[SOLVED] What is wrong with my Windows 10 drives & partitions?

[carl-vbn]

Hello everyone,
I've recently noticed a few issues with my storage configuration on windows, and as I don't know much about partitioning I was hoping that some of you could help me solve them.
First of all, here's my system configuration:
AMD Ryzen 7 1800X
RTX 2070 SUPER
16 GB DDR4 RAM
1 HDD with a capacity of 1 TB (E drive letter)
1 SSD with a capacity of 250 GB (C drive letter)
1 SSD with a capacity of 120 GB (D drive letter)
1 M.2 NVME SSD with a capacity of 1 TB (F drive letter)
OS: Windows 10 64-bit installed on the C drive and Ubuntu installed on a partition of the D drive
(I know I have a lot of drives but that's because I severely underestimated the disk space I needed at first and two of the drives were gifted to me)

Here's a screenshot of the Windows 10 Disk manager:

So there are 3 things I'm worried about.

1. Most importantly, why are there 232GB of unallocated space on my Hard Disk. I've tried extending the volume, which said that the operation could not be completed because there's not enough space on the drive, and I've tried creating a new simple volume from that space, which displayed the same error message, but the drive should have a capacity of 1 TB and I can truly only use about 698 GB.
2. What's with the "missing" disk that appears to have "failed"? I am not missing any disk in my file explorer, so what does that mean?
3. Why is "Disk 1" blank? I can use it in the file explorer, but here it doesn't show any partition

Can anyone help me or point me in the right direction? That would be really helpful.

 

[CountMike]

Hello everyone,
I've recently noticed a few issues with my storage configuration on windows, and as I don't know much about partitioning I was hoping that some of you could help me solve them.
First of all, here's my system configuration:
AMD Ryzen 7 1800X
RTX 2070 SUPER
16 GB DDR4 RAM
1 HDD with a capacity of 1 TB (E drive letter)
1 SSD with a capacity of 250 GB (C drive letter)
1 SSD with a capacity of 120 GB (D drive letter)
1 M.2 NVME SSD with a capacity of 1 TB (F drive letter)
OS: Windows 10 64-bit installed on the C drive and Ubuntu installed on a partition of the D drive
(I know I have a lot of drives but that's because I severely underestimated the disk space I needed at first and two of the drives were gifted to me)

Here's a screenshot of the Windows 10 Disk manager:

So there are 3 things I'm worried about.

1. Most importantly, why are there 232GB of unallocated space on my Hard Disk. I've tried extending the volume, which said that the operation could not be completed because there's not enough space on the drive, and I've tried creating a new simple volume from that space, which displayed the same error message, but the drive should have a capacity of 1 TB and I can truly only use about 698 GB.
2. What's with the "missing" disk that appears to have "failed"? I am not missing any disk in my file explorer, so what does that mean?
3. Why is "Disk 1" blank? I can use it in the file explorer, but here it doesn't show any partition

Can anyone help me or point me in the right direction? That would be really helpful.

Check your MB manual, on some MBs, some SATA ports are disabled when M.2 drive(s) is used.
Your Disk2 used or still has OS, likely windows on it. If you don't have any valuable data on it, delete all partitions and start from scratch.
To repartiton any drive use https://www.partitionwizard.com/ as windows will not let you do it on any drive with active partition on it.

 

[carl-vbn]

Check your MB manual, on some MBs, some SATA ports are disabled when M.2 drive(s) is used.
Your Disk2 used or still has OS, likely windows on it. If you don't have any valuable data on it, delete all partitions and start from scratch.
To repartiton any drive use https://www.partitionwizard.com/ as windows will not let you do it on any drive with active partition on it.

Yes I think DIsk2 is the D drive which as I mentioned has ubuntu installed on it. I've just recently installed the M.2 drive but all of my drives are still there in the explorer. I might follow your advice on repartitioning if I have time, but what bothers me the most is the issue with the unallocated 200 GB of disk space.

