partitioning question W11

Disk Management on my laptop indicates two partitions that appear to be empty on Disk 0. The screenshot reveals then ... 2 areas at the right end. 1.41 GB and 13 MB unallocated. Seems to me these areas/spaces are being wasted and would like to dedicate them to the OS C: partition. Would appreciate opinions, advice, and instructions before I honk something up. Thank anyone in advance.

I think it's a waste of time & effort for 1GB but, if I was doing it, I'd use
MiniTool Partition Wizard
MiniTool Partition Wizard User Manual

Looking at your diagram, it seems to me that the only job worth doing is splitting the OS drive into two so your OS & applications drive is separate from your own-files drive. This would ease the burden of backing up & restoring [particularly the making of regular system images].

Try3 said:

Personally, I leave about 130GB for my C drive [Windows & applications] and put the rest into a D drive for my own files [e.g. audio, video, MSOffice documents, ...].
This way I can make fairly small system images of my C drive quite quickly and I can restore them quickly if needs be.
I make simple file copy backups of the contents of my D drive.

Click to expand...

Denis

The 13mb is as it says, unallocated. That could be joined to the 1.41gb partition. Could the 1.41gb be the original laptop manufacturers recovery space? If you never want to use it (if it is) you could add it with the 13mb to your OS (C) partition.

I think the other members could appreciate it if you completed your "My Computer" with a little more detail. Then they could give better advice than me.

Leave it as is. Some laptop manufacturers do some odd partitioning for their recovery methods.
Not worth potential problems for such a small amount of lost disc space.

Maybe someone with knowledge of the particular Laptop brand ? can comment.

The 1.41 GB partition isn't shown as unallocated, so we shouldn't assume it's empty or unnecessary. It might be an OEM recovery or diagnostic partition.

Before considering deleting anything, could you provide the laptop's manufacturer and exact model, along with screenshots showing the results of these commands from an elevated Command Prompt or PowerShell?

diskpart
list disk
select disk 0
list partition
list volume
exit

Also, please run:

reagentc /info

These will help us identify the partitions and determine which recovery partition Windows is using.

Given that C: is already approximately 474 GB, the additional 1.41 GB would provide very little benefit. My inclination would be to leave the partitions alone unless there's a compelling reason to change them.

You can readily examine the content (if any) of a partition with no drive letter thus:


- just click 'Explore'

It might be the OEM recovery partition. If you manually do a clean installation of Windows 11 using the official ISO, it's not needed and you can delete it. If you have an OEM installation of Windows 11, then there is some recovery tool by pressing a specific F key while booting that needs it. If you decide to remove it, you must first stop Windows recovery so you can move the Windows recovery partition next to it at the end of the disk. Then using Minitool Partition Wizard you can delete the OEM recovery partition, move Windows recovery partition to the end, and expand the Windows partition to take the available unallocated space. Then start Windows recovery again. I don't know all the commands syntax to tell you exactly, but as you realize it's a lot of trouble for about 1.5GB.

appear to be empty on Disk 0

Click to expand...

You can have look with the FILES tab in diskgenius

It also has various rt click context menu options

Disk management does not display hidden partitions.

Windows diskpart commands or third party software or both can be used for partition/free space modifications.


Please open administrative command prompt and copy and paste: (all commands at one time) > post share links displaying commands with results