Setup Installation :: Create More Than 3 Primary Partitions?
Feb 1, 2014
Why windows 7 and windows 8 introduced a limitation when using Disk Management, and is NOT possible to create more than 3 Primary Partitions? However, using DiskPart from command line it is VERY possible, no warnings or notices.
Code: C:Windowssystem32>diskpartMicrosoft DiskPart version 6.3.9600Copyright (C) 1999-2013 Microsoft Corporation.On computer: PAINKILLERDISKPART> listMicrosoft DiskPart version 6.3.9600DISK [code]....
As far as I know, there is a maximum of 4 Primary partitions on a hardisk, or 3 primary and one extended, and IN the extended partitions more that 4 logical drivers.However, from any disk utility like the old, deprecated, and buggy Partition Magic, acronis disk partition utility, gparted Linux, parted, cfdisk, fdisk, or even on the older Windows like Xp, nt, 2000, 98, me, ms-dos, freedos, I WAS ALWAYS BEEN ABLE TO CREATE 4 PRIMARY PARTITIONS, but with the new WINDOWS 7 and the new WINDOWS 8, it appears this limitation of only 3 PRIMARY PARTITIONS instead of 4. Don't know about Vista as I have skipped that version of windows on every PC that I have build or worked.
Or is working like this because of some hidden reason which I can't figure out by myself what could It be, and the only thing that I can observe is that while technology is evolving (hardware and software), we have limitations like this, to create only 3 primary instead of 4 primary while using Disk Management from administrative tools or right clicking on the computer and "manage" console.
Personally I am a little irritated/annoyed that now the disk management is having "handicap" and I can NOT find a serious reason for this idiocratic limitation. As we are "evolving" the normal path It would be more normal to be able to use more that 4 primary on a hardisk, from my point of view, not limiting to ONLY 3 Primary.
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Dec 4, 2013
Purchased a new laptop . It has one large C 1T drive . I would like to create 4 primary partitions , one for programs, one for data , another for media , and the rest unallocated.
How to use built in disk manager ? Can I create several partitions at one go?
Is it easier to use a 3rd party partition software?
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Jan 8, 2014
I installed Windows 8/8.1 on a system with a Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H MB. When I look at the SSD where Windows is installed I have one partition. I also installed Windows 8/8.1 on an ASRock Z77 OC Formula MB. When I look at the SSD where Windows is installed I have three partitions - 300MB (Recovery Partition), 100MB (EFI System Partition) and 111.27GB (Boot,....Partition). Why did the Windows 8 installer create three partitions on the ASRock system? I think I understand the EFI partition since the ASRock BIOS has a "Load UEFI Defaults" option. The Gigabyte MB does not have this option in the BIOS? Is that because the ASRock MB has truly implemented EFI and uses the EFI System Partition to store boot information?
Why was the Recovery Partition created? I built this system from scratch so there is not any third party involvement. If I reinstall Windows 8 using a new - never used SSD will I get the three partitions? If I format the SSD with one partition prior to Installing Windows 8 what will I get?
I not concerned about the loss of 300MB,why I got different partition configurations on fresh installs of Windows 8 on two different MB's/Systems?
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Sep 15, 2014
I am having problems installing UEFI & a Error 0x80004005 with Windows 8.1 OEM saying it can't create partitions for UEFI then creating 2 partitions for MBR installation instead. This using a 400 TB, hard drive, setup with a GPT system & nothing else & ready for Windows 8.1 to create the partitions.
The first time it happened I used MiniTool Partition Wizard Professional, to delete the partitions created by Windows 8.1 & convert the MBR to GPT, then used Wipe Disk function to erase all data and set all the bits to a 1.
The only thing that I can think is upsetting the installation is that I have left the other drives in the system including 1x3 TB drive, 1x2 TB drive and a second 4 TB drive.
The 2 TB drive has "Win 7 Ultimate" installed using MBR, the 3 TB drive is empty but ready to install Windows 8.1 setup with GPT, and the other 4 TB drive has a UEFI Windows 8.1 installed but broken.
I have also tried to install UEFI Win 8.1 on the 3 TB drive but it failed with the same error code as above.
This UEFI takes a lot to get ones head around dose't it, and me being much older than I once was makes it even harder. I have tried this installation at least 3 to 4 times now and doing these "Wipe Disk Functions" every time has so far lost me 3 whole days just in wasted time.
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Aug 4, 2013
I would like to ask what is OEM, EFI and unallocated partitions?How can i merge unallocated partitions into primary one???Another question is when my alienware restart , I just see my alienware Logo, cant enter to BIOS ??Computer logins smoothly just cant seem to enter BIOS.I will attatch an image of my disk management.
