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I have a Acer Aspire E 15 E5-576G-5762 w/ a micron 1100 SATA SSD 256 GB.
It came new w/ win10 home and I have upgraded to Pro-several iterations ago- I bought this in Jul 2018. Currently win10 Pro ver 1909 bld18363.836.
I think I should be able to do some housekeeping as concerning the partitions. Esp the OEM restore. Can someone perhaps suggest best way to go about deleting and rearranging these?
I think I should be able to do some housekeeping as concerning the partitions. Esp the OEM restore. Can someone perhaps suggest best way to go about deleting and rearranging these?
What’s concerning you about these partitions? Recovery is holding back 1GB of space, yet you already have 180GB free, so no immediate concern there.
What’s the need for rearranging the partitions?
It’s W10 so recovery data is likely to be a lot more than 1GB and residing somewhere on your System drive, perhaps clearing out the Acer bloatware via (Add/Remove) Programs would be a better place to begin.
I see nothing that would prevent me removing the Recovery partition and expanding the System drive but be aware that there’s always a small risk that *something* will glitch; I hope you know how to recover the MBR/BCD, etc. should you ‘lose’ access to the SSD.
There are plenty of good partitioning software packages that will do whatever you want about the partitions — combining the entire drive into a single partition or dividing it up as different drive letters as you like. I personally use MiniTool Partition Wizard ( minitool.com ) which has a free version that would probably do everything you want. I’m sure others here will tell you about their favorites.
I wouldn’t change those partitions, you won’t gain anything and may prevent the machine booting.
cheers, Paul
Paul, perhaps you would be so kind as to explain? HOW would the boot process be affected? I’m a curious fellow. Removing unwanted software ie Acer et al bloatware is long done. This seems off topic with little explanation. This laptop is over 2 yrs old so in answer to another ? posed, there is no danger of warranty ruination. Curiously, I purchased this from Amazon in 2018 for approx $700- it’s now 1300!!! Go figure!
Changing partition configuration is commonly done in order to dual boot correct? Removing OEM directories when no longer needed is also common.
Are ALL ssd’s (or even HDD’s) with win10 using more than one partition to boot? If so then no partition manipulation can be done without messing up the boot sequence? This would be valuable information to have for sure! It seems I am way behind how ssd’s have changed the boot process.Not in this machine but in a Lenovo e545(DONT DO LENOVO_EVER!) I have replaced a SATA HDD w/ a SSD(thru cloning process) with no problems and so this leaves me quite confused. I appreciate the interest in helping me and the advice. I shall delve into the process and possible consequences before moving ahead.
Stay well in this time of upset in the world.
BTW, the idea of deleting possibly unneeded partitions ranks with defreagging OLD HDD’s. Housekeeping that actually produced no noticeable increase in speed. I realize the comparison is not really a good one but the best I can do.
Note Don’s screenshot identifies the Recovery partition as “Disk 0 partition 4“. I think you’ll find there’s another partition in there that’s been overlooked.
There is likely a tiny 16MB MSR (“Microsoft System Reserved”) partition between the EFI and OS partitions. Disk Management won’t show it, but third-party tools like Minitool Partition Wizard should reveal it.
The purpose of the MSR partition is to facilitate certain Microsoft features like, IIRC, Bitlocker and Dynamic Disks. If you don’t use those features, the partition is superfluous and can be removed.
Note that if you use Microsoft tools to initialize a new disk, Microsoft will always add a hidden MSR partition — even on a data-only disk. Disks initialized by third-party tools do not create a MSR partition.
The Recovery partition, as envisioned by Microsoft, boots the Recovery Environment and is usually about 500 MB. (The winre.wim file itself is typically about 300-400 MB.) As a separate partition, this is useful for repairing your OS partition when it is damaged or unbootable for some reason.
In most cases I’ve seen, Microsoft will put the Recovery partition before the OS partition, but when the Recovery partition is at the end of the disk, that’s often a partition that’s been modified by the OEM to include additional tools of their own design — such as, perhaps, a factory restore feature.
