Hardware Drivers :: Effects Of Formatting A Partition?
May 12, 2013
My Windows partition has a corrupted file system. I've tried fixing it, so far nothing works. At this point I'd just like to format it so that I can shrink it and use some of it's space on another partition. I have to format it before I can shrink it because it is corrupted. Would formatting it like this affect the Windows product key? I don't want to mess that up, in case I buy recovery media in order to re-install Windows.
I don't think it's important, but I am using a Toshiba Satellite S855 trying to fix Windows 8.
I bought a Micro SD Card 32GB from eBay. I am trying to copy files to it so I can transfer them from my PC to my Laptop, however whenever it finishes copying files and I plug it into my Laptop, it needs formatting. I have tried copying files to it and them plugging it back into my PC but it says it needs formatting again. It is annoying me because I am trying to copy a disk image which is 16gb and it takes hours to copy to the Micro SD Card but when i unplug it from my PC it suddenly needs formatting. I am using NTFS Format, i cant copy my files on Fat32. It also doesn't let me format the card, its saying 'Windows was unable to complete the format'. This Micro SD Card is basically unusable.
I run a program that requires the setting "Smooth Edges of Screen Fonts" to be un-checked in Win7 and XP. Using Win7, that selection is under Control Panel/System Security/System/Advanced System Settings/Performance Settings/Visual Effects. How do I access that setting in Windows 8?
I've had some major problems with Windows 8 recently, I'll start with the questions:
1. Does the Windows 8 installation disk do a quick format or a full format that deals with bad sectors before installing?
2. If Windows 8 tries to install files on a bad sector will it cause the installation to hang?
3. Related question: If Windows 8 tries to do updates on a bad sector, can it cause a system crash and BSODs?
4. Second related question: Are there any known issues with certain windows update files crashing systems (for Windows 8)? If so, which ones are crashing the systems?
I had a major crash with Windows 8.1 where after many fruitless attempts to salvage the system, I ended up reinstalling.
I did this about 3 or 4 times, and each time, things ended up with a crash, sometimes after 2 days, sometimes after 3.
I finally definitively figured out that Windows Update was causing the crash. Unfortunately, I still don't know which one did it. What I do know is that some updates went fine, others caused crashes.
After the last crash, Windows went into a repair loop that I couldn't get out of. It would try an automatic repair, fail, and reboot.
What's worse is that my computer would not recognize the rescue disk or the Windows install disk, and ultimately (30 or 40 minutes later), send things into yet another fruitless reboot.
I finally used Knoppix to zero out the drive, which allowed the Windows install disk to run, but when I tried to install, I had more adventures.
1. Windows tried to install, but it gave me an error and didn't install. 2. Windows then was unable to format the disk, either through the install disk or through DOS. 3. The partition was turned into a "Raw partition" and I wasn't even able to do a chkdsk.
I then used badblocks, and that allowed me to format the drive through the installation disk, but once again, the installation failed. Or let me put it this way, 8 hours after it started, it still was trying to install.
Then this morning, I formatted with the Windows install disk again, and miraculously everything installed in 30 minutes like it was supposed to.
When I get home tonight, I'm going to try to do a chkdsk to check for errors. I've also turned off Windows update since that has been causing all these problems.
At the moment I'm using Win 8 on the MBR HDD and I would like to convert to GPT without losing data stored on partition 2. I'll be reinstalling Win 8 on partition 1 so I can take advantage of UEFI.
I just read the following,"Microsoft imposes a limit on number of times Windows or other Microsoft paid applications license keys can be activated on different PCs." I have MS Office Home and Student 2010 which came preloaded with no discs but have keys. When I need to format and reinstall I need to use the 64bit link to do so. " Does the information included apply to my formatting and reinstalling both or either the OS and Office?
I purchased a product key and am in the process of trying to install 8.1. I have A 3TB hdd that i deleted all of the partitions from. I have been looking to find out what partitions and formats I should have for 8.1 to properly install.
