GPT partition questions

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Bird222

[H]ard|Gawd
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This computer I updated originally came with Win 8.1. It had 2 or 3 hidden partitions I assume was related to UEFI/GPT. I deleted the windows partition and installed Win 10. Everything seems fine, but I am wondering if I should have deleted all the partitions and installed Win 10? What do each of the hidden partitions do? Is there anything I should change in them for Win 10?
 
With a proper EFi format for the system drive you will have a total of 3 partitions. First being the recovery, second being EFi system partition, and third being system's primary partition if you do not logically partition the drive anymore.
 
Shikami said:
With a proper EFi format for the system drive you will have a total of 3 partitions. First being the recovery, second being EFi system partition, and third being system's primary partition if you do not logically partition the drive anymore.
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Four actually:

1. Recovery
2. System
3. MSR (Reserved)
4. Primary
 
Do I need to update or change any of these since I went to Windows 10?
 
Bird222 said:
Do I need to update or change any of these since I went to Windows 10?
Click to expand...
Probably best to have hosed the entire drive and started totally 100% fresh. Helps to avoid any potential issues.
 
How can I backup my complete Windows partition (i.e. c: drive) and restore it after. I've got my drive partitioned where I have a 'data' partition. So I'm thinking I can store a backup on the 'data' partition and then restore it after I reinstall Win10 fresh to create the other partitions.
 
Bird222 said:
How can I backup my complete Windows partition (i.e. c: drive) and restore it after. I've got my drive partitioned where I have a 'data' partition. So I'm thinking I can store a backup on the 'data' partition and then restore it after I reinstall Win10 fresh to create the other partitions.
Click to expand...

Clonezilla....
 
Shikami said:
System is the primary partition: https://imgur.com/a/kCpWb. Only three unless logically partitioned more.
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MS likes to put their own little "Microsoft Reserved" partition in the mix, and then hide it from you. So there are four partitions on a Windows formatted GPT disk.

upload_2017-11-16_7-2-20.png
 
I'd recommend cleaning the drive and reinstalling as follows:

1. Boot from installation media.
2. Once booted, open a command prompt by pressing Shift + F10.
3. At the command prompt, enter diskpart.
4. Enter list disk.
5. Determine which drive you want to clean and type sel disk # where # corresponds to the drive you want to clean.
6. Enter clean.
7. Enter exit.

Once those steps are complete you'll have an uninitialized drive ready to install Windows. As another side note, in order for the drive to be initialized as GPT, you must boot the installation media as UEFI boot. If you boot legacy, the Windows installer will default to MBR.
 
Lunar said:
I'd recommend cleaning the drive and reinstalling as follows:

1. Boot from installation media.
2. Once booted, open a command prompt by pressing Shift + F10.
3. At the command prompt, enter diskpart.
4. Enter list disk.
5. Determine which drive you want to clean and type sel disk # where # corresponds to the drive you want to clean.
6. Enter clean.
7. Enter exit.

Once those steps are complete you'll have an uninitialized drive ready to install Windows. As another side note, in order for the drive to be initialized as GPT, you must boot the installation media as UEFI boot. If you boot legacy, the Windows installer will default to MBR.
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Perfect advice and if I could add anything it would be to just click Unallocated space and press next. Do not try to manually create partitions because Windows wants to create its own partitions.
 
Shikami said:
System is the primary partition: https://imgur.com/a/kCpWb. Only three unless logically partitioned more.
Click to expand...
As Ryan_975 mentioned with a picture, it's four partitions. Trust me, I just did a Windows 10 64-bit install on a UEFI laptop and creating the partitions with the "NEW" button caused the four I mentioned to be created, I created no actual additional partitions beyond what Microsoft does by default. And the names I mentioned are the exact names Windows gave the partitions in the partition screen.
 
That's the MSR. This is located after the ESP. Is 32MB in size if disk is <16GB and 128MB in size if >16GB. It is true that it is a reserved "partition." This is a reserved area for data manipulation, not storage, and does not contain a partition ID. I can give and say yes its a fourth partition, but the cat is dead too. Meaning it is and it isnt-it is more of a reserved area to work with the physical disk. If observed from Disk Management Console it will be listed as three partitions. If you use Diskpart, it will list the MSR and the proper order placement of allocation with EFI (https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd744301(v=ws.10).aspx).
 
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I ended up just deleting all partitions in the Windows install and letting it create all the partitions. Does Win10 automatically add the RE tools and recovery partition when it installs?
 
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