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Jan 26, 2014
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?
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Nov 27, 2013
When first I tried to install a fresh copy of windows 8, I deleted all the partitions including systems reserved etc
Now It shows 2 drives where both of the drives are now currently unallocated and are ready to create fresh partition:
Drive 0 - 500GB HDD <== This is where I want to install my windows
Drive 1 - 20GB SSD <== This is where the system is creating the system partition
When ever I create the partition in either drives the windows create the system partition (350MB) in ssd automatically. and when I install my windows on 500 HDD then windows wont work because the systems files are on other drive. Furthermore, I dont want to install my windows on ssd because of the limited space. So How can I install my windows in 500GB HDD so it creates the system partition also in the same drive i.e. drive 0 - 500GB HDD
NOTE: I have tried everything using diskpart and making the drive 0 active but still its not working. I dont want to send it to Samsung warranty because they are charging me like $100
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Nov 6, 2012
OK, long story short. I did a clean install to Windows 8 Pro 64. Because of the System Reserved partition, it showed both Win 7 and Win 8 available and would prompt to do a dual boot. I cleaned it up by following the instructions on the below link.
Dual Boot - Delete a OS - Windows 7 Forums
It now no longer dual boots, and Windows 8 is fine. The only issue remaining is that my primary drive in drive management still has unallocated space. Disk 0 has 351MB Unallocated space, and 465GB of system boot, page file, etc...
In the instructions, it says to "Right click on the partition that contains the OS you want to delete and Delete Volume. Then right click on the deleted volume and Delete Partition. Now you should have "Freespace" where this partition originally was."
Well, I can't do that. When I right-click on the unallocated space, all I can do is: New Simple Volume, Properties. Everything else is greyed out. I also can't extend the other partition, the "extend" option is also greyed out.
I'm now on Win 8... How to put that 351MB onto the main partition?
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Jul 17, 2013
I'm mostly a Linux user, but I recently bought a laptop with Windows 8 on it. After a few days dual booting I decided it wasn't for me, so I decided to delete the windows partitions and usa just Linux. I would like, however, to keep the recovery partition, so to be able to easily reinstall Windows again if I felt like I needed to, but I'm not sure what partitions should I keep. Here's a picture of my hard drive partitions as of now:
Do I need more than the restore partition? Can I get rid of the boot one? What about the recovery one? And the one flagged msftres?
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Feb 10, 2013
I dual booted win 7 n 8. now i am running out of space in the drive which contains Windows 8.
Win 7 is installed on C drive and Windows 8 on D drive. How can i interchange the OS on the drive. I want to install win7 on Drive D and Windows 8 on Drive C.
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Sep 2, 2013
I've got a HDD currently using MBR that has 2 partitions.
Code: DISK 1:Partition 1 - C: (System)Partition 2 - D: (Data)
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.
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Sep 15, 2014
I had a 17 GB unallocated partition. I changed it to a Primary partition. It is empty. Can I merge it with the C: partition ? Picture--- edit--- A picture---
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Jan 14, 2014
using the UEFI install instructions from this forum. I do meet all of the requirements (Windows 8 64-bit iso, ASRock Z87 Extreme4 mobo, blank SSD). When I get to Step 7 in the UEFI guide, I only get 2 partitions instead of the 4 shown(Recovery, System, MSR, Primary). I only get System and Primary. I decided to delete all partitions and just run the setup on the unallocated drive...everything worked fine. I am just wondering what the consequences are of not having those 4 partitions. I still have the UEFI interface when I boot up so it appear that is working.
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Oct 18, 2013
I run 3 HDS. 1 SSD, and 2 normal drives.
I just clean formatted my SSD and installed Windows 8 on it, which I always put on that drive.
However I am seeing a bunch of partitions, 4 recovery partitions. Are these normal? If not, how would I get rid of them?
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Aug 3, 2013
I have 2 partitions: System Reserved (100mb) and Windows 8 (465gb). Windows 8 is marked as the system partition while system reserved is marked as Active & Boot. Is there any way I can like split windows 8, copy the files onto the new bit of unallocated space and make that partition the system partition instead of the "old" windows 8 partition?
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Oct 8, 2013
I am using the guide to install Windows 8 over two partitions and I get the error:
Windows cannot be installed to this hard disk space. The partition contains one or more dynamic volumes that are not supported for installation. I followed all the steps 100%
Found this Get the paid version of EaseUS Partition Master at discount. Magic Partition Manager Freeware for PC/Server users. Upgrade EaseUS Partition Master Free can I use this to copy partitions?
Worked it all out, the software linked above was able to convert my Dynamic drive to a Basic drive for free!
