Oops.

[Vicarian]

So, it happened.  I was trying after many years to clean up a really old boot partition for Windows on an HDD I've since repurposed as a game library (Steam, Origin, Epic, etc).  I was using Windows 10's built in Disk Managment.  I deleted all 3 of the system partitions via command line and went to resize the primary partition in the GUI.  I set the new size and Windows issued a confirmation dialog asking whether I wanted to change the disk type to dynamic.  I accidentally clicked Yes.  However, to my dismay, it didn't actually resize the partition containing my Steam games.  I can't quite recall what I did next, but suffice to say, the primary partition ended up getting deleted, so there went 4 TB of games that will take me 4 days to redownload.  At one point, there were two partitions on the drive with the same drive letter (D, in my case).  Fortunately, my ISP gave all their customers on a certain tier unlimited data because of the plague, so it's not all that big of a deal.  However, I'm left with some questions.  Is the Windows Disk Manager incapable of growing a partition to the left, IE, the partition's offset is non-zero?  Could I have done anything differently and ended up with a drive with a single useable partition using only the Windows disk manager?

[SquintyG33Rs]

windows disk manager just creates a fragmented add on to the partition when you extend it, it doesn't actually change it to a continuous block even when it should. it's kind of one of the most horrendous built in tools in windows. (which is why you end up doing half it's job in command line)

I recommend using a 3rd party tool whenever you do think kind of work. unfortunately most of these cost money ( or have a timed trial like acronis recently in an LTT video) I have used EasyUS partition master (cracks do exist for many of these too, especially those that have existed for a long time with good older versions)

all the paid 3rd party options I've ever seen are a million times better than windows disk manager. and they usually have a bootable USB key creator to make your partition changes outside of windows if you need that.

PS: kekw data caps