I bought an Acer Aspire V3-571G brand new a few weeks ago and I'm sending it back for a refund. I'm currently having problems with formatting it. I need to remove all my personal information from the laptop but Windows 8 was pre-installed with no recovery disks in the box. When I try to format the main drive it says I can't because thats where Windows 8 is installed and running from. This is my view from Disk Management:
I'm trying to install Windows 8 on my sister's desktop which has a Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H. I bought a new Samsung 830 SSD and it is being detected but with SATA I 1.5. When I try to format the drive it crashes and reboots.
I tried running the installer on an OCZ solid 3 which is what is running Windows 7 and the installer also crashes. Is there a way I can get the error before it reboots the installer?
I have a newer Toshiba laptop that I tried to clean reinstall Windows 8 using the "reset" feature. I wiped the hard drive completely deleting all partitions. Now I cannot boot into anything. Short of ordering recovery dvds from Toshiba, is there a legal way to reinstall Windows 8 back on this laptop?
I have a XPS 8500 with preinstalled windows 8. I tried to install Ubuntu 12.10 on it. When I partitioned the disk, I accidentally format the whole disk. Then I could not restart to Windows 8. I didn't make any backup or recovery media. How to restore factory image?
I want to partition my C Drive to install Ubuntu 14.04 so I can dual-boot with Windows 8.1. When I tried to shrink the volume it wouldn't let me got higher than 4GB even though its a 500GB drive and I have over 259GB free. From looking at it the drive seems to have a few recovery partitions one being just under 24GB. Does the number of drive partitions factor into the amount of space I can give to a partition. Also if the recovery partitions are factoring into this can I move them to another drive or just outright delete them.
I have an SSD and a normal HDD. The Windows system itself runs on the SSD for faster boot-up, and all my user data is stored on the HDD. I recently installed Linux as a dual boot option, but due to issues with UEFI and Legacy BIOS settings, I decided to uninstall my Linux. My Linux was similarly configured, with /boot residing on the SSD and the rest of it residing on an ext4-formatted partition on my HDD.
I uninstalled Linux using the boot-repair livedisc, and I can boot just fine into Windows 8.1. However, now my Windows Data partition on the HDD cannot be accessed. On boot, it doesn't even mount, and links to my Downloads or Documents folders are broken.
The Disk Management tool lists the Data partition as an EFI System Partition, when it was previously just a normal Primary NTFS partition. GParted detects the partition as an NTFS one. DiskPart also indicates the partition is hidden. Mounting the partition works fine using DiskPart but I cannot access it as it throws an access denied error, and says I do not have permission to access the drive. I have tried changing the security options in the security tab to give me full control, but to no avail. I can use CMD to access it though, and view things, but I cannot seem to move or copy data out of it. I have tried using the convert utility in CMD to convert the EFI partition to NTFS (EFI is FAT32, IIRC) but it says that the partition is already NTFS.
How can I fix this or at least enter the partition and backup my data before performing a format and restore? What data should I provide to get proper support?
I a bit stuck at the minute I have just put in a second ssd for just games and storage.in windows disk manager which type of partition do I set it to mbr or gpt this is not for my windows that's on another ssd ...
I have a 2TB external (USB) drive and have created four partitions of equal size using Windows Disk Management, the first three are three are Primary (Healthy) but the fourth is "Logical"
How do I change it to a Std Partition, Basis or Primary.
Or does it matter, the Partition will be used for backup of files, so is it okay to use it as Logical?
My C: is a SSD Id like to have back as one disc, one partition..
The 101 mb 'unallocated' It was previously listed as " reserved system protected drive" I removed and formatted its 101 mb...back to empty, unallocated, can I lose that partition??
It shows up under disc management as a part of c...but really has no drive letter at all it just shows as C:
I need to create a partition on my PC and I've followed tutorials but I always run into the same problem: Right clicking a volume in disk management only gives me a "help" option. I've connected external storage and it gives me the menu shown in the tutorials/how-tos.
Is there something I'm missing? I've followed all the steps to the letter, save for the ones that are not possible on my PC (shrink volume/etc)
Additional info: PC is an Acer Aspire V3-551 laptop The HD was replaced a few months ago and the original OS updated to 8.1 from 8
I just bought a new laptop - an ASUS N550JV - with a single 1TB hard drive. I specifically sought a 1TB hard drive because I intend to store a lot of photos on the laptop and already have over 600GB of photo data to store.
