Samsung EVO OS migration: Some questions about partitions, old (source) drives ...

[Scylithe]

Hello.

I recently migrated my OS from a 64GB SanDisk SSD to an EVO 850 250GB, with storage and program files on a separate 1TB HDD. I went from my OS booting on the SanDisk to on the EVO, and now I have a redundant SanDisk SSD.

I have some questions:

Note that I am able to disconnect both the old SanDisk SSD and 1TB hard drive without impacting on OS booting. Windows can function entirely on my new EVO after migration.

I took a look at my partitions on the advice of the internet and found that both my HDD and new EVO have 100 MB paritions named "System Reserved" and "Data", respectively. I looked up what the first parition is and found it peculiar, as it contains boot information, despite it never being a drive I had installed Windows on. However, I can't seem to figure out what the "data" partition is. Any takers? The old SanDisk SSD, which originally contained my OS, has no such parition and only contains one with all of my old files.

Secondly, is it safe to completely wipe my old SSD and use it fresh? Remember, I've already tested trying to boot Windows with either drive unplugged, and it was fine.

Thank you.

 

[Dave420]

The system reserved partition on your SSD is most likely a system recovery partition. When you booted windows in the past, instead of booting directly from the OS disk it would use another drive to boot from. It does this because if your OS drive gets corrupted you can always perform a repair from the other drive. Since you can boot windows without having the HDD or Sandisk SSD connected you are safe to erase the 'System Reserved' partition (if you are completely sure that you don't need them to boot.) But make sure you don't erase anything on your EVO SSD, which you say your OS is on and you can boot from without using any other drives.

As for the 'Data' partition, do you have acces to it? Maybe if you could post the names of some folders or files on there (if not personal) I can help you with that. As of now I don't have a solid idea about that yet.


P.S. Make sure your EVO SSD also has a system reserved partition, and DO NOT erase it.