Single partition win10 bootable drive

[homeap5]

It may be interesting for someone (or not).

I made that before with win7, but this time I check this with win10. I converted (for using on old computer) win10 from UEFI to legacy mode. After deleting all partitions but system (and after conversion from GPT to MBR) I fixed boot using win10 bootable installer command line. But that creates small boot partition - exactly like in win7 case.

So, after that, I made some tests - after using EasyBCD, I installed boot on C drive, added entry for Win10 and removed second boot partition (and expand first and only C partition to unallocated space) and I have achieved single-partition bootable win10 (legacy mode).

 

It's not about some great achievement, but more like info for those who wants to have only one partition on their system drive - it's possible.

 

Before someone asks - yes, it was the only drive connected, no boot partition on any other (non-existing) drive.

[Master Disaster]

I'm confused. This is how MBR works anyway, the first 512 bytes on the drive are reserved to store the boot loader, partition tables and FAT.

 

Also for anyone considering this as an option, be aware that if your drive is larger than 2TB then trying this will destroy the drives ability to boot.

[homeap5]

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

I'm confused. This is how MBR works anyway, the first 512 bytes on the drive are reserved to store the boot loader, partition tables and FAT.

 

Also for anyone considering this as an option, be aware that if your drive is larger than 2TB then trying this will destroy the drives ability to boot.

You confused something. I'm talking about boot partition which is separate partition (usually) that contains boot data. I'm not talking about first sector that contains partition table and first boot pass. In case modern OS-es, that 512 bytes boot sector only loads boot program saved on active partition - it's kind of low level startup program that find active partition and pass boot process to that partition, nothing more. So in fact that 512 bytes is not enough to boot Windows itself - it's boot partition job. And I'm talking about joining boot partition and system partition together, which is possible.

 

Of course that drive larger than 2TB is not possible to format in MBR mode. But I'm talking about old computers that have only legacy boot as option. I doubt that anyone wants to buy SSD larger than 2TB for that type of computers.

 

For me it was always nice to have single partition on system drive (in early days). And because I cloned today OS from modern UEFI computer to old Core Quad crap and changed partition table from GPT to MBR, I just wanted to check if it's still possible to eliminate separate partition for boot. And answer is - yes, it's still possible. That's all.

[TheCoverUp]

have you checked It properly that all th other partitions are deleted?

I had once deleted msftres partition and turns out it was still there but it was hidden...

[homeap5]

4 minutes ago, TheCoverUp said:

have you checked It properly that all th other partitions are deleted?

I had once deleted msftres partition and turns out it was still there but it was hidden...

Yes, of course, I know what I'm doing and I'm not beginner.

I don't discover that method, it was described on internet in win7 era. I just checked is it still works in case win10.

 

Separate boot partition is invented for safety reasons - it can contains more than one entry and in case you lost one of your system installation, you'll still be able to boot second drive using the same boot partition. But if you have only single operating system, you may take a "risk" and "join" (kind of) that partitions (in fact not very big risk, because if you have both on the same drive, there is really low probability that you can do anything if your system broke anyway).

 

And is nice to have only one partition on drive.

 

[TheCoverUp]

for me it is a mess of over 15 partitions...I wish it was that simple..

 

[homeap5]

22 minutes ago, TheCoverUp said:

for me it is a mess of over 15 partitions...I wish it was that simple..

You have 15 partitions on single drive? OMG. UEFI boot needs 3 and that's it. Sometimes 4 (depends if you have rescue partition or not).

[TheCoverUp]

they are mainly because of the multiple operating systems I have on this 500 gig drive...

[TheCoverUp]

also did you know the chrome books have around 12 partitions!!?!