Questions tagged [disk-management]

The Windows disk partitioning and management utility; can be used to assign drive letters and create, delete, format, and resize partitions.

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Unable to merge all partitions (including the Recovery partition) in my Old Laptop hard drive turned external drive

I have the hard drive of my laptop that was replaced with a SSD so I wanted to use it as an external storage space by combining them all into one. There were 3 partitions previously that I formatted ...
Chatrapal Singh Rathore's user avatar
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Getting a new disk to be included in the partition of a pre-existing disk on Windows 11

I am looking to buy a new M.2 Samsung SSD for my laptop that already has an M.2 Samsung SSD in it. My current SSD is 500GB while I intend to buy a 1TB one for the new SSD. I plan to use both SSDs ...
Alucaius's user avatar
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Cannot access device / WD Portable Game Drive 5.0 TB USB

I've tried two cables and using two different computers to access my WD Portable 5.0 TB portable game drive that has a USB interface. Dmesg seems ok with line [ 4586.948425] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming ...
discord's user avatar
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9 votes
3 answers
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New external SSD acting up, no eject option

I just got myself an ORICO M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure USB-C Adapter and put an unused NVMe 1.3 into it (512GB). When I tried to eject it in the file explorer, there was no eject option, though the format ...
Tim Jager's user avatar
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External HDD detected but not working

I took out an HDD from my old laptop which was working fine and never had any issues. I bought a casing for it and started using it as an external HDD. After a few months, I plugged in the HDD as an ...
ZeeShaN AbbAs's user avatar
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Is my Windows 10 installation reusing the system and recovery partitions of other installation?

In my desktop PC I have an SSD where I installed Windows 10 many years ago. Later I purchased an nvme ssd, where I also installed Windows 10, and I can choose which Windows 10 to launch at boot. Both ...
José Tomás Tocino's user avatar
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2 answers
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Expand C drive to another empty disk? [duplicate]

Can I convert my disks to dynamic. Then add the free unallocated space from disk 0 to extend C drive volume?
user1774936's user avatar
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Is it possible to extent my C: drive in this case? [duplicate]

How to move the recovery parition and D: drive to make it possibile to unallocated space to extent to C:. the unallocated space will be e: after deleting it. My case :
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System Partition & Boot Partition on Different Drives

My setup is windows 10 installed on a SSD, and then 2 other hard drives. I attempted to convert the SSD to GPT(I think that is correct) for windows 11 installation. I got the error message "The ...
Jen's user avatar
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Entire hard drive disappears randomly on Windows 10

I have an MSI laptop (GL75 9SE) with an NVMe SSD disk (Partition C) and an additional 1 TB hard drive (Partition D). I have Windows 10 Pro 22H2 Build 19045.2251 with the last updates In the last few ...
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How can I move space from drive C to drives farther away?

I have drive C, D, and E. My E is full and my C has a lot of empty space. However, no matter how much I shrink C, the unallocated space won't be available to E. The unallocated space remains in ...
Saeed Neamati's user avatar
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Why is the external hard drive not opened by Windows 10?

I have a wd external hard drive that is recognized by windows in device manager but not showing in windows explorer.
hmahdavi's user avatar
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Can I create a RAID 1 array with a drive that already has data?

I am moving an IDE drive from a customer's old desktop into his new one. I want backup the old drive (drive 1) to a new drive (drive 2) before moving it to the new computer. Afterwards, I want to ...
Cardinal System's user avatar
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My USB kind of shows up on Windows 10 [duplicate]

I have an old USB I plugged into my computer, but it doesn't show up in file explorer. I tried running CHKDSK on it but it said Cannot open volume for direct access. I tried using FORMAT but it also ...
Kovy Jacob's user avatar
3 votes
4 answers
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External hard drive not working after unplugging while Windows Explorer wasn't responding

I've put myself in a bit of pain. I was working with my external drive and got impatient. Windows Explorer was not responding so I unplugged the drive. After that I killed the Explorer process. Now ...
Paco 2015's user avatar
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Which conditions/factors cause this "The old drive letter will not be available for assignment until you restart" warning to appear?