 

[SkyNetRising]

1. Most importantly, why are there 232GB of unallocated space on my Hard Disk. I've tried extending the volume, which said that the operation could not be completed because there's not enough space on the drive, and I've tried creating a new simple volume from that space, which displayed the same error message, but the drive should have a capacity of 1 TB and I can truly only use about 698 GB.

Problem #1 - Disk 2 is dynamic. You should make it basic. It will save you from a lot of trouble later.
Problem #2 - you have EFI system partition on Disk 2. You should have only single EFI system partition in your system.

What you have to do:

1. verify your system can boot from 250GB drive alone (your system is not actually booting from EFI system partition on disk 2). Disconnect all other drives and try to boot with only 250GB drive connected (you can leave M.2 F: drive connected);
2. After that copy all your data from E: to F: ;
3. clean Disk 2 using diskpart and convert it to basic;
4. create single large partition on Disk 2 and copy data back from F: to E: .

2. What's with the "missing" disk that appears to have "failed"? I am not missing any disk in my file explorer, so what does that mean?

You probably had some additional 1TB drive before. And you have it removed from your pc. It is still being shown in Disk Management, because it is of type Dynamic.
If you still have in in your pc, then it's a dead drive.

3. Why is "Disk 1" blank? I can use it in the file explorer, but here it doesn't show any partition

There is something weird going on with this. Not sure.
120GB drive is not being properly shown in Disk Management.
Could be some compatibility problem with linux and dynamic disks. You should really avoid using Dynamic disks in general.

 

[CountMike]

Yes I think DIsk2 is the D drive which as I mentioned has ubuntu installed on it. I've just recently installed the M.2 drive but all of my drives are still there in the explorer. I might follow your advice on repartitioning if I have time, but what bothers me the most is the issue with the unallocated 200 GB of disk space.

MiniTool Partition wizard should be able to format it.

 

[carl-vbn]

Thank you both for your help. I still have a few questions though:

You probably had some additional 1TB drive before. And you have it removed from your pc. It is still being shown in Disk Management, because it is of type Dynamic.
If you still have in in your pc, then it's a dead drive.

I'm not missing any drive, so it's probably the ghost of the Hard Disk (E: ) drive. Is there a way to hide/remove it?

You should really avoid using Dynamic disks in general.

I'll take note of that but to be honest I don't know why this one is dynamic. Do you have any idea where this is coming from?

MiniTool Partition wizard should be able to format it.

I've installed MiniTool partition wizard and tried extending the already allocated space to the full capacity of the drive but it says that this can only be done using the paid version of the software. I will try doing what SkyNetRising suggested and move everything to another drive before reformatting the drive entirely.

Thank you once again for your help!

 

[SkyNetRising]

I'm not missing any drive, so it's probably the ghost of the Hard Disk (E: ) drive. Is there a way to hide/remove it?

In Disk Management - right-click in grey square box, where "missing" is written. There should be an option to remove the missing drive.

to be honest I don't know why this one is dynamic. Do you have any idea where this is coming from?

Disks become dynamic only, if you make them dynamic or if you choose to create them as dynamic. You have to pay closer attention to error messages, information and options displayed.

 

[carl-vbn]

In Disk Management - right-click in grey square box, where "missing" is written. There should be an option to remove the missing drive.

Disks become dynamic only, if you make them dynamic or if you choose to create them as dynamic. You have to pay closer attention to error messages, information and options displayed.

Okay thank you for your help. The option to remove the disk is there, but it is grayed out. What should I do?

(I've tried "Reactivate Disk" but it doesn't do anything)

 

[SkyNetRising]

Okay thank you for your help. The option to remove the disk is there, but it is grayed out. What should I do?

(I've tried "Reactivate Disk" but it doesn't do anything)

You can try deleting partition from missing disk first.
Then retry removing disk after that.

 

[carl-vbn]

You can try deleting partition from missing disk first.
Then retry removing disk after that.

Okay that worked, thank you!