Disk Management - partitioning

[wbatters]

I have a PC which I'm very happy with. Disk 0 is a 250 Gb (?I think) Samsung SSD and Disk 1 is the 500 Gb (?) which originally came with the PC. I've mashed this PC around a fair bit as it started life as an Acer Aspire in 2008 under Windows Vista and now it's a completely rebuilt machine running under Windows 10.

When I go to Disk Management I see Disk 1 as an NTFS disk with a single partition marked Healthy (Active, Primary Partition). Disk 0 however has four partitions which are, from left to right:

* System Reserved, 350 MB NTFS: marked Healthy (Primary Partition).
* Windows (C 231.66 GB NTFS: marked Healthy (System, Boot, Page File, Active, Crash Dump, Primary Partition).
* no name or title, just an entry which reads: 450 MB Healthy (Recovery Partition)
* no name or title, just an entry which reads: 450 MB Unallocated.

Now I'd be the first to agree that sleeping dogs should be left to lie, but can someone tell me what all these means and whether there are steps I should take to make changes? It looks wrong that Disk 1 is marked Primary Partition. I also guess that the two untitled partitions on Disk 0 should be deleted (destroyed? wiped out? removed?) and finally I guess that the System Reserved partition on drive 0 should not be a Primary Partition.

But I'd much appreciate any advice on whether I am correct in making these assumptions, in how to sort it all out and what risks I am running in leaving it as it is, or making changes. All of my data is stored on Drive 1 and backed up on OneDrive, so reformatting everything and reinstalling Windows 10 (assuming I can recover the correct installation key!) is not a huge issue. However, before I waste half a day doing all that I'd like to be sure I'd got my disks in an optimal structure.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, wbatters!

Everything sounds normal except for the 450MB Unallocated partition. I'm guessing it has a black border instead of a blue one in Disk Management. This is basically space which has no file system and can't be used by your OS.
As for the primary partitions - it's completely normal. Here's a pretty good explanation on the matter by Microsoft: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/what-are-partitions-and-logical-drives
As you can see from this image from one of our lab computers, it shows all the drives with primary partitions:

Spoiler

In my opinion, there's no need for you to do anything (reformat and reinstall the OS). If it doesn't bother you that you have 450MB of unallocated space just leave it as it is, as you can't add it up to your C: drive, because in order for you to be able to extend it via Disk Management, the unallocated space should be right next to that partition on the right side and in your case you have the recovery partition between them. However if you'd like to use that space, you can use 3rd party software in order to extend the C: partition with those 450MB.

Hope that helps. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Boogieman_WD

 

[wbatters]

Thanks very much guys. That's very reassuring. Given that the files on my C: drive - the Windows 10 installation, only takes up 47 of the 231 Gigabytes available, I can't see that that unavailable 450 Mb is of any significance. It just puzzled me that there were so many partitions on that drive and so many Primary Partitions. I guess those things are both legacies of the changes I have made to the PC over the years - upgrading Windows from Vista to 10 via 7, 8 and 8.1, and adding the SSD drive and moving Windows from the 500 Gb drive to the SSD. Your help much appreciated.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Sure thing, mate. As you've mentioned, that would explain it. And unfortunately sometimes when you migrate your OS, the cloning process messes up the partition a bit and you're left with unallocated space, which you can't extend your partition with, because of another partition which is in the way. For these cases, a 3rd party software is needed. However, it's only 450MB which really doesn't matter that much unless you want everything to be in order.

Cheers!