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Aug 6, 2013
I have an pre-installed Windows 8 in my notebook. When I first got the PC, I got only C:/ partition so I needed D:/ and for doing this I used EaseUS Partition Manager. This is just a guess but I guess Windows can't find those recover partitions that are in my HDD. I haven't deleted those partitions just created D:/ and here is a screenshot I just take to show you the partitions I have.
I have already tried copying the Install.wim from my BIOS_RVY partition which was about 9GB and I moved it to C:/WinRec and used this command as I saw it from internet : reagentc.exe /setosimage /path C:WinRec /target c:Windows /Index 1 But i still get the error:
"Insert media some files are missing. Your Windows installation or recovery medial will provide these files."
This method didn't worked so any other too. I wonder how can I refresh or some sort of return my notebook to the factory settings from the recovery parts I have.
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May 29, 2014
Protecting partitions from factory reset?
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Jan 27, 2014
I recently decided to buy an ultrabook and I got me this one: LG Z360-7416, with a ssd and windows 8 (x64). As usual, it came with a lot of garbage installed which was using almost half of the ssd storage (128GB), so I decided to do a clean install. I got me a msdnaa copy of the windows 8.1 pro (x64). So, i used a pendrive to boot up on UEFI mode and selected custom install and when i get to the select partition, it shows everything fine, i select a partition and when a click on install, it returns an error saying it cannot install on my partition (i dont remember exactly what it says), and when i click on refresh, all my partitions vanishes, even going into the prompt and using diskpart doesnt show my partitions anymore. I tried to load some drivers, but it didnt work.
I was only able to install windows 7(x64), where nothing of these things happens, it installs realy easy. I tried to install windows 8 from windows 7, like an upgrade, but after it restarts, it gets stuck also. My disk is formatted on GPT, as im using EUFI on my windows 7 installation.
Tried almost a hundred times using all solutions i found online, but always the same result. And to get even more weird, some rare times it gets to the installation part, where it says the progress, but stays on 0% of unpacking files...
Its seens to be missing some especific driver to windows 8 be able to work with my ssd, but i cant get it right, but if it came installed with windows 8, it must be a way to make then work together.
Unfortunately i deleted the recovery partitions, so im stuck on windows 7.
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May 15, 2014
I have a very peculiar issue; after using various disk imaging tools such as Macrium and Paragon, my boot partitions seem to be strangely corrupted. The effects of this corruption are:
1) Plain-text boot menu instead of the new graphical boot menu,
2) Long delays before the boot menu is shown,
3) Even longer delays when doing native VHD boot, after choosing the boot entry from the menu.
I have done a lot of testing and experimentation, and on a virgin fresh installed system from the Windows 8.1 setup ISO, these symptoms do not appear. Only after I have imaged the system using the imaging tools above, do these symptoms start appearing. Unfortunately, just copying my main Windows C: partition using the same imaging tools re-creates the same issue. So I cannot rely on these partitioning tools.
I need a way - a set of commands - to re-create the boot partitions, re-initialize their BCD stores, etc. so that I can normally boot from my C: partition, as well as native VHD boot.
Needless to say, I want to avoid having to completely reinstall Windows on my C: partition, as that would be extremely time and effort prohibitive, if I only knew how to re-create and/or re-initialize just the boot partitions in question.
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Oct 27, 2013
Recently I got my new laptop running under Windows 8.1 and was surprised with how the partitions were sized.
Here is the screenshot from the DiskManagement:
So I shrank the size of C: disk as you can see and got unallocated space. I want to attach that space to D: disk. I thought that is possible to extend recovery partition to unallocated space, then shrank recovery partition, and newly appeared unallocated then attach to D:/ disk. But failed with that.
I don't think that I really need those 900Mb and 350Mb recovery partitions and that they are useful, but it would be unwise to delete them while I don't know what are they for. Latter 20Gb recovery partition at the picture at least has the significant size to store something
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Jan 13, 2013
How to hid all the partitions in the factory installed HDD for Lenovo Y580.
This is the scenario.
Firstly, i successfully migrated all of the following partitions:
OEM/Hidden partition,
C partition: boot drive/ program files and data drive &
D partition: containing drivers
from my Lenovo factory installed HDD to the SSD and to use the SSD as the primary boot drive . Now, i plan to use the factory installed HDD as my data drive. (I am using a caddy tray for this whereby i plan to swap out the optical drive and pluck in the Lenovo factory installed HDD). However, for "safety reasons" i do not plan to re-format the entire factory installed HDD but rather to keep those partitions just in case if my SSD fails.
