Solved Multiple Partitions on HDD

[PBS67]

I'm trying to Clone a HDD using AOEMI Backup facility. Trouble is the HDD in the Laptop I'm trying to clone has 5 partitions and AOEMI will only clone 3!

Windows 7 offers me no way of merging these partitions so I have downloaded AOEMI Partition Assist.

The HDD seems to be in a bit of a mess having crashed and now been restored I'm sure it shouldn't have 5 partitions.

Can anyone help and tell me which partitions I should merge/delete/cleanup with PAssist before I clone the drive? Please see the attached photo.

 

[samuria]

You need EFI system and c the rest can go they will contain OEM drivers and tools

 

[PBS67]

Thanks for your reply Samurai

The EFI partition shows 100% free (empty)?

I'm happy to delte the recovery partition but both the System and Partition 5 have significant amounts of data in them are you sure it's alright to delete them or should I merge them to adjacent partitions using PAssist?

Appreciate your help!

 

[samuria]

efionly contains boot data so seems empty but its not without it you cant boot the recovery and oem paritions contain files to install which you dont need if your doing a clean install they are only for a recovery

 

[PBS67]

OK so I have made a recovery USB using the facility on the laptop so in that case I can erase all but EFI and C:\ and merge unallocated partitions to the C:\. If I ever need to recover the HDD in the future, it can all be done from the bootable USB in that case. Is all this correct?

 

[samuria]

You need system as well depending on PC you can often create DVD from recovery a lot of it is bloated ware anyway and in most cases Windows will have all the drivers unless you have strange parts