When I got the laptop the first thing I did was to go through the windows update process to get everything up to date, then I upgraded to Windows 8.1 (the laptop came with Windows 8), then I ran the windows update again until everything was up to date.
It was only then that I opened up file explorer with the intention of setting up a basic folder structure for the files I planned to transfer to the laptop. I was dissapointed, at that point, to discover that instead of a single 1TB C: drive, I saw a 370+ GB C: drive and a 530GB + D drive. I confirmed with system information that there is indead just a single drive, and that it thus came partitioned into 2 primary volumes (which, btw, still don't add up to 1TB BTW!). This setup really doesn't work for me, because the "larger" volume is still too small for all my photos, and it would be illogical and inconvenient to have to split up the photos so that some were on the C drive and some on the D drive.
Could I somehow merge the two partitions back into one primary drive, or at least re-size them so that the D drive had at least, say, 750GB, and shrink the C drive accordingly. He pointed me to the Disk Management utility and directed me to delete the (still empty) D drive, which would make that storage space unallocated, then extend the C drive to use that unalocated space. I was able to delete the D drive, and confirmed that there was now 530+ GB of unallocated space. However, when I click on the C drive the option to extend is greyed out.
I did a bit of Googling at this point and discovered that you can can only extend to contiguous unallocated space, and the unallocated space was NOT contiguous - there is a 350MB "Recovery Partition" between the C and D (or unallocated) spaces. In fact, there were multiple recovery and other partitions. (From left to right: 100MB "EFI System Partition", 900MB "Recovery Partition", 370+GB "Primary" C Drive with Boot etc, 350MB "Recovery Partition", 530+GB "Primary" D drive, and 20+GB "Recovery Partition").
Of course I would be too scared to delete the recovery partition, but there's no option to do so anyway ...
I asked the family member again and he suggested creating a USB Recovery Drive and, in the process, wipe the recovery partition. So used the windows utility to create a recovery drive, and sure enough, at the end it asked if I wanted to delete the recovery partition and I said yes. The good news is that this removed the 20GB partition, and I was able to extend the D drive to use that newly unallocated space. The bad news is that the 350MB recovery partition still lies between the C and D drives, preventing me from merging the two.
Again through Googling I found that there are tools I could use to force delete the recovery partition, but I'm afraid to do so and kill my computer or recovery options all together. I also heard that this 350MB recovery partition was created when I upgraded to 8.1, and that rolling back to my factory setting won't remove the partition?
So the question is, what can I do? Is there an easy way to "move" the recovery partition to the end of the drive without breaking any functionality that it might have? What would happen to my computer if this recovery partition were to "break" or get removed? Is it best that I just "live with it" the way it is despite the inconvenience?
I have a USB hard drive which has two partitions: 1 x 100GB partition formatted as FAT32 1 x 900GB partition formatted as NTFS
(these sizes aren't perfectly correct, but it's a 1TB drive that's split in 1:9 proportions)
On my Windows 7 laptop, both partitions are visible in My Computer, and I can read/write with no problems. (On the same laptop, an Ubuntu install can also see and use them perfectly)
On my new Windows 8 laptop, the 100GB FAT32 patition appears under My Computer normally, but the 900GB NTFS partition does not. If I go to Computer -> Manage -> Disk Management, I can see the partition. It has no drive letter or file system listed, reports as "healthy, primary partition" and shows 100% free space. If I right click on the drive's entry in the list, my only options are "delete partition"; everything else is greyed out.
So, to summarise: One hard drive with two partitions. Both partitions work perfectly in Win 7 and Ubuntu. Win 8 can only see the FAT32 partition, and treats the NTFS partition as if it is junk.
way to persuade Windows 8 to mount this partition? I know that the drive and partition are fine, but for some reason Windows 8 isn't interested.
My PC specs: Asus P8Z77-V with a SATA2 WD Caviar Black 500GB. The HDD has four partitions, and I've had Windows 7 32 bit installed on C:/ for three years. Windows 8 was just installed four months ago.
