Solved Repartitioning For A Different Layout

I decided I wanted to dedicate the bulk of my 500 gig drive to a data partition which Ive made. This procedure means the OEM Recovery mechanism won't work ...which is fine;I prefer to use vanilla OS disks and Macrium. Which of the partitions on the left hand side of the C drive can I get rid of? In case you ask: I have an external drive for critical stuff. I'm not up to speed on the modern boot system in W8.1

Partition 1 is the recovery tools if you don't use it you can delete it... partition 2 only needs to be 100MB and partition 6 is your factory recovery image partition and if you do use it delete it..

Thanks. What's partition no.3? Should I keep it and image it or delete it?

partition 2 is UEFI boot files

Partition 3 is a Microsoft system reserved - a system partition

Before you go deleting partitions - download windows 8.1 setup media - so you have repair tools if needed


I would image the whole disk - but only restore and resize Partiton 2,3,4,5

You may have to run startup repair from setup media to get it to boot

Should I modify anything in the BIOS menus that might be better for this new arrangement.

the standard uefi setup is and you should not have to adjust bios settings

350MB recovery tools partition
100MF EFI partition
128 MS Reserved
Windows

You can split windows and get windows and data or what ever (but that above is the accepted partition layout

you will lose recovery tools by deleting partition 1 and the factory recovery image by deleting partition 6

actually you got over 400GB of free space - Why mess with it?

Thanks Khyi. That enlightens me lots. I shall be better prepared now.

KYHI said:

actually you got over 400GB of free space - Why mess with it?

Click to expand...

I don't want my files with the OS. Also, doing routine maintenance tasks or scanning takes an age if everything is with the OS. Imaging and reimaging of my 50GB data-free OS partition takes much less time to do. It means my data on the laptop is less prone to an OS catastrophe. If the worst came to the worst and Windows and the laptop really messed up I can put the HD into an external enclosure and recover the data partition. This is in addition to my external drive backup. It suits my habits. I also feel that the computer is faster and smoother with a smaller OS partition.

:thumb: Can't argue with that..