What can I do with this unallocated space?

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[Cybertooth]

I just installed a 960GB SSD on my Windows 7 PC to replace a 480GB SSD. The old SSD was showing danger signs and I found a good deal on a new model with twice the capacity.

Prior to the switch, I had imaged the 480GB SSD with Macrium Reflect, then used the Reflect recovery disk to transfer that image to the new SSD once installed inside the PC case.

My question has to do with the unallocated space at the right end of the SSD (see screenshot):

Researching this on the Web has not yielded results that are clear enough for me. Only one thing seems to be certain, and that is that I can’t shift the 25.46GB and 16.83GB partitions to the right in order to create a single, larger, contiguous C: partition. That would be my preference, but the possibility appears to be universally ruled out.

So, the next idea is to create a new partition that’s readable by Windows. However—and here is where the uncertainty lies—my reading suggests that I can’t create a fifth primary partition since this is an MBR disk. As an alternative to a primary partition, some sources talk about “extended” and “logical” partitions, but the distinction between these two is fuzzy in my mind and I don’t know if either of these is applicable in a case like this one, where there’s free space dangling past the end of a partition that can’t be moved.

Suggestions welcome!

 

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• This topic was modified 3 months ago by Cybertooth.

Replies

Cybertooth wrote:

My question has to do with the unallocated space at the right end of the SSD (see screenshot):

Macrium has the ability to adjust the partition size during the recovery process, so that is one option.

Restore Partitions with Resize and Reorder

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Cybertooth, TechTango

In Disk Management place the pointer over the unallocated space displayed at the end of the drive (as shown in your screenshot)
Right click and select Extend Volume

Follow the Extend Wizard and let it extend what is shows (usually the remainder of the drive).

This will add that unallocated space to  the end of the drive and will become part of the last partition on the drive which will make that partition much larger.

HTH, Dana:))

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Cybertooth, TechTango

If the 25.46 GB partition does not contain any data you could delete it and extend the OS (C:) partition to take that space.  That would reduce the number of partitions from 4 to 3.  Then you could create an extended partition in the unallocated space.  Think of extended partitions as containers.  An extended partition counts towards the 4 partition limit for MBR but can contain several logical partitions to which drive letters can be assigned.

For example, I used a VHD to simulate your situation.  The starting point looks like this –

After deleting the 25.46 MB partition, extending and creating an extended partition –

The logical partitions reside in the extended partition.  Of course, once the 25.46GB partition has been deleted you could also create a new primary partition in the unallocated space instead of messing with an extended partition/logical partitions.

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Cybertooth

Cybertooth wrote:

my reading suggests that I can’t create a fifth primary partition since this is an MBR disk. As an alternative to a primary partition, some sources talk about “extended” and “logical” partitions, but the distinction between these two is fuzzy in my mind

An “Extended” type partition is merely a container for one or more logical volumes (sometimes called “logical partitions”), but there are reasons why that’s not going to be of practical use in your case. Instead of trying to create a fifth partition, add the unallocated space to your C: partition like you’d rather do anyway.

 

Cybertooth wrote:

I can’t shift the 25.46GB and 16.83GB partitions to the right in order to create a single, larger, contiguous C: partition. That would be my preference, but the possibility appears to be universally ruled out.

No, it’s only a limitation if you use the crippled “Disk Management” tool in Windows. It’s easy to do with a decent partition management tool — such as Mini-Tool Partition Wizard, Aomei Partition Manager, and others. With just such a tool, you can slide the 4th partition, as is, rightward until it butts up against the far end of the disk, then likewise slide the 3rd partition rightward, butting up against the relocated 4th partition, then grab the right edge of the C: partition and extend it to take up the space vacated by the other two. Click to finish and you should have what you want.

If you don’t want to learn one of these new tools, you can wipe the partitions from the new disk and start over with Macrium. As you repopulate the new disk, this time instruct Macrium to resize the C: partition during the restore process. It will take a little more forethought because as you resize C: you’ll have to plan ahead for what you’ll need to leave for the 3rd and 4th partitions, but it’s not that hard to figure out.

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satrow, Cybertooth

Many thanks to @PL1, @Drcard:)), @EricB, and @dg1261 for the informative replies and all the suggestions!