Before this, I had my Windows 8 and BIOS ahci-enabled C:/Windows 7 <> D:/Stuffs <> E:/Windows 8 <> F:/Stuffs
Yesterday, I needed some space on my F:, so I started Partition Wizard (I used this program a lot before with no problems) and cut 9gb from C, after that queue it to extend F: that much space.
Because C: is located first, but F: is located last, PW created 4 queue, which is cut -> move D: -> move E: -> extend F. The two first actions were performed fine, however when I restart as PW promoted, I was stuck at the BIOS, unable to access BIOS, with the red led lit on the P8z77-v, which means there was a problem with a boot device. If I unplug the HDD, the system goes into BIOS just fine, but obviously can't boot anymore.
There is a lot of important data on that disk which I can't afford to lose. My problem sounds almost like the same as this one: [URL] ....., however when he changes his BIOS to IDE mode, his HDD booted into Windows 7. However, mine doesn't. I've disabled Secure Boot, but that doesn't work either. It just stucks at the BIOS splash screen.
Currently I am considering to burn a PW CD and hotswap the HDD in order to fix the MBR and stuffs.
I have bought a new PC/Server to be used as a media server, I have 2 x 2TB disks installed which I believe I have mirrored.
See below screenshot.
From the reading and research I have done I don't believe if one disk was to fail the other one would work, I think I may need to mirror the EFI system Partition and Recovery Partition of which I'm not too sure how to do this?
I have dual-booted Windows 8.1 and Windows 7. I have managed to free up a significant amount of space on Windows 7 and was wondering if it's possible to add some of the freed space to my Windows 8.1 partition?
If pic won't resize, cope and paste: "[URL] ....."
I used AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard to add a NTFS Partition to my USB drive. I want to store large files over 4GB on this partition, while having the rest of my files on the primary partition which is FAT32. The problem is, when I plug my drive into the computer it only shows the primary partition.
Is there any way to get Windows to show both partitions when I plug the device in? I want to be able to store files on both partitions.
After doing some research, I found that one possible way would be to set the USB device as a "Fixed disk". I was unable to figure out how to do this.
The device is a 32GB Silicon Power Blaze Removable Disk with USB 3.0.
I have win 8 pro installed & two HDDs with two partions each , I want to migrate the boot partition to another partition on the second drive .
It would have been easier if i would have just cloned the complete drives but one of the partions on the 2nd drive has data which cannot be deleted .
So I have Drive
1 - Partitions C: ( boot partition ) & D:
Drive 2 - Partitions E: & F:
I want to remove Drive 1 from my PC so i want to copy C: to E: then remove drive 1 & boot from E:
I tried "Easeus todo backup" , did not work, it does not make the copy bootable , to make it bootale the whole drive has to be copied .
I tried making an image of C: using Windows 8 inbuilt backup feature then removed drive 1 , installed Windows 8 on E: then tried restoring the image of C: but i got some error.
I would like to add a partition to a drive having the following partitions:
Number Partition Size 1 Windows RE 499 MB 2 EFI System 300 MB 3 MSR 128 MB 4 C: 216 GB 5 Windows RE 450 MB 6 Samsung Image 19 GB 7 Samsung Recovery 1 GB
This should be easy to do with MiniTool Partition Wizard. In essence, resize "C:", add the partition in the unallocated space, assign the drive letter "D" to the new partition, and format it to NTFS.
You will notice that the drive has two Windows RE partitions. This is because I updated to Windows 8.1 from Windows 8 through the Microsoft Store.
I used to have System Reserved on separate partion to C: but on my last fresh re-install, I decided to make C: and System Reserved in one partition. Here's what shows on Disk Management:
My question is, which is better. System Reserved on the same partition with C: or on a separate partition?
Suddenly, the Acronis program I used to always use for partition copy, won't detect my USB mouse and KB. So, I'm having to do it with Partition Wizard 7. I've never used that to move a system partition, are there any issues doing it that way? The only other program I used to use for this kind of Op is paragon partition manager, which the version I have is not compatible with 8.
I don't like doing it this way, it's very slow compared to using the Acronis program, which seems to fly fast.
