Solved Which Of Thes Disk Configurations Is Correct?

tackyjan

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Which Of These Disk Configurations Is Correct?

Hello All,

I have 2 computers, a custom built desktop PC and an ASUS N550JK laptop. The hard drives that are installed on each are as follows:

[Desktop PC]
Drive C: Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB SSD (OS Disk)
Drive D: Samsung 840 EVO 250 GB SSD (Data Disk)

[N550JK Laptop]
Drive C: Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB SSD (OS Disk)
Drive D: HGST Travelstar 7200 RPM 1 TB HDD (Data Disk)

I recently did a clean install of Windows 8.1 Pro on both computers and I noticed something odd about the partitioning of the OS disk for my Desktop PC. It did not have a Recovery partition. Also, the laptop had this partition called "NO NAME".

Here is a screenshot comparing my desktop OS disk and my laptop OS disk:

pc_OSDISK.png

n550_OSDISK.png

As you can see the OS disk for my desktop has the following 2 partitions:

1. 350 MB System Reserved
2. 238.1 GB OS

and the OS disk for my laptop has the following 3 partitions:

1. 300 MB Recovery
2. 100 MB NO NAME
3. 238 GB OS

When I installed Windows 8.1 on each of these computers I selected "Clean Install" and then "Customize" and wiped all the disk partitions (for all drives), then selected the SSD as the drive for Windows to install to. I did not see anywhere to select whether or not I wanted a Recovery partition to be created. In fact Windows did not ask anything about the way I wanted to partition the drive.

I don't know if Windows is smart enough to know what to do and that's why it did not ask or if I am too stupid :) to manually setup the partitions prior to installing Windows.

I have a few question about these partitions:

What is the "NO NAME" partition on my laptop used for? Can I delete it?

Secondly, which of these two configurations should I have for both systems:

1. Recovery + NO NAME + OS
or
2. System Reserved + OS

Seems to me that I should have at least have a Recovery partition on both systems but I don't know how to create one and, as I said, Windows did not prompt me to create one during installation.

Thank you,

Jan




which configuration should I have? 3 Partitions or 2?
 
Last edited:

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Pro

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    64-bit Windows 10
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Custom self built
    CPU
    Intel i7-8700K OC'd to 5 GHz
    Motherboard
    ASUS ROG Maximus XI Formula Z390
    Memory
    64 GB (4x16GB) G.SKILL TridentZ RGB DDR4 3600 MHz (F4-3600C18D-32GTZR)
    Graphics Card(s)
    ASUS ROG-STRIX-GTX1080TI-O11G-GAMING
    Sound Card
    Integrated Digital Audio (S/PDIF)
    Monitor(s) Displays
    2 x Samsung Odyssey G7 27"
    Screen Resolution
    2560x1440
    Hard Drives
    1TB Samsung 990 PRO M.2,
    4TB Samsung 990 PRO PRO M.2,
    8TB WD MyCloudEX2Ultra NAS
    PSU
    OCZ Series Gold OCZZ1000M 1000W
    Case
    Thermaltake Core P3
    Cooling
    Corsair Hydro H115i
    Keyboard
    Logitech wireless K800
    Mouse
    Logitech MX Master 3
    Internet Speed
    1 Gb/s Download and 35 Mb/s Upload
    Browser
    Internet Explorer 11
    Antivirus
    Malwarebyte Anti-Malware Premium
    Other Info
    Logitech Z625 speaker system,
    Logitech BRIO 4K Pro webcam,
    HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M477fdn,
    APC SMART-UPS RT 1000 XL - SURT1000XLI,
    Galaxy S23 Plus phone
Hello Jan, They are both correct for each one. You installed Windows 8.1 without UEFI to have a MBR formatted disk.
http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/2299-clean-install-windows-8-a.html
You installed Windows 8.1 with UEFI to have a GPT disk. The 100 MB partition is the EFO partition, and the 300 MB is the system reserved partition. All perfectly normal. :)
http://www.eightforums.com/tutorial...e-firmware-interface-install-windows-8-a.html

Thank you for the answer... do you mind also answering a more general question?

For each Motherboard type UEFI and NON-UEFI what are the expected partitions to be created upon a fresh install (assuming you install with no custom configuration and just let it default)?

For example:
UEFI : Recovery, NO NAME, OS (?)
NON UEFI: System Reserved, OS (?)
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Pro
No problem.