I can’t believe that I never noticed that the 25.46GB partition was in RAW state, as @EricB pointed out. Maybe I figured it was some kind of system-related thing and didn’t give it any more thought. Just finished going through all the system images I have for this PC, dating back to 2023, and they all have it. I’m not sure what to make of that partition. I mounted each of these images via Macrium Reflect in order to explore them, and they report that the partition has some 6GB in use out of the 25, although in no case does it have a drive letter associated with it and giving it a letter would format it and lose whatever might be in there.

Unless we can think of a plausible reason for that partition’s presence, I’ll either nuke it and enlarge the C: drive, or use Partition Wizard as @dg1261 suggests to shift the D: recovery drive to the right and then decide what do with with the mystery partition. I do have some experience with Partition Wizard, mainly from creating Windows/Linux dual-boot systems, so that process should go OK.

 

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PL1

Cybertooth wrote:

I can’t believe that I never noticed that the 25.46GB partition was in RAW state

@Cybertooth I created the VHD for the simulated partitioning scheme on a Windows 10 system.  Because the Windows 7 image you posted showed the 25.46GB partition as 100% free and without a file system I interpreted that as RAW even though the image from Win7 did not contain that indication compared to the Win10 simulation.

Cybertooth wrote:

the partition has some 6GB in use out of the 25

Do you mean 6 MB out of the 25 GB?  In an elevated command prompt run diskpart.  At the diskpart command line enter the LIST VOLUME command.  Does this partition show as a volume with a RAW filesystem?

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Cybertooth

@EricB, here’s a screenshot of the backup image partitions when I go to “Explore” the backup image in Macrium Reflect. The mystery partition is highlighted in blue:

And here are the results of DISKPART:

(Note that the 25GB partition doesn’t appear on the DISKPART list, but it does on Macrium’s list.)

For a moment, I thought I was going crazy because I couldn’t remember where I’d seen that the partition was RAW and I couldn’t remember where I’d seen that 6GB of 25GB were in use. I found the latter but not the former, so maybe I’m only half-crazy.  🙂

 

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dg1261

The image you posted from Macrium Reflect shows the file system of the 24.56GB partition as “ext”. This means that Reflect believes it to be formatted with a Linux filesystem. It does not appear to be RAW to me

Cybertooth wrote:

I never noticed that the 25.46GB partition was in RAW state,
[…]
Just finished going through all the system images I have for this PC, dating back to 2023, and they all have it. I’m not sure what to make of that partition.

My guess is it’s a HP OEM partition, perhaps for a factory recovery image.

Many OEMs — notably, HP and Dell — intentionally munge the MBR partition table “type” indicator so Windows won’t know what it is and won’t give the partition a drive letter. That’s deliberately done to help prevent hapless users, Windows utilities, and even malware from tinkering with the partition and breaking it. When you invoke the magic keys to launch the factory recovery routine, the MBR partition table is temporarily rewritten so the partition becomes accessible, the recovery program can give it a drive letter, and the recovery image can be read.

Accordingly, the “RAW” designation is a red herring and merely means Windows doesn’t know what to make of it, so Windows assumes it doesn’t have anything on it even though it really does.

Be that as it may, recovery partitions can be quite finicky and don’t always work when they’re moved/copied/restored, so even though Macrium faithfully copies it, it may not actually work. You might want to test-launch the factory restore routine after moving the partitions, just to confirm whether or not it looks like it might still work.

OTOH, even if it does still work, what are the chances you’d ever revert all the way back to a decade-old factory image, given that you have a better, more recent, Macrium image instead? If that seems unlikely, you may choose to just dump the 3rd partition and re-purpose the disk space.

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Cybertooth, PL1, satrow, EricB

@dg1261, the chances are probably tiny that I’d ever take the back to that original state. Not only are recent images available as you said, but at this stage the process of bringing the OS up to date would be very long and tedious!

 

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dg1261 wrote:

Accordingly, the “RAW” designation is a red herring and merely means Windows doesn’t know what to make of it, so Windows assumes it doesn’t have anything on it even though it really does.

@Cybertooth I fired up a Win7 VM and used it to create a VHD that contained a partition without a file system.  Disk Management on that Win7 VM displayed the RAW indicator for that partition.  So the partition on your disk may not be RAW.

dg1261 wrote:

OTOH, even if it does still work, what are the chances you’d ever revert all the way back to a decade-old factory image, given that you have a better, more recent, Macrium image instead? If that seems unlikely, you may choose to just dump the 3rd partition and re-purpose the disk space.