On my Windows 10 laptop, I sometimes need to change the letter of my external hard drives in Disk Management. Sometimes, but not always, I see the warning in Disk Management: If you continue, the new ...
Franck Dernoncourt's user avatar
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Transfering mirrored disks to different computer

I had two 3TB HDDs on my old computer. These were setup to be mirrored using Window's Disk Management util. I am now trying to use those two HDDs on my new computer. I plugged them in using the ...
valegians's user avatar
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How to move EFI folder to C drive

I want to remove an SSD from my main rig to use it in a retro machine. However I've must have placed a EFI folder there by accident when I reinstalled windows 10 on a larger NVME drive. 120GB drive ...
Jonasz Przybycień's user avatar
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Moving the Recovery Partition, EFI System Partition, and a 16mb "Reserved Partition" to resize Windows partition

This is my first question, so please let me know if I'm missing something. Long story short, I messed up one of my Windows 10 installation on another SSD and ended up with a Windows system drive too ...
Elizabeth V.'s user avatar
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1 answer
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Why is there a 16gb blank volume space on my primary partition on C: Drive?

TL:DR - Can I delete the 16gb volume on my c: drive that isn't assigned to anything, without bricking my system? It is to the left of my "Healthy (EFI System Partition)" The only reason why ...
user1693028's user avatar
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External Hard disk not showing in disk mangement but show in device manager

Yesterday when I was copying over over 130gb data from my internal hdd to external hdd using my laptop, the copying stopped at 20% says that the external hdd is not found. Then I tried unplugging it ...
Vivek Dhan's user avatar
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1 answer
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Unexplained partition gap after Windows installation

I used Windows's MediaCreationTool21H2.exe to make a bootable USB flash drive to install Windows 10 on the SSD 2TB of my PC. The installation process starts by asking you which paritition you'd like ...
hymced's user avatar
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trying to install openSuse Leap 15.3 alongside existing windows10 on my surface pro

Device Spec Windows Spec Disk Partition in Windows Now, when I restart and boot using a openSuse Leap 15.3 bootable USB, i expect to see a 100 GB disk that I could partition as required (root, home, ...
Pratheek Ponnuru's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
779 views

USB device showing 'Insert a disk' message [duplicate]

Here is the story. I got this usb today and I did format it with default settings (only changed its name). Then I copied some files into my usb. Without ejecting it (I think), I disconnected the usb. ...
Howsen's user avatar
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Unable to shrink volume by needed amount despite available space in Windows Disk Manager [duplicate]

I am trying to create a new partition on my SSD and need to shrink my C: partition to do so. According to the "this PC" page, I have 36.1GB available on my C: drive. However, when I attempt ...
physBa's user avatar
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1 answer
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How do I fix an issue with Disk Manager that is causing a Windows Boot Manager Error?

A user of my desktop erroneously clicked 'make drive active' on the C: drive in Disk Manager. This has caused a Windows Boot Manager Error when I try to restart the computer. Here is what I do not ...
Joe's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
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Unmovable file stops me from shrinking partition

I am trying to shrink my main NTFS partition to get some space for a Linux partition. Howver, the Disk manager tells me the following when I try to shrink: You cannot shrink a volume beyond the point ...
Anders's user avatar
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4 votes
1 answer
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How to format an USB drive having multiple partitions under Windows 11?

I have an USB stick totalling 8GB. It has three "partitions": 41 MB Unallocated D: 2MB Fat the rest is unallocated I want to completly format the USB drive. Yet when I do right click on D:\...
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windows: Is the term "basic disk" the same as "Simple Volume"?

While doing some disk management operations with 4 SSD drives on my windows-10 machine, I read some Microsoft documentation 2022-01-10 that says "dynamic disks" (i.e. Disk Management's "...
Trevor Boyd Smith's user avatar
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How to restore (normalize) HDD spinoff timeout in LXLE?

After the last update on my system, the timeout setting for turning off the hard disk was broken. This problem manifests itself as a constant shutdown and spinning of the HDD motor at intervals of ...
Alex A.'s user avatar
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Option to extend volume on windows 10 disk management greyed out for no reason

Alright, I was trying to use this external 4TB HDD as a live disk for Linux, it worked but now I have to reformat it. However Disk Management, in it's infinite wisdom, has decided to grey out the ...
Misha600's user avatar
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I think I deleted my partition, but I can still see it in Windows 10 "disk management"

Okay so, I downloaded on my Windows 10, Ubuntu and I successfully achieved a dual boot system with Ubuntu. Because I need to re-install Ubuntu, I wanted to delete it, from my windows. I found online ...
tonythestark's user avatar
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Unable to delete files in D drive

Following is the content of my D-drive. The folder is empty. But when I try to delete them, it says I don't have the permission - D-drive-contents message-when-clicked-on-delete I wanted to clear ...
sunny's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
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extending disk partition with other partitions in the way