(Note 1GB is not large enough for a factory image, so in this case the partition is just for the tools; any image will be elsewhere. Some OEMs might just create a larger Recovery partition to include the image, while others — such as Dell — may use two OEM partitions: a bootable one with the tools, and a second, larger one with the image.)
So, can you remove the MSR and Recovery partitions? Yes, and Windows will still boot. But I see no reason to do so.
Deleting the MSR is utterly fruitless unless you plan to add its space to the OS partition. But because it is in front of the OS partition, it cannot be incorporated unless you slide the OS partition forward by moving each and every sector of the OS partition. That’s a task fraught with more risk than can be justified, just to reclaim a measly 16MB.
As for the Recovery partition, there are other ways to boot to a Recovery Environment, so strictly speaking, it isn’t indispensable. But it’s useful for more than just factory restoring, so it can be handy to have. I see no reason to get rid of it just to reclaim another 1 GB of space.
If/when you decide to clone the contents of this disk to a new, larger disk, though, you can skip both the MSR and Recovery partitions if you wish, and clone just the EFI and OS partitions. Until then, I don’t see a reason to bother with them.
A far cry from Partition Magic of the mid ’80’s!
Thank you!
Are ALL ssd’s (or even HDD’s) with win10 using more than one partition to boot?
All GPT initialized drives are. By rule of GPT initialization, the number of partitions cannot go below two because the file systems of System and Boot partitions cannot concur. Partition rearranging cannot include removing EFI System Partition.
Other than that, separation of System and Boot drives has been the default arrangement since the release of Windows 7. While this has been an option on MBR, it’s mandatory on GPT.
Regards, VZ
If you want to boot using UEFI mode, you will need an ESP on the boot disk, but it doesn’t require a GPT setup. It’s possible to do a UEFI boot from an ESP on a MBR-partitioned disk (if the PC’s UEFI implementation is complete). Not all UEFI implementations can handle this… some see the MBR and will only try to perform a legacy boot, completely ignoring the ESP.
I haven’t been able to find the specification for GPT that states definitively that a ESP is or is not required by the spec on any GPT disk, just that it is required to boot from one. In any case, it is possible to have a GPT disk with but a single partition and have it work without any issues.
Here’s one of my SSDs in my desktop PC:
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)
Paul_T wrote:
I wouldn’t change those partitions, you won’t gain anything and may prevent the machine booting.
> Paul, perhaps you would be so kind as to explain? HOW
> would the boot process be affected?
I think maybe Paul was just stating the obvious: that there’s a non-zero chance that partition changes you make may hose your currently-working system. And he was simply advising you that he wouldn’t make partition changes, because there won’t be any real technical benefit. And you may inadvertently create an actual problem that doesn’t currently exist.
If you’ve never had to deal with (or help someone else deal with) a partition-related boot problem, that’s great. But a simple web search will quickly uncover stories of those less fortunate. For example…
Hope this helps.
Paul’s reply did not state anything obvious, sorry to say . message ##2271114 however DID clearly and succinctly answer the question. That’s the issue here many times we have to play 20 ?’s to get a clear answer. If this was a one on one chat perhaps it would work but it is frustrating to not get anything more than an off the cuff one line reply.
#2271132 by anonymous gave more info even after making the ‘obvious’ comment.
I am not being ungrateful- only stating that as a rule, technical ?’s require a more complete answer. And it would save the mods from having to read so many ?’s when one answer would solve the issue. And in this type of forum, OVERLY technical can be disastrous. AW is geared for those of us not so technically knowledgeable. There is a fine line I guess.
So Paul apologies if you are offended, not my intent. Only thanks to those who took the time to inform.
D
If the device is still under warranty/ extended warranty, I would not touch any partitions.
technical ?’s require a more complete answer
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
This is my answer to almost all “I want to tweak my stuff” questions. Your time would be better spent making a backup to an external disk, for the time you have a real problem.
As always, if you are unsure of an answer, ask. That’s what we’re here for.
cheers, Paul
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