This makes sense to me.

 

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Cybertooth, dg1261

It is my guess that the third and fourth partitions are the WinRE and the HP-OEM Recovery partitions. That being said, I would use MiniTool Partition Wizard to slide the fourth partition to the far right and the third partition to the left of the fourth (size and content unchanged for both), then merge the unallocated space (which should now be to the right of the OS/C: drive) with the C: drive increasing the C: drive by the 447.12 GB. These moves should leave the Win7 activated, the WinRE and OEM in the known sequence/locations (3rd and 4th partitions same). Check which is the WinRE and whether it’s active prior to and after completing changes. In an elevated Command Prompt:

reagentc /info

Replace the “4” in “partition4” below with the partition number identified by the above command.

Dism /Get-ImageInfo /ImageFile:\\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk0\partition4\Recovery\WindowsRE\winre.wim /index:1

You may experience problems reactivating Win7 if you have to reinstall from scratch. Make a full disk image before you start in case you make a mistake while learning to use MiniTool Partition Wizard (personal experience here considered) so you can start over and try again. 🙂

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Cybertooth, dg1261, debdrex, EricB

A Microsoft recovery partition will display as such in Disk Management.  For example, in a Win7 VM I used diskpart to create a recovery partition (type 0x27) on a VHD.  This is what was displayed –

 

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dg1261

On my old Win7 Dells, the OEM Recovery contained an image for the original Dell (factory) installation. I think it was F11 (if my memory is correct) that accessed the reinstall of factory condition.
But I have seen some old HP’s Recovery contain the original manufacturer utilities/programs plus any additional installed “stuff,” not an entire factory image. And, if I recall correctly, the partition was read-only and was assigned a drive letter. It’s been years since.

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dg1261

(Ref. https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/what-can-i-do-with-this-unallocated-space/#post-2741266)

@PKCano, the partition number given by the first command you offered was 3, so in the second command I substituted that for “4”. The result was:

Error: 87
The get-imageinfo option is unknown.

Hopefully we can make something of the above.

 

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Can you post the results of

reagentc /info

The 25GB ‘missing’ partition is going to be a non-MS style deliberately to prevent stock Windows tools interfering with the OEM Windows install recovery, thus it’s a no-show in Diskpart.

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Cybertooth, PKCano

Cybertooth wrote:

I do have some experience with Partition Wizard, mainly from creating Windows/Linux dual-boot systems

Cybertooth wrote:

here’s a screenshot of the backup image partitions when I go to “Explore” the backup image in Macrium Reflect. The mystery partition is highlighted in blue

Hmm, more food for thought …

That screenshot shows Macrium thinks partition 3 is of type “ext”, which normally implies a linux partition. Any chance you experimented with a Windows/Linux dual-boot on this particular system? If so, partition 3 might be a leftover you forgot to delete from those days.

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Cybertooth

No, not on this system. This computer did at one point have in it an SSD sporting Linux, but that was a new SSD and I had removed the Windows SSD in order to put in the Linux SSD. Windows and Linux have never “coexisted” on this machine, it’s only ever been one or the other.

I’ll see if I can find the original SSD that came with this PC. Maybe I can temporarily install it on another machine to examine its partitions.

 

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dg1261

Cybertooth wrote:

Only one thing seems to be certain, and that is that I can’t shift the 25.46GB and 16.83GB partitions to the right in order to create a single, larger, contiguous C: partition. That would be my preference, but the possibility appears to be universally ruled out.

Wrong answer!

MiniTool Partition Wizard Free can move partitions around to place the unallocated section adjacent to the OS partition and then you can use Windows Disk Management to extend the OS partition to include the unallocated part.

• How to move unallocated space

I’ve done this numerous times when restoring an image to a new larger SSD and it works just fine.

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Cybertooth

Just checking: When you have done that, have the OEM or WinRE partitions continued to work properly after being moved with Partition Wizard?

 

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I have not used the MiniTool Partition Wizard Free and as nOads says will most likely do a good job.

I have done what you want to do on my Windows 7 systems many times as larger drives became cheaper in those days.   Yes, all the data in the moved/edited partitions stayed intact and functional.  I used with great ease and success EaseUS Partition Master which I see is still available at the link below.