Hence, how do i turn all the three partitions above (in the Lenovo factory installed HDD) to become dormant? I want the computer to boot up from the existing SSD but then to treat the factory installed HDD as the data drive and not to read from any of the three partitions in the factory installed HDD.
I am planning to use EASUS as my disk partition freeware.
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Jan 6, 2013
I have Windows 8,W7,Wxp working well in multiboot. But i have Windows 8 instaled in C:but it is the 2nd partition.How can i move it to first partition ?W7 and wxp are probably on the 1st D: partition.
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Jun 15, 2014
I'm trying to recreate win 8.1 pro system reserved partition on my ssd. Initially I installed windows on my ssd (c: ) and windows created the sysres partition on my unformatted hd (without telling me anything). After some trouble I managed to be able to boot from ssd directly without going through the sysres partition on the hd. Now if possible I'd like to recreate the sysres on the ssd (by disconnecting my hd so that windows has no other options than creating this on the ssd). If a try a system refresh it tells me it would wipe away all my user installed apps.
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Dec 22, 2013
I need the steps for create partitions aligned in 1024.
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May 16, 2014
Trying to create an ISO of the windows 8.1 dvd. I want to make a bootable USB stick when I go to install it to speed things up and make a backup copy. I can create the ISO using Alcohol 120 but when I use the Windows 7 USB/DVD tool to open the ISO it says it is not a valid ISO file.
Every other bit of software can read it okay so it is an ISO file as far as I can tell.
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Sep 15, 2014
I have a Windows 8 pro oem copy and I want to create a bootable Windows 8.1 pro Usb stick in uefi format to do a clean install.
Now I built my machine myself so I am sure there is no embedded windows key in the bios? But I cant seem to download anything that will create the media, it says it my key wont work in a retail copy of windows 8.
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Apr 26, 2014
I already have a Windows 8 Pro USB installer setup but I don't think it can be used to do a repair install for my Windows 8.1 Pro upgrade. So I'm trying to create a new USB installer setup specifically for Win 8.1 Pro. However, the Windows 8.1 setup window is not accepting the 8.1 Product Key that I extracted from Belarc, ProduKey and WPkey. Is there a way to get around that issue so that I can create the Win 8.1 USB installer?
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Jun 29, 2014
I recently picked up an Asus laptop, a SDD to replace the the laptop's HDD, and a HDD caddy to hold the HDD in place of the CD/DVD drive. After a fresh Win 8.1 install on the SDD, I made system images of both the SDD and the HDD with the Win 8 OEM install (both stored on external drive). I also created a USB recovery drive and then formatted the HDD.
Fast forward a few weeks... It's last Friday. I'm about to leave for a business trip. I boot up my laptop and a screen comes up telling me to "reboot and select proper boot device". I pull the SDD out, hook it up to my desktop, and see that the drive shows up, but it's blank. A little googling turned up a few reviews from other people with the same issue. On rare occasion, it will wipe itself. Using the USB recovery drive and the Win 8.1 system image, I got things up and running again.
Now for my question, instead of constantly carrying around the 2 USB drives holding the recovery and system image, can I create a recovery partition on my HDD that I can boot too if my SDD wipes again? (Could I copy or clone my Recovery USB to a partition on my HDD?) Then I could just keep the SSD system image on the HDD in case I need to restore it, right?
Disk 0: SDD disk that wiped itself
Disk 1: HDD that I'd like to have a recovery partition and system image on
I also have: Win 8 OEM system imageWin 8.1 system imageRecovery USB drive (8.1)Win 8.1 USB Install drive
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Jun 7, 2014
I have sony vpceh3aen laptop with windows 7 home basic. I have IOS file of embedded windows 8.1 industry pro with update via dreamspark.com. just now I run windows 8.1 upgrade assistance and its says "your pc's firmware doesn't support secure boot so you won't be able to use it in windows 8.1". Some persons says that not a problem. I not like to upgrade my OS but I want create dual boot with windows 7 home basic and embedded windows 8.1 industry pro.
my questions:
1. can I possible to dual boot? if possible how to create it and what are changes(in BIOS and windows 7 settings) needs to make in my laptop?
2. I have pen drive and DVD, which is best for create dual boot with IOS file?
3. I have 100GB free logical partition. that is enough for embedded windows 8? if not how much need to increase?
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Jul 16, 2013
I don't know what Windows 8.1 has done to my system but after getting rid of it and re-installing Windows 8 ENTERPRISE again I cannot create Windows to GO any more
It doesn't matter if I plug in an SSD, a standard USB stick or a standard external USB HDD - I get No suitable devices found when launching the application from the control panel.
(I can do it manually the old fashioned way but I don't know why the standard method is broken when it was working perfectly before).
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