Boot Disk - From Dual use to just boot

[Weezy]

When I set up my new system, I used a large percentage of the remaining space on my boot disk for movies I've downloaded, family photos, family videos, etc.. If I decide to put those on a completely separate drive and want to free up that space on the boot drive to give it more headroom, what are the steps in doing so safely? Literally, step by step if you don't mind, it's a function I've never done and don't want to mess up my boot disk. I'm not familiar with partitioning, etc..  My boot disk is the Corsair Gen 4 NVME

 

Thanks in advance.

[Eigenvektor]

So do you need help setting up a second drive or just moving the files?

 

In the second case you would simply e.g. drag & drop the files from one drive to another (that will copy them) then delete them from the old drive.

 

Or right click>cut, a file then right click>paste wherever you want it to go.

[Weezy]

6 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

So do you need help setting up a second drive or just moving the files?

 

In the second case you would simply e.g. drag & drop the files from one drive to another (that will copy them) then delete them from the old drive.

 

Or right click>cut, a file then right click>paste wherever you want it to go.

Very familiar with moving files, but have a large chunk of the SSD allocated to personal files that I want to 'open up' so the entire drive is used solely for boot disk. Once I move the files (have them backed up elsewhere as well), and the space is now available, how do I give the space back? Just deleting everything or do I need to partition or delete partition, etc?

[Eigenvektor]

2 minutes ago, Weezy said:

Very familiar with moving files, but have a large chunk of the SSD allocated to personal files that I want to 'open up' so the entire drive is used solely for boot disk. Once I move the files (have them backed up elsewhere as well), and the space is now available, how do I give the space back? Just deleting everything or do I need to partition or delete partition, etc?

If you move a file from one drive to another, the space previously occupied by the file is free. No need to partition anything.

 

Or do you mean you currently have two partitions (e.g. C: and D:) and you want to combine these partitions? Maybe show a screenshot from disk management so we can see your current setup.

[Weezy]

Just now, Eigenvektor said:

If you move a file from one drive to another, the space previously occupied by the file is free. No need to partition anything.

So no need to increase or expand the existing partitions once I have more space available? Even if not 'needed', any benefit in doing so anyway?

[Eigenvektor]

Just now, Weezy said:

So no need to increase or expand the existing partitions once I have more space available? Even if not 'needed', any benefit in doing so anyway?

It's not entirely clear what your current setup is. Do you have one big partition that contains all files? Do you have two partitions, one for Windows, one for your files?

 

If you only have one drive (C:), then there is no need to repartition anything. More specifically, there is nothing to partition, deleting or moving a file to another drive will free the space it used. If you have two partitions, then you'd move all files away from the second partition, delete it, then expand the remaining partition to get a single big one.

[Weezy]

1 minute ago, Eigenvektor said:

It's not entirely clear what your current setup is. Do you have one big partition that contains all files? Do you have two partitions, one for Windows, one for your files?

 

If you only have one drive (C:), then there is no need to repartition anything. More specifically, there is nothing to partition, deleting or moving a file to another drive will free the space it used. If you have two partitions, then you'd move all files away from the second partition, delete it, then expand the remaining partition to get a single big one.

I'll have to take a look, but I believe I simply used the empty space after cloning Windows on the drive, so I don't think it's an actual partition. I know when I delete files, it frees up that space, just wanted to know if there was benefit for SSD life to increase any of the partitions relating to the OS (wear leveling??). If not, I'll just move the files and keep the space open. I'll take a look tomorrow to see if I do have a separate partition though, but doubt it

Thanks for the advice, appreciate it

[Eigenvektor]

7 minutes ago, Weezy said:

I'll have to take a look, but I believe I simply used the empty space after cloning Windows on the drive, so I don't think it's an actual partition. I know when I delete files, it frees up that space, just wanted to know if there was benefit for SSD life to increase any of the partitions relating to the OS (wear leveling??). If not, I'll just move the files and keep the space open. I'll take a look tomorrow to see if I do have a separate partition though, but doubt it

Thanks for the advice, appreciate it

Can you open Disk Management in Windows and take a screenshot of the drive (right click Start > Disk Management)? You can't use "empty space", it needs to contain a partition formatted to e.g. NTFS for Windows to be able to use it and store files on it.

 

Wear leveling is essentially a hardware feature the SSD does on its own by using additional space (that you can typically never access directly). The size of your partition(s) has nothing to do with this.

 

~edit: Here's an example of a Windows System disk in Disk Management.

 

There's a small 100 MB system partition that Windows needs to function, then the C: drive, that contains the OS and other files, then the Windows recovery partition. If there would be any "free space" it would simply be unused/unusable and is essentially wasted.