EaseUS Partition Master Free

Read all that it does.  I like it because it could rewrite the MBR to change many parameters in moving, labeling, and formatting partitions.

The Free version has only one drawback in that an ad will pop up after each use of the app.  For me, a small price to pay for free.

HTH, Dana:))

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Cybertooth

PKCano wrote:

Can you post the results of

reagentc /info

No problem, here you are:

 

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dg1261

OK. Then I recommend keeping partitions 3 and 4 in the same order, moving them as described in the instructions above, then extending the OS/C: partition to include the unallocated 447.12GB space. I have done all this within MiniTool Partition Wizard.

Make a full disk image (all partitions, and verified) first.
Be sure you can boot from your backup s/w Rescue USB/disk and see the image.

 

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dg1261, Cybertooth

Cybertooth wrote:

When you have done that, have the OEM or WinRE partitions continued to work properly after being moved with Partition Wizard?

As @Drcard:)) indicated, they work just fine — as long as the partition # they’re located on stays the same.

I’d suggest you move the unallocated space behind the OS partition like this:

And then extend the OS partition to include the unallocated space.

That way, the partition #s will stay exactly the same but the OS partition will be larger.

Note: MiniTool Partition Wizard may indicate it has to reboot in order to make the changes.

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Cybertooth

See: #2741266 and #2741527.

 

Very well, everyone agrees that this operation can be carried out with no untoward effects (but including the creation of a new backup just in case).

It’s going to be a busy day today and I may not get to do this until tomorrow, but I’ll report the results once they’re in.

A big Thank You to all of you!

 

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May you be blessed with first-attempt success!  🙂 🙂

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Cybertooth

UPDATE: I was able to move the HP Recovery partition to the right end (see screenshot below), but the mystery 25.46GB partition would not budge. In Partition Wizard, the option to move it was grayed out.

It looks like my only choice to make use of the unallocated space will be to nuke the mystery partition, merging it with the OS partition (C: drive) and then extending that partition into the unallocated space.

Wish I knew what the purpose (if any) of that 25.46GB partition is, or was.

Edit: Maybe EaseUS Partition Master, as suggested by @Drcard:)), will do the trick where Partition Wizard couldn’t?

 

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I’m guessing that you can’t move the third partition because it is the WinRE partition and it’s active. There are three commands involved.
To test if this is the case –
To deactivate it, run:  reagentc /disable
Then run: reagentc /info
This should tell you that is is inactive (or not there)
Now run:  reagentc /enable
And again run reagentc /info
This should give you the info that it is at partition3 again.

If that was good, then deactivate the WinRE (reagentc /disable), and see if you can move it to the right of the unallocated space. If that works, merge the unallocated space with the OS (C:) partition. That should put the WinRE partition back as partition3.
Then reenable the WinRE partition by running: reagentc /enable
And check that it is recognized by running reagentc /info

Cybertooth wrote:

Wish I knew what the purpose (if any) of that 25.46GB partition is, or was.

And the answer to your question IS:

Cybertooth wrote:

I just installed a 960GB SSD on my Windows 7 PC to replace a 480GB SSD.

If you had restored the image and told Macrium how you wanted the partitions, it would have filled the C: drive. But, by default, it copied the smaller drive onto the larger drive as it was. You still can recover your backup and change the partition size.

Restore Partitions with Resize and Reorder

You should be able to move that recovery partition as long as it remains as partition 3 – see your screenshot in #2741471 above.
One of the advantages of GPT is disks are referenced by partition number, not sector, so moving does not require delving into and editing system files.

I think the reason is PM can’t identify the file system and therefore refuses to play with something it doesn’t recognize.

Can you actually boot into the recovery partition? Maybe it’s HP weirdness?

BTW, why does your other recovery partition have a drive letter? You should not have drive letters in case you change stuff and break the recovery.

Since Reflect believes that the 25.46GB partition contains a Linux filesystem one test you could perform would be to use a Linux live DVD to boot your system and attempt to mount that partition with read only access.

@PKCano & @PaulT  Disk Management will identify a Microsoft Recovery partition in its display.  I showed this in post #2741267

EricB wrote:

PKCano & PaulT, Disk Management will identify a Microsoft Recovery partition in its display. I showed this in post #2741267

@EricB, not to sound too dismissive, but it’s well known that Windows Disk Management is not the sharpest tool in the shed. That’s why better tools like Mini-Tool and Aomei are so popular — and so much more flexible.

