Can I delete or extend a partition?

[SJMaye]

I have a little Acer Revo HTPC. I am running out of recording space, so I took a look to see what was using up my 500GB drive. Turns out almost 50% of it is set aside in a partition for "Data". I would assume this is for system recovery, but it shows empty.

Can I reclaim this space or extend the main partition? I do not want to lose my ability to recover my system.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Hello SJM mate I use Partition Wizard to domost things with partitions I am not expert but I think that you can delete the D: and just extend the C: into the space it leaves.
MiniTool Free Partition Manager for Window 8/7/vista/xp | Partition Wizard Free Edition see my pic

PS the space made by deleting D: may show as unallocated space it is ko to go ahead and follow the pic instructions.

 

[AddRAM]

It is not used for recovery as there is nothing on it, you can either just start using that partition for data, a great idea so you can always just reinstall windows to C if you have to. Or you can delete it and add the space to C.

John has given excellent advice, but it can also be done just using Disk Management.

Simply moving your data to D will clear up plenty of room on C, i`ts 6 of 1 or a half dozen of the other kind of thing, it`s all 1 hard drive, so however you do it does not really matter, but your data should never be stored with C

Best thing you could do is buy an external usb drive for more storage. 2 TB or more.

 

[SJMaye]

I am a little confused. I know I see nothing on the D: partition and I have double checks to show any hidden files and still see nothing there. I THOUGHT the only way they could protect an system image for recovery would be to put it on a separate partition. How can Acer offer system recovery if the image is on the C: drive?

 

[Layback Bear]

Completing this tutorial completely might help the good folks helping you. (ICIT2LOL and AddRAM)

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/274797-disk-management-post-screen-capture-image.html

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Hum well unless I am terribly wrong that recovery is just that the D: you can do with what I said to or using that software make it a usable partition by formatting it. If you use PW click on the D: and see if it will explore it that will show if there is anything on it or look in Disk Management it will show what the partition is probably unallocated.
Start > right click Computer > left click Manage > left click Disk management see pic for example.

Personally I like to back up (image) to an external drive / separate drive in case the internal goes south taking all hands down.

 

[Taplice]

The tutorials will help you
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2668-partition-volume-delete.html
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2670-partition-volume-extend.html

 

[Layback Bear]

Post #1 shows nothing on Partition "D". It also doesn't show a recovery partition.

 

[SJMaye]

Sorry Layback Bear. Totally missed the clues. Yes, disk management showed far more. And what a mess that disk is. Maybe you guys can help me determine what I need to save.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Hum had an idea Disk Management might show something like this. Now you can go in and use Partition Wizard and "Explore " each partition. MiniTool Partition Wizard | Best partition magic alternative for Windows PC and Server it is as I described before a very handy tool for doing a lot with partitions.

So instal PW and the right click on each partition and click Explore it will drop down a list of what is in the partition.

 

[SJMaye]

OK. I am getting somewhere. Have a look at this. I had a crash back in June and did a restore. I wonder if that is what created this mess on the HDD. Please have a look. It appears I could delete multiple partitions.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Ok we may be getting soemwhere but I am not sure which is the duplicate and maybe Mitchell could answer tis better than me.

What I personally would do and I know it sounds rather drastic - is to clone this drive and take out the original or disconnect the SATA lead and boot the clone and remove the duplicates and see what happens. If all goes well then either use the cloned drive or go back and delete the duplicates on the original. But whatever you decide I would suggest you fully back up any data and programs you need.

 

[SJMaye]

Not to worry. There is nothing on the drive that I am attached to. If it all went South I would just rebuild from scratch. All I would be out is some time and the wife beating on me until the HTPC was up and running again

Getting back to the issue- Like many off the shelf PCs this has a recovery system that makes it easy to push a button and put back to factory. If I lost this am I just back to being like my custom builds? I would just use a bootable version of WIN7 to install a fresh copy and go?

The most simple thing I see here is the delete the data partition and extend the main partition to regain 220GB. Should be safe?

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Yes well if you have the factory recovery partition then it is the most important one to save and if you want to get it all back in shape then do a factory restore.
Just one thing if you do and want to steer clear of any 10 crap then when updating and I would set them to let me choose what to download and install - look carefully through them for KB3035533 - right click it and hide it.
If you miss it and it gets installed then does the disable upgrade from this Upgrade to Windows 10 Update - Enable or Disable in Windows 7 or 8.1 - Windows 10 Forums

 

[SJMaye]

Thanks for the tip on 10. I always set my PCs to check for, not autoinstall updates. At this point I do not want Win10. I watch closely for that one.

Thx.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Ok alls good and I suspect if you were not looking for it that KB3035533 was installed on your machine during any clean install because it was very ambiguous in the description of it.
Anyway you have the disable thing to keep it out and personally unless they address the privacy and ability to have what you want on your computer I shall not be using 10.

 

[SJMaye]

I went ahead and used the registry fix to disable the Win10 update. Keeps me from having to keep an eye on it.

Thanks for the tip.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

No problems and if you have to ever reinstall just use the update settings as in the pic and just hide the KB mentioned then you will not have to worry about disabling the update, because once on it leaves a registry entry GWX which cannot be removed without wiping the disk and doing a clean install

 

[cnc many]

hi
Im no expert, but how about moving all photos or music etc to the d drive or even my documents, but whatever you do get a usb external drive and back up the lot first good luck

 

[AddRAM]

hi
Im no expert, but how about moving all photos or music etc to the d drive or even my documents, but whatever you do get a usb external drive and back up the lot first good luck

Said back on post #3