move the system reserved partition to another HDD without formatting

[k17777]

Hello,

i have 3 HDD's . one of them is a very old drive with 40gb space

the system installed on another drive that it's 250GB storage,

i have a problem that the system doesn't starting without the old 40GB drive...(this is an old drive that i want to disconnect from the pc)

on the Disk Managment there is a partition in the old drive that called "System reserved" and i think that the system doesn't starting without this drive is because this partition, so there's any way to move the partition to the drive that the windows installed there without formatting the computer?

Thanks for helpers.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, k17777.

This happens when you have other drives connected to the motherboard (besides the drive you've decided to install Windows to, of course) during the Windows installation process. The best case scenario would be to backup the 250GB HDD, disconnect all other drives from the motherboard and make a fresh install of Windows.
Another option would be to create a system image, this would include your OS along with all the settings and data. Please check this tutorial: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17101/windows-7-system-recovery-options (check the System Image Recovery part). After you've created a system image, you could restore it to your 250GB drive and hopefully boot to Windows without an issue and without the 40GB drive.

Hope that helps. Please let me know how it goes.
Boogieman_WD

 

[k17777]

Hey there, k17777.

This happens when you have other drives connected to the motherboard (besides the drive you've decided to install Windows to, of course) during the Windows installation process. The best case scenario would be to backup the 250GB HDD, disconnect all other drives from the motherboard and make a fresh install of Windows.
Another option would be to create a system image, this would include your OS along with all the settings and data. Please check this tutorial: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17101/windows-7-system-recovery-options (check the System Image Recovery part). After you've created a system image, you could restore it to your 250GB drive and hopefully boot to Windows without an issue and without the 40GB drive.

Hope that helps. Please let me know how it goes.
Boogieman_WD

Thanks for your solution,to which drive should i make the recovery image? for the 40gb hard drive that have the system reserved on it or the 250gb drive that the system is installed on it?

 

[ArtPog]

We've found the following process to move the boot files from the System Reserved partition to the C:\ primary partition so that the system will boot Without the need for a SR partition.
NOTE: This process applies to Win 7 & Win 8.1. While this process also appears viable with Win 10 based on our preliminary experience using it with that OS we would prefer to gain further experience employing it with that specific OS before recommending it unreservedly.

AS A CAUTIONARY MOVE BEFORE UNDERTAKING THIS PROCESS WE STRONGLY URGE THE USER TO CLONE THE CONTENTS OF THEIR SYSTEM DISK TO ANOTHER DISK. WHILE WE'VE FOUND THIS SYSTEM CONFIGURATION CHANGE CONSISTENTLY RELIABLE IT DOES REPRESENT A MAJOR SYSTEM CONFIGURATION CHANGE TO A USER'S PC SYSTEM AND A FALL-BACK POSITION SHOULD ALWAYS BE AVAILABLE TO THE USER SHOULD THINGS GO AWRY.

AGAIN, IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT THE PC USER NOT UNDERTAKE THIS PROCESS WITHOUT FIRST CREATING A CLONE OF HIS/HER BOOT DRIVE.

1. Open a command prompt (Elevated Command Prompt) with administrator privileges: C:\Windows\System32>

Type: bcdboot c:\windows /s c: <Enter>
You should get a message: "Boot files successfully created."

2. Open Disk Management, locate the C:\ partition, right-click and select the option “Mark Partition as Active” from the sub:menu; click Yes to the confirmation message.
NOTE: Should Disk Management have the "Mark Partition as Active" option grayed out, use Diskpart to mark partition Active, as follows...
Select Partition
Active

3. Reboot to confirm that everything is OK, i.e., the system boots without incident and properly functions with no problems.

4. In Disk Management you can now delete the System Reserved partition by right-clicking on the partition and selecting "Delete Volume". The resultant disk-space will be "Uallocated". In most cases the SR partition had been created in the drive's disk:space located before the C: partition. That being the case you cannot utilize Disk Management to extend the C: partition to incorporate that unallocated disk-space. Since only a rather trivial amount of disk-space is involved it would seem there's no great urgency to utilize that disk-space for more productive purposes. However, most third-party "partition management" type programs possess this capability if it's of some importance to you.

5. In some cases it's necessary to assign a drive letter to the System Reserved partition before you can delete it. Also, it's sometimes necessary to use the Diskpart utility to delete the partition by selecting the partition and invoking the command "delete partition override".

6. The SR partition can also be deleted in Disk Management when the drive is connected as a secondary drive.

7. If all else fails and the system prevents deletion of the empty System Reserved partition no great harm ensues as long as you have a bootable, functional drive.

Hopefully in your situation you will be able to follow the above steps so that your 250 GB drive will be able to boot straightaway without the need of your 40 GB drive containing the System Reserved partition being connected in the system.

BUT TO REITERATE...ENSURE THAT YOU FIRST CLONE THE CONTENTS OF YOUR 250 GB DRIVE BEFORE UNDERTAKING THIS PROCESS SO THAT IN THE EVENT OF FAILURE YOU WILL BE ABLE TO RETURN TO YOUR ORIGINAL SYSTEM.

 

[ales.kladnik]

@ArtPog solution to move the boot files is excellent, but it was quite nerve wrecking in my case.

I have four drives in my computer, installed fresh Windows 10 on the SSD and the install put the boot files on one of the other three drives, so my C: drive was Boot, and E: drive was System. That resulted in some annoyances like I couldn't use that drive for File History backup, I need to have both drives plugged in and functional if I want to boot Windows, etc. So I copied the boot files to C: (where they belong in my opinion). It was quick and smooth, shut down the computer, unplugged all drives except the SSD to be really sure that moving of boot files was succesful - it was, turned off the computer, plugged in the other drives, turned the computer on and SHOCK - only SSD drive was visible, I couldn't see other drives not even in Disk management, but they were visible in BIOS. Googled that and got a bunch of non-helpful advices, but then I found this magic trick with Windows Memory Diagnostics: https://shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=26561 and it really worked! I have all the drives back to life, whew! Thank you Shamus Young!