As you correctly pointed out in #2741267, the usual partition descriptor for a MS Recovery partition is type 0x27, but I believe that is the one and only criterion DM uses to make its determination, and not by looking at the actual contents of the partition. It’s plausible partition 3 could still be a WinRE partition but mislabeled as other than 0x27.

According to the results Cybertooth posted in #2741471, it’s evident to me that PKCano’s assessment is right. The WinRE partition is partition 3, and accessible at boot time via F11 (scan code 0x85, or decimal 133).

So why is Cybertooth’s DM not showing partition 3 as a MS Recovery partition, as EricB’s post #2741267 suggests it should? And secondarily, why is it showing the “HP_Recovery” partition with a drive letter, as Paul T noticed? I suspect Macrium mishandling might be responsible for both issues. It’s been many years since I’ve studied a HP-style MBR partition table, but ISTR HP used non-standard type descriptors for those extra partitions. Perhaps that has confused Macrium. Macrium can backup and restore the contents because it has the sophistication to look inside the partitions and determine the actual file system, but if it’s getting confused by the type codes in the original partition table it might be reconfiguring the new disk’s partition table incorrectly.

It might be useful to look at and compare the actual partition tables on both the original and clone disks, but that would depend on how much more exploration Cybertooth wants to do.

Meanwhile, I’d be interested to see if PKCano’s remedy in #2741962 works. Logically, it sounds to me like it should work.

And if it doesn’t, my Plan B would be to boot from the Partition Wizard boot media and finish the repartitioning work from there, since WinRE should not be active when booting from external media.

A third alternative would be to wipe the new disk and start the restore process over again, as PL1 suggested in #2741140 and #2741969. I can’t imagine that not working.

But PKCano’s remedy seems comparatively easy, so I’d try that first.

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dg1261 wrote:

I believe that is the one and only criterion DM uses to make its determination, and not by looking at the actual contents of the partition.

I agree.  When I created the recovery partition I did nothing other than setting the correct type to determine how it would display in Disk Management. By the way, no offense taken regarding your commentary. 🙂

@Cybertooth,

Don’t know if this will work or not but…

Use DISKPART to turn the unallocated space into an actual partition (format it but don’t assign a drive letter) and then see if MiniTool will let you move it between the OS partition and the 25.46 GB partition you can’t move.

If that works, then use DISKPART to delete the new partition so it becomes unallocated again and can be used to extend the OS partition.

BTW, if you assign that troublesome partition a drive letter you “should” be able to see what it contains.

n0ads wrote:

Use DISKPART to turn the unallocated space into an actual partition (format it but don’t assign a drive letter) and then see if MiniTool will let you move it between the OS partition and the 25.46 GB partition you can’t move.

@n0ads This sounds like a good idea but @Cybertooth is working with an MBR partitioned disk that has already reached the 4 primary partition limit.  I’d be pleasantly surprised (and confused) if this worked.

I tracked down the original 120GB SSD and put it in a spare laptop, then booted into Partition Wizard to see what it said about the drive (see the photo screenshot below). If anything, the mystery has deepened because there are even more partitions there than on the 480GB SSD which it was imaged onto back around 2018.

Unfortunately, at this point 6+ years later, I don’t have any memory of what (or why) I might have done other than simply imaging the disk to put it on a new disk. But note FWIW that the HP Recovery partition is already there.

@dg1261 introduced what is a new concept for me, “partition descriptor”. I checked each of the above partitions for this in Partition Wizard, and they are all 0x127 except for the 512MB partition, which is 0xef, and the 7.5GB and 14.6GB partitions, which are 0x83.

Hope this yields some useful clues.

 

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Cybertooth wrote:

I can’t create a fifth primary partition since this is an MBR disk

Are you sure it’s MBR? Any recent PC has GPT disks.
In Disk Management, right click on “Disk 0” and select Properties > Volumes.
What is the Partition style?

cheers, Paul

Yes, positive:

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I’d convert it to GPT and then shuffle the partitions.

cheers, Paul

Edit: Opps! Missed the W7 bit. Thanks to PK for the correction.