It's basically what you see now for your two computers, but the UEFI tutorial link I posted above will show you the default disk layout when installing with UEFI on an unallocated disk.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    64-bit Windows 10
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Custom self built
    CPU
    Intel i7-8700K OC'd to 5 GHz
    Motherboard
    ASUS ROG Maximus XI Formula Z390
    Memory
    64 GB (4x16GB) G.SKILL TridentZ RGB DDR4 3600 MHz (F4-3600C18D-32GTZR)
    Graphics Card(s)
    ASUS ROG-STRIX-GTX1080TI-O11G-GAMING
    Sound Card
    Integrated Digital Audio (S/PDIF)
    Monitor(s) Displays
    2 x Samsung Odyssey G7 27"
    Screen Resolution
    2560x1440
    Hard Drives
    1TB Samsung 990 PRO M.2,
    4TB Samsung 990 PRO PRO M.2,
    8TB WD MyCloudEX2Ultra NAS
    PSU
    OCZ Series Gold OCZZ1000M 1000W
    Case
    Thermaltake Core P3
    Cooling
    Corsair Hydro H115i
    Keyboard
    Logitech wireless K800
    Mouse
    Logitech MX Master 3
    Internet Speed
    1 Gb/s Download and 35 Mb/s Upload
    Browser
    Internet Explorer 11
    Antivirus
    Malwarebyte Anti-Malware Premium
    Other Info
    Logitech Z625 speaker system,
    Logitech BRIO 4K Pro webcam,
    HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M477fdn,
    APC SMART-UPS RT 1000 XL - SURT1000XLI,
    Galaxy S23 Plus phone
No problem.

It's basically what you see now for your two computers, but the UEFI tutorial link I posted above will show you the default disk layout when installing with UEFI on an unallocated disk.

Kay, checking out the tutorial now. Thanks!
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Pro
This reminds me of another strange issue with partitions that I ran into right after I got my laptop. The original factory configuration of the (single) hard drive partitions was:

System Reserved + Recovery + OS + DATA (for a total of 4 partitions on the single drive).

As soon as I got the laptop I ran the ASUS recovery tool to create a recovery disk. I then got a new hard drive, took out the old one and replaced it with the new (blank) drive and proceeded to do a system recovery.

The recovery worked, however, when I checked the partitions after the recovery it had a total of 6:

System Reserved, Recovery, OS, System Reserved*, Recovery*, and DATA.

It looks like the recovery process did not "overwrite" the target disk partitions. Instead it seemed to create the default partitions (System Reserved, Recovery, and OS) and the append the old ones (System Reserved, Recovery, and DATA) and ended up making a total mess!

When I looked at the partitions for the first time I was blown away! Luckily I found a program to cleanup that mess!
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Pro
Yeah, when you throw in the factory recovery partitions, it really does have the disk with a lot of partitions.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    64-bit Windows 10
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Custom self built
    CPU
    Intel i7-8700K OC'd to 5 GHz
    Motherboard
    ASUS ROG Maximus XI Formula Z390
    Memory
    64 GB (4x16GB) G.SKILL TridentZ RGB DDR4 3600 MHz (F4-3600C18D-32GTZR)
    Graphics Card(s)
    ASUS ROG-STRIX-GTX1080TI-O11G-GAMING
    Sound Card
    Integrated Digital Audio (S/PDIF)
    Monitor(s) Displays
    2 x Samsung Odyssey G7 27"
    Screen Resolution
    2560x1440
    Hard Drives
    1TB Samsung 990 PRO M.2,
    4TB Samsung 990 PRO PRO M.2,
    8TB WD MyCloudEX2Ultra NAS
    PSU
    OCZ Series Gold OCZZ1000M 1000W
    Case
    Thermaltake Core P3
    Cooling
    Corsair Hydro H115i
    Keyboard
    Logitech wireless K800
    Mouse
    Logitech MX Master 3
    Internet Speed
    1 Gb/s Download and 35 Mb/s Upload
    Browser
    Internet Explorer 11
    Antivirus
    Malwarebyte Anti-Malware Premium
    Other Info
    Logitech Z625 speaker system,
    Logitech BRIO 4K Pro webcam,
    HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M477fdn,
    APC SMART-UPS RT 1000 XL - SURT1000XLI,
    Galaxy S23 Plus phone
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