drive partitions ? help!

MRSMIFFY · July 22, 2014

in my pc i have 2x 1tb hdd and a 120gb ssd but when in my pc it shows 6 drives including recovery image (E) system reserved (F) and system reserved (H) both system reserved partitions are empty when i click on them but the recovery image i cant open now i have no idea what these are all about or how to get rid of them if anyone knows how id be very grateful i will upload a pic to show my situation.

thanks in advance and sorry if posted in the wrong place

DaveSimonH · July 22, 2014

I see that the C: drive is labelled as NEW OS, have you just installed/reinstalled w8? If so, any reason why you didn't install it to the SSD? Is this a recent change, did you only see drives C: D: & G: before?

Generally when installing Windows at least one system reserved partition will be created (w7 100MB, w8 350MB), but usually you can only see it in Computer Management;

right click Computer on desktop, or in start menu & select Manage and then Disk Management.

Best not to delete them, you can hide them though. In Disk Management, right click one of the partitions and select Change Drive Letters and Paths, then hit Remove button to get rid of its drive letter. Now it will be hidden from view, but will still accessible by the system.

The Recovery Image is as it sounds, it's an image of your system created either by you with Windows Backup, or the OEM. Will allow you to take your system back to factory settings if you ever run into problems.

MRSMIFFY · July 22, 2014

I see that the C: drive is labelled as NEW OS, have you just installed/reinstalled w8? If so, any reason why you didn't install it to the SSD? Is this a recent change, did you only see drives C: D: & G: before?

Generally when installing Windows at least one system reserved partition will be created (w7 100MB, w8 350MB), but usually you can only see it in Computer Management;

right click Computer on desktop, or in start menu & select Manage and then Disk Management.

Best not to delete them, you can hide them though. In Disk Management, right click one of the partitions and select Change Drive Letters and Paths, then hit Remove button to get rid of its drive letter. Now it will be hidden from view, but will still accessible by the system.

The Recovery Image is as it sounds, it's an image of your system created either by you with Windows Backup, or the OEM. Will allow you to take your system back to factory settings if you ever run into problems.

thanks for the reply and yes i did have it installed on ssd but at some point the drive read protected itself and i reinstalled os on hdd formatted ssd and labelled it like so to avoid confusion and yes these extra drives only appeared after that. and ok i guess i will hide them thanks buddy you have just relieved a major pain in my arse!!!!

DaveSimonH · July 23, 2014

I guess that explains the second reserved partition.

Not sure how you tried copying it over the first time, but you could maybe try using something like "EaseUS Todo Backup Free" or "Acronis True Image" to clone Windows 8 over to the SSD. You'd have to temp backup to your 2nd HDD so that you have less than 111GB to copy over. But the speed of the SSD would be worth the effort.