This is a Win7 problem. If you make drastic changes Activation may be lost. Is it possible to activate Win7 if that happens?

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Microfix

Unless the 25.46GB partition contains something useful that can’t be replaced, I’m thinking that the most expedient approach will be to delete the partition and extend the OS drive into both that and the unallocated space.

Next chance I get, I’ll slide a Linux live CD into the laptop and install the 480GB SSD inside it, so that then I can try to inspect the contents of the mystery partition.

In the meantime, I’ve been leaving the original 120GB SSD in the laptop (see screenshot), in case anybody wants more information about that setup.

 

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OK. In my opinion, the reagentc /info identified what was on the partition (when it asked for info it filled in partition3). I have followed the instructions in #2741962 on my Win8.1 installations (also EOS like Win7), keeping other partitions in the same order unchanged, and afterward the WinRE is still functional and Win8.1 is still activated.

However, there are too many cooks in the kitchen here. So I’m out. No offense intended to any other participant, but I’ve given what advice I have.

Good luck, @Cybertooth.

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Cybertooth

Thanks for the help, @PKCano.

BTW, the reagentc commands that you gave upthread yielded the following results:

 

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As you have confirmed the recovery partition is OK it’s time for the next step.
Turn off the recovery – 1st command.
Reboot and try to move the partition.
Reboot and enable the recovery – 2nd command.

Ultimately it doesn’t really matter whether you have the recovery enabled as you are unlikely to use it. You can boot to your backup USB and restore an image.

cheers, Paul

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Cybertooth

Cybertooth wrote:

Unless the 25.46GB partition contains something useful that can’t be replaced, I’m thinking that the most expedient approach will be to delete the partition and extend the OS drive into both that and the unallocated space.

I suspect that’s where you’ll ultimately end up.

There’s something very definitely odd about the partition layout currently on the original 120GB SSD (screenshot in #2742158). I would have a hard time believing it came from the factory that way — and whatever may have happened to them since could have left them corrupted. (You haven’t had occasion to boot those partitions, so you don’t really know.) Cutting your losses now may be the most expedient path forward.

Here are some of the oddities I see.

The three “Logical” volumes will be inside a single “Extended” partition — IOW, the 120GB’s primary partition table will still show only 4 partitions: “System”, “OS”, “Extended”, and “HP_Recovery”. (In Windows Disk Management, the “Extended” will be designated by a green border surrounding the three Logical volumes, as illustrated in EricB’s example in #2741145.

That’s not odd, but what is odd is having a Primary partition following the Extended partition.

Technically that’s not illegal, but it is seen rarely enough that, IMHE, a lot of third-party imaging/cloning utilities have been coded to expect an Extended partition only at the end of a disk, and not embedded amidst Primary partitions. All sorts of havoc can ensue if the utility misinterprets the partitions, and that becomes more likely if some of the Primaries or Logical volumes are of ID types “unknown” to Windows. (See here for one example I wrote about 15 years ago.)

Second, you said two partitions have 0x83 IDs, which denotes linux “ext3/4” partitions. (That’s likely the source of Macrium’s confusion.) I can’t see any reason HP would ship it from the factory like that, so I wonder if someone tinkered with linux on this drive? That might also explain the odd transformation of partition 3 from a (most probably) single Primary partition into three Logical partitions. Microsoft OSes have always had a love/hate relationship with Logical partitions, but linux has no problem and will blissfully boot from Logicals.

Third, I have no idea what a partition type 0xEF represents. I’ve been mucking around inside disk sectors and MBR partition tables for 40 years now, but I haven’t come across that one before.

TLDR; I think your screenshot is probably not the partition layout HP originally shipped with the machine. That leaves the possibility that whatever subsequently happened in the past may have left some partitions no longer viable. You could continue trying to troubleshoot them, but what’s to be gained? They probably have little or no value this long after the original shipping date anyway, so perhaps it’s more practical to ditch them and reclaim the disk space for your C: partition.

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mledman, Cybertooth, PL1, satrow

dg1261 wrote:

Third, I have no idea what a partition type 0xEF represents

This is the partition type id for an EFI System Partition on an MBR disk. Also, since partition types are a single byte the 0x127 value posted by @Cybertooth looks like a typo to me

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mledman, Cybertooth

@EricB, you’re right—that value that I typed as 0x127 is actually 0x7.

