moving to a smaller SSD - do i need that 550meg System partition?

[giantbucket]

as per question... Dell laptop, which came with a HDD which i cloned onto an SSD, so i have:

recovery partition (18.3Gig)
system partition (550Meg)
the actual win7 partition (65Gig)
blank space (139Gig)

it's all on a 240G SSD, but i am gonna swap it out for a 120G since i need that 240G elsewhere.

i will skip over the recovery partition, but do i need to "copy over" the 350meg system partition, or can i skip that and just "copy over" the win7 partition which is like 65G in size?

i'm gonna use MiniTool Partition Wizard to copy the partitions individually, and then rebuild the MBR on the drive. just no idea if that 550Meg needs to come along or not. and what it even does.

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, you need that small partition.

Why are you trying to copy them over manually, instead of using a dedicated tool that will do it for you?
Macrium Reflect does this easily.

 

[giantbucket]

cuz i already have MiniTool which will do that as well, and i want to SKIP that initial recovery partition. it's just wasting 18Gigs of space. i like my stuff CLEAN.

ok, so i clone over the sys and main partitions. what does that sys partition even do?

 

[USAFRet]

cuz i already have MiniTool which will do that as well, and i want to SKIP that initial recovery partition. it's just wasting 18Gigs of space. i like my stuff CLEAN.

ok, so i clone over the sys and main partitions. what does that sys partition even do?

Macrium Reflect, which is free, will do exactly what you need.
You can simply not select that 18GB recovery partition in the migration process.
Yes, you DO need that small System partition. That is your boot info.

You can do this the hard way or the easy way.

 

[USAFRet]

So...have you decided on which path you will go down?

The easy, guaranteed path (Macrium Reflect + that System partition)?
Or the manual path, filled with rabid wolves and poison ivy?

 

[giantbucket]

which one has the kittens and Ah Caramel cakes? i don't like rainbows, though. a hint of 60's pre-catalytic exhaust fumes would be a nice touch.

 

[USAFRet]

which one has the kittens and Ah Caramel cakes? i don't like rainbows, though. a hint of 60's pre-catalytic exhaust fumes would be a nice touch.

You may jest, but it is your system.
Do you wish a working system at the end of this process?

 

[giantbucket]

i've had good luck with moving partitions over using MTPW9.1 so, that's what i'll use. the 550Meg isn't huge anyways - it's the 18G recovery i really want to get rid of during the move

 

[USAFRet]

Have fun.
Huge or not, that partition is critical.

 

[popatim]

The Recovery partition usually holds your Factory Restore image as well as your diagnostics.
If you've made 2 or three copies of your factory disk set then I dont really see the need to keep it. {I do on customers machines but not on my own}

Now theres a very good chance you wont be able to use that space, I havent used that app before but the older ones tend not to put the unpartitioned space as one large unallocated space at the end of the drive so you may need a partition tool move move them around and then expand C: to fill the space. Plan on this taking several hours too.

You'll have the original drive to act as your backup in case things go horribly wrong so take good care of it.

Good luck.

 

[USAFRet]

The Recovery partition usually holds your Factory Restore image as well as your diagnostics.
If you've made 2 or three copies of your factory disk set then I dont really see the need to keep it. {I do on customers machines but not on my own}

On older systems (HP, around Vista era), that function allowed you to make exactly one DVD set. Once you made one, that partition killed itself off. It gave a big warning "You can only do this once"
One of the dumbest things I ever saw.

 

[popatim]

LOL - While yes they stated this, I've always been able to make multiple copies and have never seen the partition delete itself. Or maybe you meant the image.

Ahh the good old days. So glad windows can make its own image now

 

[g-unit1111]

The Recovery partition usually holds your Factory Restore image as well as your diagnostics.
If you've made 2 or three copies of your factory disk set then I dont really see the need to keep it. {I do on customers machines but not on my own}

On older systems (HP, around Vista era), that function allowed you to make exactly one DVD set. Once you made one, that partition killed itself off. It gave a big warning "You can only do this once"
One of the dumbest things I ever saw.

Yeah I never understood why system manufacturers did that. What was worse than that was when they made you pay for recovery discs. I did that with my old Toshiba and the discs they actually sent me were completely worthless when I actually needed to recover my laptop. I wound up buying a Windows license for it, which I then used on the White Knight.

 

[giantbucket]

update time.......... so, that was interesting.

turns out that my system wasn't even using that System Reserved partition. now i recall that some time in the past i screwed something up and had to use a Win7 DVD to repair the boot sector, which it seems it did within the C drive, so that other thing was just idle.

MiniTool to the rescue! deleted the 550meg System partition. reboot. works perfectly. delete Recovery partition. reboot. works perfectly. sweet! now i have space to move my stuff around and Win7 is all nicely contained in ONE partition.

 

[USAFRet]

update time.......... so, that was interesting.

turns out that my system wasn't even using that System Reserved partition. now i recall that some time in the past i screwed something up and had to use a Win7 DVD to repair the boot sector, which it seems it did within the C drive, so that other thing was just idle.

MiniTool to the rescue! deleted the 550meg System partition. reboot. works perfectly. delete Recovery partition. reboot. works perfectly. sweet! now i have space to move my stuff around and Win7 is all nicely contained in ONE partition.

Please post a screencap of your Disk Management window.

 

[giantbucket]

eh, it's already been modified and working, so by now you won't see much of interest. there's an 18G FAT32 in place of the recovery, Win7 is now 116G, and i've got 2 more partitions for WinXP and Mint prepared. keeping things on a 240G SSD for now, i think...

 

[giantbucket]

https://goo.gl/photos/DF7gs3GcwQ7FcihB8