Reclaiming (Seemingly Orphaned) Drive Space

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[Mr. Austin]

When the old, 750 GB spinning disc on my Windows 10 laptop was swapped out for a 1 TB SSD, the cloning process seems to have orphaned 1,023 MB of drive space.

What simple Windows utility could tell me what’s contained, or not contained on those 1,023 MBs?

If there’s nothing on that drive section then I’d aim to reclaim it with something simple like Extend Volume in the disk manager. Thank you 🙂

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

• This topic was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by Mr. Austin.
• This topic was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by Mr. Austin.
• This topic was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by Mr. Austin.

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Could you assign it a drive letter, then look at it in File Explorer or similar?

Windows 10 Pro 64 bit 20H2

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Mr. Austin

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A curious and simple thought, that. Thank you. Although even if that could be done I wouldn’t want to trust File Explorer to provide actionable info about hidden information it couldn’t read.

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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I’d aim to reclaim it with something simple like Extend Volume in the disk manager.

Not going to happen. It takes a third party tool and moving two partitions to achieve this.

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I watched as an expert friend used Extend Volume to reclaim an adjoining space to the second 1,023 MB space. So it worked in that instance.

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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You need a 3rd tool like EASEUS Partition Master Home Edition

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Mr. Austin

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Yeah. Thank you. So far I’ve found no tools I really like. Although EaseUs, Macrium and others work I’m just not used to them.

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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It is an oddity of the Extend Volume option in Windows Disk Management console, that if the orphaned bit of drive space is not adjacent to your intended volume to extend…the option to do so disappears. In other words, to extend your main volume, the orphaned part must be directly to the right of your main volume, and be unallocated space, i.e. not formatted. If there is another partition, between the main volume and the orphaned space, you cannot extend to the vacant space you want to reclaim. In that case you would have to delete the partition that is next to the right and then you could capture both partitions to extend the main volume. That is a real nut to crack! I have used a product from Aoemi software called Aoemi Partition Manager to great advantage in situations like this, without the crazy rules about wasted space not being in the exact position that the Windows Disk Management tool requires. And as others have posted hereabouts, there are other tools that can do this as well.

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Mr. Austin

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I’d use MiniTool Partition Wizard free.
It will allow you to move and increase the size of the partition in one go.

Make sure you align the SSD when you do this – performance is much better with an aligned SSD.

cheers, Paul

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wavy, Mr. Austin, Alex5723, Microfix

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I’m sure there is a facility within minitool partition wizard (once installed) to create a bootable usb and then ammend from the boot usb (was there in V9 which I have).
It’s a very quick and effective method to alter partitions.

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

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Mr. Austin

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You don’t need to boot from USB, it manages the reboot process for you, via hard disk.

cheers, Paul

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Mr. Austin

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so, having a bootable USB device in a toolkit isn’t simpler?
Explain please..
Perhaps it’s due to being no-longer free in recent builds of minitool partition wizard..

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

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Mr. Austin

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I have V9.1 from 2015 run from Windows and it does all the rebooting needed to perform disk changes.
Is this no longer available in the latest version?

cheers, Paul

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Mr. Austin

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I use version 12.1 portable and it does the booting…

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Mr. Austin

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Thank you. In maybe 2011 when I was fiddling and moving some stuff off an old spinning drive I tried MiniTool Partition Wizard. I’d forgotten about it so thank you. And this is the first time I’d heard about ‘aligning’ an SSD so I’ll want to look into what that means.

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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Some thoughts:
File explorer and the hardware management for ejecting the device will not show the partition unless it is formatted as a windows recognised file structure NTFS FAT etc. and also (apparently needs actually specifying for win-10) has a letter assigned to it.

There is the possibility that the partition contains some entries that the EFI – or the onboard drive electronics need, so clearing that, or even changing the partition specification may cause problems.
If you cannot actually incorporate the space into the C: partition – and with the EFI partition between them I suspect that you cannot combine the 2 spaces into 1 partition and making a ‘Volume’ from them may cause other problems.
Then, if you really want the space usable for storage within the windows environment use the Attach’ facility  – create a folder on the OS partition  (usually, but not always, denoted as C:) and, having formatted the partition as NTFS, use the storage manager to attach that partition as the storage location for files etc. set to be in the folder –
That technique reduces the size of the MFT on the main partition, remember small files have their data in the MFT, and even zero length files, and unused folders have all the control entries in the MFT  so moving lots of those to the other partition can  in some cases vastly improve the OS throughput, and effectively applies a ‘quota’ type limit to the content of the folder.

Me – I’d leave the 1GB space alone – hoping you will not actually need it.
I would, however have created a Data partition from most of the the storage assigned to teh OS partition.
Splitting the software that needs a partition backup  from the data that can be managed as a set of files, and those maybe even including a backup – full and ad-hoc created incremental set of the OS and apps partition  on that data storage partition.
With a SSD you do not even suffer the hardware (head movement, settling, and rotational latency) delays when copying from the OS partition to that data partition.

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