I just finished building my first PC, and I've run into a problem with my new NVMe M.2 SSD. There's a whopping 931.5 GB of unallocated space on it, but no matter what I try, I can't extend my C drive without messing up the Windows Recovery Environment. I have four recovery partitions surrounding the C drive which are causing this issue. They include a 400 MB Healthy Recovery Partition, a 300 MB EFI System Partition, my 914.6 GB C drive, and three other recovery partitions totaling 15 GB. I've tried using tools like Macrium and MiniTool Partition Wizard to move or delete these partitions, but doing so disables Windows Recovery and I'm left having to clone my old SATA SSD repeatedly. I've even done a fresh Windows 11 install hoping it would clear this up, but the partitions are still there. Is there a way to move these partitions out of the way in order to extend my C drive without breaking anything? Or should I just create a new D drive with that unallocated space? Any advice would be super appreciated!
1 Answer
If you just reinstalled Windows, your best bet might be to start fresh. When reinstalling, delete all partitions on the drive so it just shows as "unallocated space." Don't worry about the other disks; just focus on disk 0, which is your main drive. From there, you can create a single partition that uses all the space or multiple ones as you prefer during the install process. Windows will set up all the necessary partitions for recovery automatically, so you won't have to mess with them manually.
Are you suggesting I need to use an ISO to install Windows? I tried resetting and selecting to wipe everything, but I never got an option to delete the partitions. How do I do that without risking my current setup?