[aDoomGuy]

@Eigenvektor Yeah, I think what OP means he had a separate partition on his boot drive dedicated to certain files.

 

OP, if that's the case. You can delete the partition in question and expand the partition containing your OS if there are no other partitions between the two. If there are any partitions between them maybe they too can be removed but they may be system partitions but please provide the screenshot Eigenvektor asked to properly advice you.

[Weezy]

9 hours ago, Eigenvektor said:

Can you open Disk Management in Windows and take a screenshot of the drive (right click Start > Disk Management)? You can't use "empty space", it needs to contain a partition formatted to e.g. NTFS for Windows to be able to use it and store files on it.

 

Wear leveling is essentially a hardware feature the SSD does on its own by using additional space (that you can typically never access directly). The size of your partition(s) has nothing to do with this.

 

~edit: Here's an example of a Windows System disk in Disk Management.

 

There's a small 100 MB system partition that Windows needs to function, then the C: drive, that contains the OS and other files, then the Windows recovery partition. If there would be any "free space" it would simply be unused/unusable and is essentially wasted.

Thanks again, here is how it looks in DM

[Weezy]

9 hours ago, aDoomGuy said:

@Eigenvektor Yeah, I think what OP means he had a separate partition on his boot drive dedicated to certain files.

 

OP, if that's the case. You can delete the partition in question and expand the partition containing your OS if there are no other partitions between the two. If there are any partitions between them maybe they too can be removed but they may be system partitions but please provide the screenshot Eigenvektor asked to properly advice you.

Here is how I set it up 

[Eigenvektor]

47 minutes ago, Weezy said:

Here is how I set it up 

So you have the Windows recovery partition between the two, which is a bit of a problem. You can easily extend E: to claim the currently unallocated space, but extending C: is a bit more work.

 

Once everything from E: has been copied (and ideally backed up), you can delete this partition. You can then move the 500 MB partition to the back, but you'll need a third party partition manager to do that (e.g. GParted). This is somewhat risky, so make sure to backup your important data beforehand. If something goes wrong you may have to reinstall Windows.

 

When the partition has been moved to the back, you should be able to extend C: to fill all available space.

Current
| EFI | C: (222 GB) | Recovery | E: (683 GB) | Unallocated (24 GB)

First step, delete E:
| EFI | C: (222 GB) | Recovery | Unallocated (683+24 GB)

Second step, move Recovery
| EFI | C: (222 GB) | Unallocated (683+24 GB) | Recovery

Last step, extend C:
| EFI | C: (222+683+24 GB) | Recovery

[Weezy]

21 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

So you have the Windows recovery partition between the two, which is a bit of a problem. You can easily extend E: to claim the currently unallocated space, but extending C: is a bit more work.

 

Once everything from E: has been copied (and ideally backed up), you can delete this partition. You can then move the 500 MB partition to the back, but you'll need a third party partition manager to do that (e.g. GParted). This is somewhat risky, so make sure to backup your important data beforehand. If something goes wrong you may have to reinstall Windows.

 

When the partition has been moved to the back, you should be able to extend C: to fill all available space.

Current
| EFI | C: (222 GB) | Recovery | E: (683 GB) | Unallocated (24 GB)

First step, delete E:
| EFI | C: (222 GB) | Recovery | Unallocated (683+24 GB)

Second step, move Recovery
| EFI | C: (222 GB) | Unallocated (683+24 GB) | Recovery

Last step, extend C:
| EFI | C: (222+683+24 GB) | Recovery

Awesome thank you! I didn't even recall that I created a partition for the storage space, so obviously just deleting it isn't going to do much. Curious, if I used GPart and move recovery and open up the space next to C: successfully, I imagine I create more room for desktop, programs etc.. are there any other benefits besides that?

[Eigenvektor]

1 minute ago, Weezy said:

Awesome thank you! I didn't even recall that I created a partition for the storage space, so obviously just deleting it isn't going to do much. Curious, if I used GPart and move recovery and open up the space next to C: successfully, I imagine I create more room for desktop, programs etc.. are there any other benefits besides that?

No other benefits. Extending C will simply give you more room on that drive, nothing else.

 

If you're not hurting for space, extending E: (to claim the currently unallocated space) would be the easier thing to do and you could probably move some stuff from C to E to get more room on C that way.

[Weezy]

1 minute ago, Eigenvektor said:

No other benefits. Extending C will simply give you more room on that drive, nothing else.

 

If you're not hurting for space, extending E: (to claim the currently unallocated space) would be the easier thing to do and you could probably move some stuff from C to E to get more room on C that way.

Got it.. thanks again, I appreciate your help in understanding this!