you ever need it someday ...

Many people like storing Data on a different partition such as [D].
That allows restoring the [C] drive without losing any User Data...
That's your choice, but now might be the best time to consider it ???

Thanks very much! What is a PW bootable flash drive please? I have always used the Windows 7 disk to format new drives before installing, but couldn't due to no dvd drive. Is the PW bootable flash a way of doing that? I have now got a bootable image of the updated system with expanded partition, so that's a start! The drive was a pig to change - meant taking out the keyboard which is tight fitting to be 'splashproof' and now have a slightly bent keyboard in one corner with a couple of gouges in it!

It's so you can boot up with a bootable flash stick and make partition changes without having to boot Windows and make changes to the disk/partitions Windows is on while Windows is running.

You said you don't have a DVD drive, so you could use a bootable flash stick instead.
The link explains how to make the bootable Partition Wizard flash stick.

I don't like to modify the "OS" Disk Structure while Windows is booted, and some things can't be changed because of unmovable files, etc.

I had a problem once modifying the disk with the OS from within the OS.
It was a pita and a lot of work to recover everything.

For example:
If you decide you do want to resize (shrink) the [C] partition now so you can create a [D] data partition, I would use bootable PW.

I think it's safer, and you might not be able to resize the way you want in Windows Disk Management because of unmovable files (while the OS is running).

hth,
David

Thanks very much. I was a bit nervous about resizing the C drive within windows, but it was just to expand to use the unused space. Do you think that would be ok?

Yes, if you've done it and didn't get any errors you're good to go.
Expanding is probably less problematic than shrinking, as no files should need to be moved.

Thanks for your help. As it is just 6 year-old's netbook I will just keep my finger's crossed as have a back-up image now, but will certainly try and sort out the bootable flash stick you mention, in case I need it for my own computer!

If you had a 32gb SSD then that is normally a chip on and MSATA hard drive intended to speed its function by providing SSD caching and boot files speed. This is explained in Install Windows on MSATA (SSD) Drive

Many of these function using Intel Rapid Storage Technology which is explained and shown how to disable it and set to AHCI for normal install in Install Windows on System with MSATA and ISRT.

When you say you replaced the SSD, how was this done?

Did you enter BIOS setup to adjust the SATA controller to AHCI to remove the 32gb correctly and allow install to the HDD, as shown in the above tutorials? This should also show the 32gb as a separate drive, since using IRST it is RAIDed and become part of the HD.

I'm afraid I just unplugged the ?msata and plugged in a 2.5" sata ssd. There is a lot of Intel software on it - I believe it is also called an Intel Classmate - they were made for schools. The speed seems about the same as before - I thought there was something I might need to do in bios but was just glad to have it working!