I’ll now proceed to try @PKCano’s procedure using reagentc (I feel like I’m back in chemistry class! 🙂 ).

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All right, after doing reagentc /disable, I rebooted into Partition Wizard. PW would still not let me move the 25.46GB partition.

It looks like the best way to go now may be to delete that partition and make a big new one including it, the OS partition, and the unallocated space. However, there’s still one arrow in the quiver. I’m downloading EaseUS Partition Wizard as suggested by @Drcard:)). Will report what happens.

UPDATE: During installation of EaseUS, the following notice popped up:

After dismissing the notice, the installation completed (?) and EaseUS Partition Master launched. Unlike Partition Wizard, it does give me the option to move the 25.46GB partition, although I have to admit it feels strange for it to be letting me do this from within Windows and on the SSD that holds the OS.

But when I click on “Execute 1 Task(s)” on the EaseUS UI, an ad pops up:

Well of course I’m not going to buy before I see how well the program works. So I dismiss the ad, but when I do that, the main UI continues to display the button to Execute the task as if nothing had actually been done. Checking Disk Management still shows the 25.46GB partition in its original place to the left of the unallocated space.

Adding to the idea that nothing actually happened, is that when I went to close EaseUS, it warned me that there was still an operation pending and did I really want to close it.

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You can try Aomei Partition Assistant free.

cheers, Paul

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Cybertooth

Well, that one did the trick!

Looks like we’re in business!

A big THANK YOU to everyone who pitched in with ideas, analysis, tips, and suggestions. This shows how valuable AskWoody.com is!

 

 

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Don’t forget to reenable the WinRE if you disabled it before the move.

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Cybertooth

Thanks for the reminder! It’s done now.

 

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What does Aomei show that partition as?

cheers, Paul

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Cybertooth

Here’s what Aomei says about that partition:

FWIW, it looks like the amount of free space in that 25.46GB partition has changed. Whereas previously I think it said that some 6GB of the total was in use, now that amount is down to 65MB.

 

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dg1261

Was that screenshot before or after reenabling?

 

It was after reenabling.

 

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Next question: does reagentc /info show in partition3 like it did before?

Oh, wait. You may have to merge the unallocated space first in order to make that partition #3

 

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Cybertooth

The “BCD Id” is slightly different, but otherwise it looks the same as before:

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dg1261

Good. Now extend the OS partition into the the 447.12GB space and you should be good to go!

I saw your reply only after posting the paragraph below:

Now the question is, how to extend the OS partition into the unallocated space. Do I create a new volume in that space and then perform some other operation to merge the two, or can this be done in one step? And in which program?

 

 

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Cybertooth wrote:

Now the question is, how to extend the OS partition into the unallocated space

I would think that the Aomei software is capable of doing that for you. Even Microsoft’s Disk Management can extend the OS partition into the adjacent available space.

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Cybertooth

You’re right, it was easy with Aomei. I tried Disk Management first, but the interface was not exactly user-friendly: all it did was show me the “available” space, some 800+GB (with no reference as to what that space consisted of) and an option to change the amount. I didn’t want to risk ending up erasing the HP Recovery drive, and otherwise there was no guidance in the UI for deciding how much space to add.

Aomei Partition Assistant was much friendlier.

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Aomei even shows it’s a Basic MBR, nice!

cheers, Paul

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Cybertooth

PKCano wrote:

Good. Now extend the OS partition into the the 447.12GB space and you should be good to go!

I launched Aomei Partition Assistant and it was simple to extend the OS partition into the unallocated space by dragging the boundary to the right in the UI. Disk Management updated the info at once, and Windows Explorer shows the C: drive at 851GB.

Looks like we have a successful conclusion!

 

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Now to test booting into recovery, or not!

cheers, Paul

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Cybertooth

That will be the acid test. It’ll have to wait though, as now I need to get to some other (non-tech) things.

 

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Cybertooth wrote:

That will be the acid test. It’ll have to wait though, as now I need to get to some other (non-tech) things.

 

…and the test was successful.  🙂

It looks like we’re in business!

I’ll wait a while in case someone has a follow-up question or idea, then (with any luck) mark this issue as Resolved.

Thanks again for all the help!

 

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dg1261, SueW

OK, marking as Resolved. Looks like I have to enter an actual post in order to do that.

 

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Microfix, PKCano, satrow