My important partitions are all on different drives

[Zeke_]

Shame on me, I didn’t know about the apparently common bug that does this when installing windows with multiple drives installed.

 

My main system partition is on my primary SSD where I want it to be. 

 

My EFI boot partition is on my secondary SSD

 

My recovery partition is on my 7 old HDD that’s probably a year or two out from failure. 

 

Ideally I would like all of these partitions on the previously mentioned  primary SSD. Is there any easy way to move those partitions or create new ones for my main SSD? I really would prefer to not have to reinstall windows. 

 

I am using Windows 11, and otherwise my system is behaving completely normally. I just would really like this fixed.

 

 

[Robchil]

8 minutes ago, Zeke_ said:

Shame on me, I didn’t know about the apparently common bug that does this when installing windows with multiple drives installed.

 

My main system partition is on my primary SSD where I want it to be. 

 

My EFI boot partition is on my secondary SSD

 

My recovery partition is on my 7 old HDD that’s probably a year or two out from failure. 

 

Ideally I would like all of these partitions on the previously mentioned  primary SSD. Is there any easy way to move those partitions or create new ones for my main SSD? I really would prefer to not have to reinstall windows. 

 

I am using Windows 11, and otherwise my system is behaving completely normally. I just would really like this fixed.

 

 

the fastest way to do it is to take a backup of your personal files in your user profile

disable the other drives in bios, or disconnect them.

wipe your system drive, delete all partitions, reinstall win11

restore the backup of your files.. machine account and access control list (acl) for files and folders will be different so you shouldn't back up registry or any more.

enable your other drives, or reconnect them and delete system partitions and expand the main storage partition. 

[Zeke_]

18 minutes ago, Robchil said:

the fastest way to do it is to take a backup of your personal files in your user profile

disable the other drives in bios, or disconnect them.

wipe your system drive, delete all partitions, reinstall win11

restore the backup of your files.. machine account and access control list (acl) for files and folders will be different so you shouldn't back up registry or any more.

enable your other drives, or reconnect them and delete system partitions and expand the main storage partition. 

Is it possible to just create new EFI and recovery partitions? I can live with the duplicate ones if it means not having to reinstall windows.

[Robchil]

21 minutes ago, Zeke_ said:

Is it possible to just create new EFI and recovery partitions? I can live with the duplicate ones if it means not having to reinstall windows.

to do that you will have to shrink your windows partition in the front and back to fit them in.  

i've never realy tried that but if you do that and disable your other disks so it's not booting anymore, use the install USB to repair the install, that could possibly fix it. 

 

my system drive has one 499MB partition(recovery) a 100MB EFI partition ahead of C: and a 650MB recovery partition in the end of it. 

so you would need 600mb in front free space, and 650 mb at the end of the disk. 

[Zeke_]

1 minute ago, Robchil said:

to do that you will have to shrink your windows partition in the front and back to fit them in.  

i've never realy tried that but if you do that and disable your other disks so it's not booting anymore, use the install USB to repair the install, that could possibly fix it. 

 

 

I think I will try this. I have about 600GB of games on that drive that I don’t want to have to reinstall but I also don’t have space to move onto my secondary. 

[Robchil]

Just now, Zeke_ said:

I think I will try this. I have about 600GB of games on that drive that I don’t want to have to reinstall but I also don’t have space to move onto my secondary. 

my system drive has one 499MB partition(recovery) a 100MB EFI partition ahead of C: and a 650MB recovery partition in the end of it. 

so you would need 600mb in front free space, and 650 mb at the end of the disk. 

[BoomerDutch]

Oh god manually changing partitions is a nightmare.

 

Make sure to make backup before you do this.

[Robchil]

btw.. with steam ubisoft and other game loaders, you can backup the game data.. if you have space on your harddrive i would copy the game data there.. and restore it after a reinstall. 

 

and for drivers... i would use powershell and type Export-WindowsDriver -Online -Destination D:\Drivers  before you start this

 

D:\drivers can be where every you want it.. to reload drivers quick.  go in device manager and just load drivers and point to the directory you choose.. 

 

[Zeke_]

On 4/15/2024 at 2:48 PM, Robchil said:

the fastest way to do it is to take a backup of your personal files in your user profile

disable the other drives in bios, or disconnect them.

wipe your system drive, delete all partitions, reinstall win11

restore the backup of your files.. machine account and access control list (acl) for files and folders will be different so you shouldn't back up registry or any more.

enable your other drives, or reconnect them and delete system partitions and expand the main storage partition. 

Ended up doing this, all is well. Thanks for your help.