I want to extend my C drive partition after upgrading it, but the 2 partitions have partitions in between them. I'm not sure how to extend it and the extend button is grayed out.
Steven's user avatar
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2 votes
2 answers
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diskpart shows one partition as two different ones

I want to convert my hard disk from MBR to GPT via mbr2gpt, but for it to work, I can have a maximum of three primary partitions and diskpart is labeling the same partition as two separate partitions [...
Viren Joshi's user avatar
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1 answer
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How can I merge a partition with unallocated space? (In Ubuntu)

I'm stuck as to how I can fully utilize all my free space. I have 1TB of storage. A few months ago, I installed Ubuntu 20.04 into it. Then something happened (my fault really) and Ubuntu stopped ...
chris4953's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
131 views

How do I determine properties of disks from a live USB?

I'm currently using Clonezilla to restore previously-created disk images (Windows) to a variety of small computers - an Intel Compute Stick (two versions) and an Asus Vivo Stick. Obviously the image I ...
crypto's user avatar
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Windows 10 reassigns drive letters on reboot

Through being forced to for a software program my company uses, I recently switched from Windows 7 to Windows 10. Now, every time I reboot, my computer decides to assign letters E, F, G, and H with ...
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Dual-Boot Ubuntu 18.04/Windows 10 No Room [duplicate]

I am trying to dual boot my Dell Latitude D7270 with Windows and Ubuntu Desktop 18.04. When I enter I look at my storage in settings it says my C: drive has 98GB free (230 GB Total). Yet when I try to ...
engstudent4231's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
1k views

Cannot delete volume on drive that was originally a windows installation?

I have three drives in my system Disk 0, Disk 1, and Disk 2. Disk 1 and Disk 2 were originally installed in the system, the former was my windows installation and the later my storage drive. I cloned ...
KDecker's user avatar
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External HDD freezes computer and does not show up in Disk Management

I have a Seagate 1TB external hard drive. I was doing a full reformat of the drive the other day and unfortunately, my pc crashed while it was at 94%. After a reboot, my pc was completely stuck and ...
Ghostly_Hax's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
5k views

Is it safe to delete the recovery partition?

I am trying to grow my C: drive to use the unallocated space on Disk 0. Is it safe to throw away the Recovery Partition (i.e. make it unallocated)? And if so, is GParted an ok tool to do that with? Or ...
David Thielen's user avatar
-3 votes
1 answer
406 views

How to get rid of weird disk partitions on a Windows 10 on C drive

I am having an issue were I am unable to delete the weird partitions in C drive. When I right click, I get only the Help option available. For the first partition, other options are greyed out while ...
Iamnogood's user avatar
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2 answers
89 views

Explain the partitions please

I am new to this. I want to identify which is the BOSS Linux OS and which is the Windows OS and if I want to keep Windows and remove BOSS, which partitions should I be removing. I am on Windows OS and ...
Tough_cookie99's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
3k views

Extend unallocated space to my `C:` drive?

I am using a machine with Windows 10. After shrinking the size of the partition D: using Disk Management, I got 215.78GB Unallocated. Now, I want to Extend the Volume of the partition C: with the ...
Gonçalo Peres's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
1k views

root partition doesn't have all space available

It's been 10+ years since I've done any server admin work and now I have installed on an old laptop an Ubuntu 20.04 server and I have some problems in making all space available in the / partition ... ...
George E's user avatar
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2 answers
1k views

Disk Management format vs command line format

I have read in many places that, since Windows Vista, the command line format command writes zeros in each sector of the disk (not for quick format). Edit : https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/...
dagn's user avatar
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Hard drive issues after setting to offline and disconnecting the hard drive

I used Disk Management to set my hard drive to offline (method). I shut my computer off then disconnected the SATA cable and PSU cable from the hard drive. I rebooted and used my computer for a few ...
blahahaaahahaa's user avatar
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1 answer
70 views

Booting is messed up when tried to clone my main HDD to SSD

Im trying to upgrade an old Dell pc and clone the old HDD drive with an SSD I have connected the new SSD to the connections of the optical drive and used the "MiniTool partition" app to make ...
Tassos's user avatar
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1 answer
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Are there pitfalls of extending a partition to a space before it in Windows 7 (after Windows 10 upgrade)?

Several years ago, it was impossible to extend a partition to a space directly before it, using Windows 7's built-in Disk Management (case #1 from 2010, case #2 from 2012). This has been possible for ...
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