Hey everyone! I just completed my first PC build and now I'm facing an issue with my NVMe M.2 SSD. I have a whopping 931.5 GB of unallocated space on the drive, but I'm struggling to extend my C drive without messing up the Windows Recovery Environment. I have four recovery partitions surrounding my C drive, as shown in Disk Management:
- 400 MB Healthy (Recovery Partition)
- 300 MB Healthy (EFI System Partition)
- 914.6 GB Healthy C Drive (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Basic Data Partition)
- 773 MB Healthy (Recovery Partition)
- 350 MB Healthy (Recovery Partition)
- 15 GB Healthy (Recovery Partition)
- 931.5 GB Unallocated
Every time I try to delete or move any of these partitions using tools like Macrium or MiniTool, I end up breaking the recovery environment. I've had to clone my old SATA SSD multiple times because of this (and it takes forever!). I even attempted a fresh install of Windows 11, but these annoying partitions are still there.
Is there any way I can move these partitions to extend my C drive without breaking the recovery or should I just create a new D drive with the unallocated space? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!
3 Answers
If you've just reinstalled Windows, the simplest solution is to start fresh. During installation, delete all the partitions until it only shows 'unallocated space' on disk 0. Just ignore any external drives you have plugged in. If you want one big partition, just hit 'next' when it shows the unallocated space. If you prefer multiple partitions, create the size you want for C and then hit 'next'. Windows will then set things up correctly for you.
Given that you've just reset Windows, a good approach is to create a bootable USB with Windows on it, boot from that, and delete all existing partitions. This will let you start over without the recovery complications. Alternatively, you can use the command 'reagentc /d' to relocate your Windows Recovery Environment files correctly, but it's a bit more technical. I'd suggest going the USB install route for simplicity.
From your description, it sounds like you cloned a 1TB drive to a 2TB drive, which is why you've got all that extra unallocated space. If I were in your shoes, I’d disconnect the drive, connect it to another PC with a USB-to-NVMe adapter, then use MiniTool Partition Wizard to wipe everything off before installing Windows anew. That should resolve your partition headaches.
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