Which Of Thes Disk Configurations Is Correct?

[tackyjan]

Hello All,

I have 2 computers, a custom built desktop PC and an ASUS N550JK laptop. The hard drives that are installed on each are as follows:

[Desktop PC]
Drive C: Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB SSD (OS Disk)
Drive D: Samsung 840 EVO 250 GB SSD (Data Disk)

[N550JK Laptop]
Drive C: Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB SSD (OS Disk)
Drive D: HGST Travelstar 7200 RPM 1 TB HDD (Data Disk)

I recently did a clean install of Windows 8.1 Pro on both computers and I noticed something odd about the partitioning of the OS disk for my Desktop PC. It did not have a Recovery partition. Also, the laptop had this partition called "NO NAME".

Here is a screenshot comparing my desktop OS disk and my laptop OS disk:

As you can see the OS disk for my desktop has the following 2 partitions:

1. 350 MB System Reserved
2. 238.1 GB OS

and the OS disk for my laptop has the following 3 partitions:

1. 300 MB Recovery
2. 100 MB NO NAME
3. 238 GB OS

When I installed Windows 8.1 on each of these computers I selected "Clean Install" and then "Customize" and wiped all the disk partitions (for all drives), then selected the SSD as the drive for Windows to install to. I did not see anywhere to select whether or not I wanted a Recovery partition to be created. In fact Windows did not ask anything about the way I wanted to partition the drive.

I don't know if Windows is smart enough to know what to do and that's why it did not ask or if I am too stupid to manually setup the partitions prior to installing Windows.

I have a few question about these partitions:

What is the "NO NAME" partition on my laptop used for? Can I delete it?

Secondly, which of these two configurations should I have for both systems:

1. Recovery + NO NAME + OS
or
2. System Reserved + OS

Seems to me that I should have at least have a Recovery partition on both systems but I don't know how to create one and, as I said, Windows did not prompt me to create one during installation.

Thank you,

Jan

 

[cirdecus]

Looks like you have residue partitions on the ASUS. Install windows again following the same steps, but actually delete the partitions and erase them so you're left with just one big chuck and NO partitions. Then do the install and let windows make its own partitions. Your desktop is correct. Those are the two that should be present. You should only see "system reserved" and "OS".

Redo the ASUS install and this time, completely delete them.

 

[tackyjan]

Can I just use a Utility app such as Paragon HD Manager to delete the partition then expand to OS partition to fill the newly created empty space?

 

[tackyjan]

@cirdecus: I am almost 100% sure that that is what I did when I installed Windows 8.1 on my laptop. When I got to the section where you can select "Customize" and then it takes you to a GUI showing all the drives, I systematically deleted each partition on each drive leaving me with 2 disks, both of which had zero partitions. I then clicked/selected the PRO 840 SSD and clicked "Next" to begin the installation on that drive.

 

[tackyjan]

This reminds me of another strange issue with partitions that I ran into right after I got my laptop. The original factory configuration of the (single) hard drive partitions was:

System Reserved + Recovery + OS + DATA (for a total of 4 partitions on the single drive).

As soon as I got the laptop I ran the ASUS recovery tool to create a recovery disk. I then got a new hard drive, took out the old one and replaced it with the new (blank) drive and proceeded to do a system recovery.

The recovery worked, however, when I checked the partitions after the recovery it had a total of 6:

System Reserved, Recovery, OS, System Reserved*, Recovery*, and DATA.

It looks like the recovery process did not "overwrite" the target disk partitions. Instead it seemed to create the default partitions (System Reserved, Recovery, and OS) and the append the old ones (System Reserved, Recovery, and DATA) and ended up making a total mess!

When I looked at the partitions for the first time I was blown away! Luckily I found a program to cleanup that mess!