Red Line Marks The Spot

timlab55 · May 20, 2023

When I did a clean install of Windows 11 (Pain In The A$$), I noticed that it took my Hard drive that I was putting it on and it divided that disk into 3 partitions. I hope I'm using the correct term for this stuff. I loaded Windows 11 in, and all my software and stuff. When I was going to do a backup of my drive inMacrium Reflect, I noticed that were 4 partitions and the last partition was red where it should have been blue, showing up much you have used.
Question: For this partition that is marked in red, how can I give it more disk space without redoing everything?

wabbit · May 20, 2023

A clean install of Windows 11 creates 4 partitions on a UEFI system. The EFI partition, a MSR partition, the OS partition, and the recovery partition. I wouldn't be too concerned about expanding that last partition. On an old laptop I have with legacy BIOS and MBR, there were only 3 partitions during a clean install of Windows 11

Ghot · May 20, 2023

timlab55 said:
When I did a clean install of Windows 11 (Pain In The A$$), I noticed that it took my Hard drive that I was putting it on and it divided that disk into 3 partitions. I hope I'm using the correct term for this stuff. I loaded Windows 11 in, and all my software and stuff. When I was going to do a backup of my drive inMacrium Reflect, I noticed that were 4 partitions and the last partition was red where it should have been blue, showing up much you have used.
Question: For this partition that is marked in red, how can I give it more disk space without redoing everything?

Post a screen shot of what you see in Macrium.

timlab55 · May 20, 2023

@Ghot - Figure you would charm in which I'm glad you did. Here is the screen shot you requested.

Ghot · May 20, 2023

timlab55 said:
@Ghot - Figure you would charm in which I'm glad you did. Here is the screen shot you requested.
View attachment 60534

Shrink the C: partition 500MB. Comp will need to reboot to do that.
Then you can add that 500MB to the RED partition, by resizing the RED partition to include the freed up 500MB.

Minitool Partition Wizard is probably the easiest fastest way...

Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Wizard Free

As an all-in-one free partition manager and disk manager software, MiniTool Partition Wizard Free helps manage disk space safely on Windows 11/10/8/7.

www.partitionwizard.com

When you shrink the C:\ partition, shrink it from the right edge to the left.
So it looks like this...

NOTE: Only shrink the C:\ partition 500MB (megabytes)

timlab55 · May 20, 2023

@Ghot - I'm sorry, been at this all day, could you draw a picture or something that I can use as references on what I should do?
Thanks

Ghot · May 20, 2023

timlab55 said:
@Ghot - I'm sorry, been at this all day, could you draw a picture or something that I can use as references on what I should do?
Thanks

I did.

Here....

Right click the C: partition and choose: Resize.
In the RED box on the right, choose MB
In the other RED box, type: 500.00

Then in the lower left corner, click APPLY. It will say you have to reboot... answer OK or YES or w/e

Then, after you're back on the desktop... it will look like this...

Then... open Minitool again and right click the RED partition and choose RESIZE
Then just grab the slider arrow on the left and drag it to the left to ADD that 500MB to the RED partition.
Then in the lower left, click APPLY.
The RED partition is your Recovery partition. I don't think you'll need to reboot to ADD the 500MB.

Then... your RED partition will be BLUE like the others.
In Macrium, when you see a RED partition... it just means that partition doesn't have enough free space.
So... that's why we ADDED some.

On my system, I just got rid of the 16MB Reserve partition and the Recovery partition.
So... when I make a FULL backup, it just does my C: partition and my 100MB EFI System partition...

When you install Windows 11... these are the partitions that get made, by default...

Back in the good old days, when you installed Windows, you got this...

timlab55 · May 21, 2023

@Ghot - I'm back and thank God I made a backup before I did this, or I would be doing Windows all over again. It was very scary for me as I've never did this before. I will look at this post again in the morning (after church) and see if I'm willing to try it again.
Thanks and Good Nite.

TechnoMage2021 · May 22, 2023

Just curious: Why mess with something that doesn't belong to you?
That is NOT your partition, it belongs to Windows.
I try to stay out of trouble by not messing with things that don't belong to me.

"My Computer" will show you the partitions that belong to you. Any that you don't see, belong to Windows.

timlab55 · May 22, 2023

@TechnoMage2021 - I love the way you put that and in some way you are right. I also like the way you repurpose things as your computer. Keep up the good work.

timlab55 · May 22, 2023

@Ghot - I like what I see here. I remember this was full of Critical errors when my system when down and we were trying to figure it out. Now look at, zero's for critical and 1 for errors.

Ghot · May 22, 2023

timlab55 said:
@Ghot - I like what I see here. I remember this was full of Critical errors when my system when down and we were trying to figure it out. Now look at, zero's for critical and 1 for errors. View attachment 60618

Have you gotten the partitions taken care of?

timlab55 · May 22, 2023

Question wouldn't windows take care of that if need be?

timlab55 · May 28, 2023

@Ghot - I got the partition taken care of this morning. I had to do it a different way due to the fact that I couldn't find slinking, but I did use resize and all in all, I got it done. :)
Dan

Ghot · May 28, 2023

timlab55 said:
@Ghot - I got the partition taken care of this morning. I had to do it a different way due to the fact that I couldn't find slinking, but I did use resize and all in all, I got it done. :)
Dan

Good job.

cereberus · May 28, 2023

timlab55 said:
@Ghot - I got the partition taken care of this morning. I had to do it a different way due to the fact that I couldn't find slinking, but I did use resize and all in all, I got it done. :)
Dan

Well done but tbh this was a rather pointless exercise though. The recovery drive is static, so makes no difference to performance. All you are really doing is wasting some space now.

It might prevent a second partition being created at a further update, but that is easy to rectify at that time.

timlab55 · May 28, 2023

Here you go with the image:

As you can see I gave it 1GB. Still have lots of room on a 2TB drive that should last for many years this way. If not I have a total of 12TB .

Thanks for your assistance

Dan

Ghot · May 28, 2023

timlab55 said:
Here you go with the image:

As you can see I gave it 1GB. Still have lots of room on a 2TB drive that should last for many years this way. If not I have a total of 12TB .

Thanks for your assistance

Dan

You should be fine with a 1GB Recovery partition. The biggest one I've seen is about 700MB.