Hard Drives not partitioned appropriately

Ajones79

New Member
Messages
4
Hi,

I purchased an Acer laptop from EBay. It was listed as a refurbished unit. However it looks like it was a complete system wipe and OS replacement. There are no Acer hardware drivers installed and no Acer applications available. My real problem is that the computer has been set up with two hard drives visible in "Computer" a (C:) drive and "New Volume (D:). I believe that when this computer was "refurbished" the installer improperly assigned the drives. In disk management the drives are labeled Disk 0: System reserved 350 MB and New Volume (D:) 297.75 GB. Disk 1: (C:) 18.64GB. The C: drive is completely full, with the OS however, it is also the default drive meaning that everything tries to install to that drive, but can't. I want to move the (C:) drive to the New Volume (D:) drive or merge the two drives together. Is there a way to perform this task so that the computer will boot up into Windows 8
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 64 Bit
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Acer MS2346
    CPU
    Intel Core i3-2367M
    Memory
    4.0 GB
A screenshot of Disk Management would be very helpful. Is there anything on that D drive (partition)? If not, it may be as simple as deleting it and then expanding the C drive to include the newly unallocated space but the disk management would be required to confirm this suggestion. However, please be advised there are always risks in doing things like this so I hope you have emergency recovery procedures in place.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Pro Windows 8.1 Preview
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
Here is the screen shot of disk management. Capture.JPG I have included it as an attachment as well. There is no recovery partition on the computer at this point. I tried creating windows 8 recovery media on a usb thumb drive, but I don't believe the thumb drive was created properly. Looking at the disk management, do you think it is possible to delete the drive and expand the c? When I tried shrinking the volume, the unallocated space wasn't moveable.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 64 Bit
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Acer MS2346
    CPU
    Intel Core i3-2367M
    Memory
    4.0 GB
Very small Disk1.

What is on D - looks like 20gb used? Take a look , may be there is an os installed which just needs adding to the boot menu.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    7/8/ubuntu/Linux Deepin
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
Here is the screen shot of disk management. View attachment 25385 I have included it as an attachment as well. There is no recovery partition on the computer at this point. I tried creating windows 8 recovery media on a usb thumb drive, but I don't believe the thumb drive was created properly. Looking at the disk management, do you think it is possible to delete the drive and expand the c? When I tried shrinking the volume, the unallocated space wasn't moveable.

My previous suggestion is not possible because your System Reserved is on one drive (large) and your C drive appears to be on an old 20GB hard drive. Maybe SIW can give you some additional guidance if needed but I would be looking to do a clean install to the larger drive after saving any important data to an external drive. Once done, you could then reuse that old 20GB hard drive for internal data storage. Good luck.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Pro Windows 8.1 Preview
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
The 20 GB SIW2 is referring to is mostly me copying the files from C: to D: in an attempt to change the default drive in regedit. I had wanted to have the OS open files and save onto D:. That didn't work the OS couldn't find program files and none of the standard windows programs were available. I restored the defaults and haven't yet deleted the files. I don't know if the OS was copied over as well as all I did was view hidden files and unhide protected files. I'm assuming the OS was not copied over though, but I have no idea what I'm talking about. If copying these files also copied the OS that'd be great
 
Last edited:

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 64 Bit
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Acer MS2346
    CPU
    Intel Core i3-2367M
    Memory
    4.0 GB
Looked up your specs and you do have 2 different physical hard drives and the smaller one is supposedly used for SSD caching:

Acer Aspire S3 Review (320GB HDD) « Ultrabook News and the Ultrabook Database

Extracted from the description:
The model reviewed here is based on a Core i5, 1.5Ghz CPU (Turbo Boost to 2.3Ghz) with 4GB RAM and 320GB HDD with a 20GB ‘SSD cache’ that is used to speed up some operations.

Good luck on this one.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Pro Windows 8.1 Preview
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
JustA thanks for providing some clarity. I had assumed that there was one physical drive that was partitioned incorrectly. That changes the question considerably.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 64 Bit
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Acer MS2346
    CPU
    Intel Core i3-2367M
    Memory
    4.0 GB
I am neither familiar with nor have I ever used an SSD caching arrangement so I really can't help you but good luck from here.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Pro Windows 8.1 Preview
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
For me, looking at your Disk Management picture is a little confusing. The first thing we need to understand, is the 20 G drive a flashdrive or the SSD referred to in the link supplied by JustATest? If it is a flash drive, can you remove it and boot into Windows?

If the 20 G is an SSD and meant to be used as a cache drive, it has been set up incorrectly. If it was using Intel's Smart Response Technology, you would not see the SSD as a separate drive in Disk Management. But it can be set up after the OS is installed correctly on the HDD.

Depending on the actual situation, there are options to get your system back, and some of those might require a third party partition manager that would copy a partition to another drive. Do you have an option to reinstall the OS?

Is there already a OS installed on the HDD in the D: partition? Do you have the option in the Boot Device Menu to boot directly to it?

Edit: I think I understand your comment about copying files from C: to D: accounting for the data on D: so you only have the OS installed on the SSD. A little strange D: shows as active, but maybe that was part of the erroneous install.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 x64
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home Grown
    CPU
    i7 3770K
    Motherboard
    ASUS P8Z77 -v Pro, Z87-Expert
    Memory
    16 G
    Graphics Card(s)
    EVGA GTX 680 Classified (2)
    Hard Drives
    Kingston SSD 240 GB
Tech Specifications - Acer Aspire S3 MS2346[section_2->title|firstupper|optional|prefix:-|prefixspace] - [section_1->title|firstupper] - ITP.net

Specifications

Audio Y
Card reader Y
Display adapter Intel HD graphics
Display screen 13.3-inch
Internal storage 20GB SSD, 240GB hard drive
Memory 4GB DDR3
Motherboard Intel ID1C47
Networking 802.11b/g/n WiFi
Optical drives N/A
OS Windows 7 Home Premium
Price $1,008
Processor 1.7GHz Intel Core i7-2637M
Warranty One-year
Weight 1.4kg

From what I can see from the above the Acer MS2346 comes with a IRST acceleration cache

http://www.eightforums.com/installa...tall-hp-32gb-mssd-hdd-acceleration-cache.html



Intel links.
IRST acceleration cache
Intel® Cache Acceleration Software
New and Innovative Caching Solution
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    ME, XP,Vista,Win7,Win8,Win8.1
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    Other Info
    Notebooks x 3

    Desktops x 5

    Towers x 4
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