need help

[Goku1814]

im trying to move my recovery onto a different storage device. but idk how to do it. is there an easy way to do it?

if drive that has the black box around is unplugged the nvme SSD i have as my bootdrive completely dissappears and the pc acts like it wasnt there but if i plug it in it magically reappears if that makes sense.

 

[MrSimplicity]

are you talking about the "recovery" drive/partition? if so then no. The partition is created when installing the OS. If you're just talking about a backup then it should just be a regular files that you can move anywhere.

[Goku1814]

1 minute ago, MrSimplicity said:

are you talking about the "recovery" drive/partition? if so then no. The partition is created when installing the OS. If you're just talking about a backup then it should just be a regular files that you can move anywhere.

so i would have to do a new install of my OS? which im fine with if can make it so my ssd is the recovery drive instead of 7yr old hhd

[MrSimplicity]

4 minutes ago, Goku1814 said:

so i would have to do a new install of my OS? which im fine with if can make it so my ssd is the recovery drive instead of 7yr old hhd

If you're okay with it then reinstalling your OS to your SSD should've been the first thing you did when you got it. So yes, the only way to do what you're asking is to reinstall your OS onto your SSD and your recovery drive will also be installed on the SSD. Also your old recovery drive will not go away nor will you get the space from it back on your HDD without basically deleting all partitions and reformatting the entire drive. And if you do reinstall windows to your SSD, fun tip... remove your old OS drive prior to installing or else you'll be prompted with dual boot every time you start your computer.

[MrSimplicity]

okay, somehow I completely missed the photo in your post...

 

that E: drive, as you do, I'd assume is your recovery drive. The only reason that would be on a separate drive other than your OS drive is if you have your OS installed on the drive prior. in which case Windows doesn't actually know that recovery drive exists for it's intended purpose. either that or the E: drive is actually a partition on your SSD already.

 

If you can open up Disk Management and see what all partitions you have and maybe post a picture of that here.

 

*edit* also either windows doesn't do it anymore or it's only SSDs but your recovery drive shouldn't actually have a drive letter attached to it and you should be able to see it in "my computer"

[Goku1814]

3 minutes ago, MrSimplicity said:

okay, somehow I completely missed the photo in your post...

 

that E: drive, as you do, I'd assume is your recovery drive. The only reason that would be on a separate drive other than your OS drive is if you have your OS installed on the drive prior. in which case Windows doesn't actually know that recovery drive exists for it's intended purpose. either that or the E: drive is actually a partition on your SSD already.

 

If you can open up Disk Management and see what all partitions you have and maybe post a picture of that here.

 

[MrSimplicity]

Yupp, as I suspected. See that "Healthy (recovery partition)" that's your NVME that was created when you installed windows on your SSD. so you can, if you want, just delete the other partitions you have on the other drives.

[Goku1814]

3 minutes ago, MrSimplicity said:

Yupp, as I suspected. See that "Healthy (recovery partition)" that's your recovery that was created when you installed windows on your SSD. so you can, if you want, just delete the other partitions you have on the other drives.

okay im also doing a full copy of my os onto a backup hard drive so ill have all my files for when i do a fresh OS 

[MrSimplicity]

1 minute ago, Goku1814 said:

okay im also doing a full copy of my os onto a backup hard drive so ill have all my files for when i do a fresh OS 

You don't have to do that other than just for the sake of having a backup in general. Every time you do a clean install of windows (at least on the same drive) it puts everything into a windows.old folder. There's not really a reason to format the drive or to delete partitions prior to a reinstall either. Nor do you want to carry over any old OS files to the new one. But if that's what you're used to doing then by all means it's probably best to stick with that. 

[Blue4130]

2 hours ago, MrSimplicity said:

are you talking about the "recovery" drive/partition? if so then no. The partition is created when installing the OS. If you're just talking about a backup then it should just be a regular files that you can move anywhere.

Software like acronis or macrium can move the windows "special" partitions to other drives pretty easily. No need for a complete reinstall.