Can I move System Reserved Partition Safely?

[CanadianJet]

I recently purchased a new 2 TB SSD for my game library. I previously had games spread out on my previous 4 drives. I would like to wipe both 120 gb SSD's for a fresh slate on both of them. However, on Disk 3 used to have my windows 10 installation. I added a M.2 later and re-installed windows there, and later upgraded to windows 11. It appears that the system reserved and recovery partitions stayed behind on the old drive and are Active. Can I format disk 3 safely without borking my system? Also, I don't know why my M.2 has so many recovery partitions...

 

 

TIA

[C2dan88]

23 minutes ago, CanadianJet said:

Can I format disk 3 safely without borking my system?

Pretty sure you can. To test though try booting without disk3 connected to the system. If you can boot to desktop with no issues, then you can format the drive.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

1 hour ago, CanadianJet said:

I recently purchased a new 2 TB SSD for my game library. I previously had games spread out on my previous 4 drives. I would like to wipe both 120 gb SSD's for a fresh slate on both of them. However, on Disk 3 used to have my windows 10 installation. I added a M.2 later and re-installed windows there, and later upgraded to windows 11. It appears that the system reserved and recovery partitions stayed behind on the old drive and are Active. Can I format disk 3 safely without borking my system? Also, I don't know why my M.2 has so many recovery partitions...

 

 

TIA

If you can remove or disconnect the drive you don't want to wipe, I would do that first. 

 

Boot into the Windows installation media, open the command prompt, and launch diskpart. Select the drive you want to completely wipe and run the clean command on it. It'll delete all partitions on the drive. You'll want to do this via the Windows installer because if you're booted into Windows, it could for good reason, refuse to wipe any sort of system reserved and recovery partitions. 

 

https://www.microcenter.com/tech_center/article/11405/how-to-use-the-diskpart-utility-preparing-to-install-windows

[aisle9]

1 hour ago, CanadianJet said:

I recently purchased a new 2 TB SSD for my game library. I previously had games spread out on my previous 4 drives. I would like to wipe both 120 gb SSD's for a fresh slate on both of them. However, on Disk 3 used to have my windows 10 installation. I added a M.2 later and re-installed windows there, and later upgraded to windows 11. It appears that the system reserved and recovery partitions stayed behind on the old drive and are Active. Can I format disk 3 safely without borking my system? Also, I don't know why my M.2 has so many recovery partitions...

 

 

TIA

As a general rule, anytime you're going to mess with partitions that used to belong to a Windows install, even if it's on a different drive than your Windows install, it's a good idea not to have your boot drive connected to the system. Really anytime you're going to be formatting drives or deleting partitions, it's not a bad idea to just disconnect everything but the drive you want to mess with and then boot into Linux or Windows installation media to make the changes.

 

But yes, you can.

[CanadianJet]

22 hours ago, C2dan88 said:

Pretty sure you can. To test though try booting without disk3 connected to the system. If you can boot to desktop with no issues, then you can format the drive.

Unplugged disc 3 and booted into Windows no problem. I am assuming the 'Active' Status is irrelevant then?

[CanadianJet]

20 hours ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

If you can remove or disconnect the drive you don't want to wipe, I would do that first. 

 

Boot into the Windows installation media, open the command prompt, and launch diskpart. Select the drive you want to completely wipe and run the clean command on it. It'll delete all partitions on the drive. You'll want to do this via the Windows installer because if you're booted into Windows, it could for good reason, refuse to wipe any sort of system reserved and recovery partitions. 

 

https://www.microcenter.com/tech_center/article/11405/how-to-use-the-diskpart-utility-preparing-to-install-windows

 

20 hours ago, aisle9 said:

As a general rule, anytime you're going to mess with partitions that used to belong to a Windows install, even if it's on a different drive than your Windows install, it's a good idea not to have your boot drive connected to the system. Really anytime you're going to be formatting drives or deleting partitions, it's not a bad idea to just disconnect everything but the drive you want to mess with and then boot into Linux or Windows installation media to make the changes.

 

But yes, you can.

Easier said than done, I have to remove my cpu fan to access the m.2 slot... I booted into windows no problem with the disc disconnected. Do I need to worry about the 'Active' label of the partition? The option is greyed out for Disc 4.