Solved New HDD with only one partition

[sverne]

Just installed a new HDD with new 8.1 OS, and I think I did not format the drive correctly during the install. When asked for the drive information, there was 465G unallocated, and I clicked "new", which then became "primary." I did not delete any drive, nor choose, etc.

I checked both in DOS and disk mngmt which show:
1 disk NTFS Partition 456 GB Healthy System (DOS) and healthy system boot page file active crash dump primary partition (dsk mngmt)

I am concerned that 1 partition is not enough for recovery and the other systems, and as I checked here, there are usually from 4-7 different ones.
Checking my hunch about a recovery problem--went to BIOS and tried recovery, but it just sent me back to the desktop.
Another important point is that I have Legacy boot installed as UEFI was not registering the USB booter.

Can someone guide me to correct this?
Thanks

 

[sverne]

I corrected this weakness by first partitioning 17GB of unallocated space, and then installed Aomei onekey recovery.
I still do not have the Lenovo onekey buttom/system , but at least I have a new partition (and of course an external image.)

 

[MGhee]

I believe once you selected to create a new partition Windows lets you do your thing, it would have been better to either delete all partitions to get to unallocated space is equal to total space, or on a new drive simply select the drive and click Next. Even from the Advanced tab in the drive tools section of the Windows 8 installer you can Select-Delete all the partitions and get to Total Space=Unallocated Space -> select drive -> then select Next instead of New, Windows will handle the rest.

I'm not sure exactly, my Windows 8.1 install is on a Lenovo laptop so I figure the OEM partition was created by Lenovo, regardless, I think Windows 8.1, and maybe 10 create 3 partitions by default, 4 at most?

About Data Loss! It goes without saying make sure you unplug any data cables from additional drives installed in your system, and be mindful that creating new partitions and/or deleting old ones, as well installing Windows fresh on a used drive will destroy the data on it - do we really need to remind people in 2019 of this, yes if you don't want to get yelled at.