Windows 7 Understanding Partition Sizes and Unallocated Space on Cloned Drives

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ruggb

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I have a WD 500GB drive. I installed W7 - cloned from a 2TB drive that has 4 partitions (100MB, 78.03GB, 363.20GB, 1.39TB(logical)) with the first 3 partitions. I then extended the last partition with disk manager to 387.63 which was all the unallocated space left. So the 500GB drive = 100MB, 78.03GB, 387.63GB.

When I originally installed W7 on the 2TB drive I set the system partition to = 80GB.
After W7 created the partition I had 100MB and 78.03GB. I don't remember what # I used to get 363.20 but that isn't important. The goal now is to make the three partitions = on both drives. They r all primary partitions.

When I look at 500GB in disk manager a 2MB unallocated piece shows at the end that I can't do anything with.
There is also a 1MB piece on my 2TB drive between the last primary partition and the logical partition.

What causes this? 0.1+78.03+387.63 = 465.76GB, which is the std windows size for a 500GB drive, right?
Is there a way to partition the drive to get rid of it?

I am guessing if the drives were formatted to 1k units it would use them all up. true?

I think I just answered my own question.........
since it is formatted in 4096 units it can't include that last piece in the previous partition because it is only a partial unit. Right?
 
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Solution
Personally, I do everything I can to make the partitions different sizes, in case I need to correct some problem, I can tell which one is which.

But since the first two partitions are equal, you want to make the partition on the 2 TB match the 3rd partition on the 500G? Which means you would have to extend the partition to 387.63?

Using a third party partition manager might be your best bet, something like Partition Wizard...
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Personally, I do everything I can to make the partitions different sizes, in case I need to correct some problem, I can tell which one is which.

But since the first two partitions are equal, you want to make the partition on the 2 TB match the 3rd partition on the 500G? Which means you would have to extend the partition to 387.63?

Using a third party partition manager might be your best bet, something like Partition Wizard...
 
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Solution
I Name my partitions just to avoid such a problem...it will still retain the drive letter as well as the new name.
 
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saltgrass, I guess something was lost in the woodwork.
what u said is what I wrote that I did.
The question is in ref to the 1MB and 2MB pieces hanging on the end of the last primary partition on each drive.
After a couple of reboots, I went back and could not see them any more.
I guess W7 just ignores them after a time since they r useless.

I also name my partitions - The size is strictly functional.
 
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