Mistakenly deleted a partition on my D: drive for storage

[Lotrbee]

Hi folks, how r u all?

Btw yesterday I was re-installing windows to a newly bought m.2 sata SSD. On the disk partition menu, I accidentally deleted a partition on my 1TB WD blue HDD which is only 16MB in amount but i forgot what's the name on that partition (was it MBR or OM or ER, but definitely not OEM).

But afterward the D drive was still readable and I could do copy-paste just fine.

My question is, is the partition that I deleted is an important partition which can cause trouble later on? Or was it just some partition that windows make just to ease things up? Please respond if anyone knows about this, I kindly appreciate it.

[WhitetailAni]

If it works fine, probably not.

I can't think of any extra partition that a storage drive would need.

[WaggishOhio383]

It was probably some sort of partition created by your OS, which now that you're not running an OS off the drive isn't needed. I know Windows 10 likes to create extra partitions on the drive it's installed on, but I don't really know what they do. However, if I were you I'd get all your important files off that secondary drive and wipe it. It's probably not a good idea to just leave your old windows installation (or what's left of it) on there when it's not your primary boot drive.

[Lotrbee]

4 minutes ago, ragnarok0273 said:

If it works fine, probably not.

I can't think of any extra partition that a storage drive would need.

Alrighty, thanks for the information.

[Godlygamer23]

3 minutes ago, WaggishOhio383 said:

It was probably some sort of partition created by your OS, which now that you're not running an OS off the drive isn't needed. I know Windows 10 likes to create extra partitions on the drive it's installed on, but I don't really know what they do. However, if I were you I'd get all your important files off that secondary drive and wipe it. It's probably not a good idea to just leave your old windows installation (or what's left of it) on there when it's not your primary boot drive.

At the very least, those partitions are required as my current build requires my WD 320GB hard drive to be connected to my motherboard(and it has one of those partitions), or Windows literally cannot boot.

[Lotrbee]

4 minutes ago, WaggishOhio383 said:

It was probably some sort of partition created by your OS, which now that you're not running an OS off the drive isn't needed. I know Windows 10 likes to create extra partitions on the drive it's installed on, but I don't really know what they do. However, if I were you I'd get all your important files off that secondary drive and wipe it. It's probably not a good idea to just leave your old windows installation (or what's left of it) on there when it's not your primary boot drive.

Oh, okay then. I just don't have an extra storage to make a backup out of the 1TB yet. Will do it later on. Thanks btw

 

[WaggishOhio383]

1 minute ago, Godlygamer23 said:

At the very least, those partitions are required as my current build requires my WD 320GB hard drive to be connected to my motherboard(and it has one of those partitions), or Windows literally cannot boot.

Well yes, but not if you aren't trying to load the OS from that drive, which OP isn't. They're booting from a different drive and using the old boot drive as extra storage. They just never removed the old installation from it.

[Godlygamer23]

3 minutes ago, WaggishOhio383 said:

Well yes, but not if you aren't trying to load the OS from that drive, which OP isn't. They're booting from a different drive and using the old boot drive as extra storage. They just never removed the old installation from it.

I'm not loading the OS from the drive. It's a secondary drive strictly with an additional partition created during OS installation. Besides, you asked about additional partitions, and I gave you an answer, regardless of the location.

[Lotrbee]

4 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

At the very least, those partitions are required as my current build requires my WD 320GB hard drive to be connected to my motherboard(and it has one of those partitions), or Windows literally cannot boot.

Thankfully windows was booting just fine for my PC, so I think it doesn't impacting so much to the OS. Just have to make a backup out of it like WaggishOhio383 suggest.

[WaggishOhio383]

2 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

I'm not loading the OS from the drive. It's a secondary drive strictly with an additional partition created during installation. Besides, you asked about additional partitions, and I gave you an answer, regardless of the location.

Oh you're saying one of your secondary drives has to have that partition too? I thought you were talking about your boot drive. That's definitely odd. I have two secondary drives in my PC, and neither has any partition other than the main one used to store files.

[Lotrbee]

2 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

I'm not loading the OS from the drive. It's a secondary drive strictly with an additional partition created during OS installation. Besides, you asked about additional partitions, and I gave you an answer, regardless of the location.

Perhaps it's a system partition that you are speaking of here. It's true that without it,OS usually won't boot. Well,based on what I've read from other sources.

[Godlygamer23]

3 minutes ago, WaggishOhio383 said:

Oh you're saying one of your secondary drives has to have that partition too? I thought you were talking about your boot drive. That's definitely odd. I have two secondary drives in my PC, and neither has any partition other than the main one used to store files.

It was created when I reinstalled Windows 7 when I first got my SSD somewhere around 8 years ago. When W10 came out, I just upgraded to it directly without reinstalling it, and I still haven't gotten around to it lol. I forgot about it some months ago when I disconnected it so I could retire it(it's about a decade old drive), and was confused when I couldn't boot into Windows. I reconnected the drive, and all of a sudden could boot into it.

[Godlygamer23]

2 minutes ago, Lotrbee said:

Perhaps it's a system partition that you are speaking of here. It's true that without it,OS usually won't boot. Well,based on what I've read from other sources.

Yeah it is a system partition. I can't see it though normally, but it's there.

[Lotrbee]

1 minute ago, WaggishOhio383 said:

Oh you're saying one of your secondary drives has to have that partition too? I thought you were talking about your boot drive. That's definitely odd. I have two secondary drives in my PC, and neither has any partition other than the main one used to store files.

Yes, it's odd in my case too. I have 3 drives now, one is M.2, the other two is HDD for storage (1TB and 160GB). After installation, I looked at the partition and windows just create a system partition out of the 160GB drive. Why don't it create the system at the same M.2 drive?? I wonder why..

[Lotrbee]

Thanks very much by the way folks, for the sharing n caring. Keep the techs up

[LWM723]

When Windows installs and there is another drive connected, it may install a hidden boot partition on the other drive. Always disconnect all drives except the one you are installing to. Create a partition first and install to that partition and you won't have any other partitions creared just C:.

[Godlygamer23]

1 minute ago, LWM723 said:

When Windows installs and there is another drive connected, it may install a hidden boot partition on the other drive. Always disconnect all drives except the one you are installing to. Create a partition first and install to that partition and you won't have any other partitions creared just C:.

Yeah, that's a good rule of thumb that I've followed on other builds.