Windows 10 Converting secondary partition to main primary one

[blksith0]

This image describes it well

My question is, this will probably break something, so what steps should I take to fix things up after I delete and move stuff around like that?

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Well, there are at least 2 ways to do this. One is using built-in Windows tools and the other involves using downloading 3rd party tools to assist with this process.

The most important thing you need to know first is whether or not both your Logical drives (C: and D: drive) exist on the same PHYSICAL HARD DRIVE OR NOT! I'm going to give you a way to do this using the first method, built-in Windows tools, to accomplish this. It of course will only work if both your logical drives are on the same physical hard drive. If you have C: drive on 1 physical hard drive and your D: drive on a 2nd physical hard drive, this won't work and it becomes more difficult to do, which I won't tell you how to do unless you post back that this is your current scenario.

Next, before proceeding it looks like you might have a lot of data on your D: drive which of course you don't want to lose. Regardless of the method or tools used you should first BACKUP ALL THE DATA YOU HAVE ON YOUR D: DRIVE TO EXTERNAL MEDIA TO AVOID IRRETRIEVABLE DATA LOSS SHOULD YOU MAKE A MISTAKE DURING RE-PARTITIONING!!

Now that you've done your backup, you can take a look at this short video to explain how to combine your C: drive and D: drive into one single large partition (195.54GB). Here's the video: convert C: partition in Windows to use full drive capcity - Bing video
**REMEMBER: This will only work if both C: and D: drives are on 1 single hard drive, not 2 drives!!**

Once you've completed the combining of the 2 volumes into 1 large new C: drive, you can then copy back all of the Data that was on the old D: drive onto folders on the new C: drive. You will then have ALL of your files and programs on one single larger C: drive as you asked!

You may ask if there is a way to do this without having to first backup and erase your large D: partition, and the answer is yes; but it takes Linux tools such as GPartEd partition editor and advanced computer knowledge to do so. Even then, it doesn't always work on all computers; and too if your hard drive is older than 3 years old, and has or is failing, this could also cause things to go wrong. That's why it's always important to backup any Data partition you intent to combine with an existing partition. I'm recommending that you use the method in the video first, as it's most likely to work for the person with average computer skills.

Enjoy!
<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>

 

[blksith0]

Thanks. And once D:, which is labelled as "Boot" (edit, "System"), is deleted, will anything be missing or will I just load into the C: OS just fine?

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

In your original post, D: is not labeled with Boot flag, C: drive is, which is the way it will need to be once you complete your re-partitioning procedure. If you are missing the Boot Flag on the newly re-partitioned C: drive, Windows will not boot to that partition, which will be your only partition excluding Hidden System partitions used by Win8x or W10. I've seen as many as 12 partitions in W10 computers with only 1 physical drive. Once your procedure is done, the D: drive will no longer exist. All data files will be moved into the C: drive which is where your W10 will live and of course Windows needs to boot from that partition.

Since it doesn't sound like you've done this before, just make really, really sure you've got your data backed up in at least 2 different media types such as external hdd and Cloud account should you make a mistake.

<<<BBJ>>>

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

One thing that you might look into is using EasyBCD to create a new boot partition on the same drive that has Windows installed on it.
It would help to see the whole Disk Management window like this...

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The above would show what drive the partitions are on.

Link Removed

Link Removed

Select the drive that Windows is really on for the new entry.

If you can get it to boot from the drive that Windows is on, you should be able to backup the other partition and then format it and combine it with drive D:\.

At that point I think you can just rename it Drive C:\.

I'm not sure if there is any constraint on naming the Windows drive, but I've never had a problem naming other drives to whatever letter I wanted to.

I just checked and it didn't tell my I couldn't rename my C:\ drive.
Windows isn't really that hung up on which drive is which, if you dual boot it will call whichever drive you boot to Drive C:\ switching back and forth all the time.

It's free...

EasyBCD

If you do this, be absolutely sure that the computer is booting to the D:\ drive before you remove anything from the drive that is now listed as C:\.

EasyBCD should give you a boot menu after you create a second boot sector, (Don't check skip boot menu) and let you decide which disk you want to use to boot.

In any case it would be a really good idea to back up all your data before you do anything at all.

Mike

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

I haven't used EasyBCD before, but others here have and it seems to work. The process however is going to be the same as using the Windows built-in Disk Management utility in the Video I posted. And that's going to require you to still select one of your 2 existing partitions (either C: or D, backing up what you want from that partition to external media, deleting that unused partition, re-creating it and formatting it, and finally merging the windows partition (where your Windows is currently installed; we can't tell from your original screengrab as Mike said) with the new partition (unallocated and formatted for NTFS) to make one large C: drive; approx. 195GB or so based on what you provided us with.

The main difference you will notice is a Boot Menu selection screen when you fire up your computer now, whereas with my method you won't have an Intermediate menu to access whether or not it auto-boots without your input or not. Some people find this annoying, and this will be the price you pay to use Mike's program (which I've heard nothing but good things about!). To me, this is no difference than having a Boot Menu for Dual-Boot (2 OSes on 1 hard drive such as I run with Ubuntu Linux & W10), or from a Imaging Backup Software Recovery Boot Menu from an Image Backup program such as Macrium Reflect which I have on all my computers now. It doesn't bother me; in fact it gives me comfort that the Boot Menu is displayed and the computer is doing something different and better than a plain old Windows boot screen that you may or may not see for a second or two when you first turn on your PC.

Thought you'd like to be aware of this going forward.

Let us know how it goes, and get that screen grab of your entire Windows Disk Management screen to us if you can.
<<<BBJ>>>

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

Once you are sure that the computer boots to the drive that you want it to, you can use EasyBCD to remove the unwanted boot option and the menu disappears.

This is also the way to safely remove a second unwanted OS when dual booting.
If you remove one of the OSs and not the boot option it will make your computer un-bootable.

I found this out the hard way, many years ago, that was when I first found EasyBCD.

As Bear said you can do all this in Window but EasyBCD gives you an easy interface to do it with.

Mike

 

[blksith0]

Here's more info.

I was considering using gparted to do it, because I wasn't sure if windows disk management could handle extending "backwards".
Either way, I haven't even backed up D: yet, so. Will keep y'all updated on the results.

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

I think that you may be right about Windows not wanting to extend to the left.
I seem to remember running into that in the past.

Can you merge the Linux partition into C:\?

Mike

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

Don't make your Windows partition too small.
I have almost nothing but Windows on my Windows 10 partition but it has grown to a little over 100 GB.

All my software games, and data is on other drives but things like the Users folder keep growing.

Mike

 

[Neemobeer]

I would pull up your BCD store too, you will break your boot when you delete partition D, so you you'll need to fix BCD after.