Windows 7 My C Drive or Partittion lists as Primary

[julio99]

I just got my laptop back from Acer and they had given me a new hard drive. I restored a disk image backup that I had made from Acronis True Image. The backup seemed a little strange going in, but none the less it worked anyway. I then went to Disk Management to look at the setup and noticed that my primary partition is now listed as a Logical. I'm posting a screen shot of the partions and someone tell me if that looks right to them and if not how do I get my C drive back to Primary. As I said it boots ok but when I did the recovery with Acronis it didn't seem to go as smoothly as it should have.

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[patcooke]

Bear in mind you are limited to a maximum of four primary partitions. How you proceed depends to start with on whether you want to keep the recovery partition on your hard drive. In case of any need to recover back to factory settings you can boot to this partition to run a full recovery. However, you don't have to keep it provided you first use the built in utility to burn a set of recovery dvd's. I do this as I consider the recovery partition a waste of valuable disk space, especially when space tend to be limited on a laptop anyway. If you do this (and I always burn a second copy of the recovery disks just to play safe) then you can remove the recovery partition. The OEM partition will contain a load of Acer add-ons and I (like most people) tend to scrap the add-ons. This would leave you with just the system reserved area which you should leave you could then convert your drive C from a logical partition to a primary one and move it to the beginning of your drive after the 100MB system reserved area with the remainer used for your data partition (which you could also convert to a primary). To tackle these sorts of tasks you might find it easiest to get a copy of Easeus Partition Manager free from here:

EASEUS FREE Partition Manager Software. Free Partition Magic alternative for Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7 and Windows Server 2000/2003/2008. Hard Drive partition software.

Not forgetting the over-riding rule to back everything up before starting (I see you already have the wisdom to use Acronis TI!)

 

[julio99]

Bear in mind you are limited to a maximum of four primary partitions. How you proceed depends to start with on whether you want to keep the recovery partition on your hard drive. In case of any need to recover back to factory settings you can boot to this partition to run a full recovery. However, you don't have to keep it provided you first use the built in utility to burn a set of recovery dvd's. I do this as I consider the recovery partition a waste of valuable disk space, especially when space tend to be limited on a laptop anyway. If you do this (and I always burn a second copy of the recovery disks just to play safe) then you can remove the recovery partition. The OEM partition will contain a load of Acer add-ons and I (like most people) tend to scrap the add-ons. This would leave you with just the system reserved area which you should leave you could then convert your drive C from a logical partition to a primary one and move it to the beginning of your drive after the 100MB system reserved area with the remainer used for your data partition (which you could also convert to a primary). To tackle these sorts of tasks you might find it easiest to get a copy of Easeus Partition Manager free from here:

EASEUS FREE Partition Manager Software. Free Partition Magic alternative for Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7 and Windows Server 2000/2003/2008. Hard Drive partition software.

Not forgetting the over-riding rule to back everything up before starting (I see you already have the wisdom to use Acronis TI!)

Thanks for the prompt and thorough reply. As you can see in the screenshot I supplied of my Disk Management window I only have 3 (those first 3) Primary partitions, so I'm not of the 4 limit yet. The C drive remains Logical and I don't seem to be able to get it to go back to Primary. My C Drive looks like a primary and acts like a primary, it just happens to be recognised as a Logical drive by Disk Management and I can't get it to change back to Primary. It's funny that you should mention Easeus because that is what I used to get my D or Data drive. I even tried to change the C Drive to Primary with Easeus by dumping the data drive and re-adding the un-allocated space back to the C Drive like it was in the first place and Easeus told me that I was unable to change a System or Boot drive period. Would not let me change either way. It`s almost looking like the only way of getting this to go back to default is to re-yuk-format the whole computer and start over. Unless you have another idea. I had it in to Acer to get the sound looked at due to shorting and or the sound was intermittently going out and coming back and this thing with the partition started when I re-added the True Image backup. The Recovery didn`t seem to go as smoothly as any other TI Recovery. When I was running the recovery, each partition had `New Location at the top of the Recovery with Change Default below that for Primary-Logical and Change Default for the letter below that. I`m enclosing a screen sot of those TI Settings as well. You would think I could change the partition with the recovery. (See Enclosed Screenshot)
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[patcooke]

If your happy to dispose of all the "un-needed" partitions then as you have an Acronis image to recover your drive C I would use a bootable cd of Easeus (from the tools menu in Easeus if you've not used it before) to do a complete reformat removing all partitions, create a primary partition for drive C and run the Acronis TI recover to the new drive C. Make it about 40GB and you can create a second primary partition for your data drive D.

 

[julio99]

If your happy to dispose of all the "un-needed" partitions then as you have an Acronis image to recover your drive C I would use a bootable cd of Easeus (from the tools menu in Easeus if you've not used it before) to do a complete reformat removing all partitions, create a primary partition for drive C and run the Acronis TI recover to the new drive C. Make it about 40GB and you can create a second primary partition for your data drive D.

Just thought I'd let you know all is well on the home front. I did a little digging and also found out that I could only have 3 Primary partitions if I had a Logical, so I went into Easeus Free and dumped the D drive which is the small one I was using for data and then I downloaded another free little tool called "Partition Wizard Mini Tool". It allowed me to convert the Cdrive back to Primary, whereas Easeus wouldn't. Something about not being able to convert System or Boot Drives. I think it was more of a safety feature on their part as they get a lot of people doing the wrong thing with the right tool and then bye bye to the system drive. Anyhow this little tool did the job in all of 5 minutes including boot time. For now I'll just use a new folder for the small amount of Data or a flash drive until I figure which of the 2/OEM or Recovery partitions that I want to either change or delete. I think you said something about one of them just being add-ons. I think one of mine is Acer Arcade. Does that sound right? It just say 3.50 GB Healthy Primary, so I have to believe that is the OEM. I'll figure it out and I always have Acronis True Image which I've just updated the build on, so I guess I'm good to go. PS My C drive is 577 GB, so I'm not really hurting for space. Thanks again Patcooke for all the help and suggestions you've given me. More people like you are sorely needed to get people like me in the know.

 

[patcooke]

Thanks for the feedback (and the personal comment ). With Acronis images and all your data safely backed up I'd use the opportunity to do a full spring clean!

 

[julio99]

Just thought I'd let you know all is well on the home front. I did a little digging and also found out that I could only have 3 Primary partitions if I had a Logical, so I went into Easeus Free and dumped the D drive which is the small one I was using for data and then I downloaded another free little tool called "Partition Wizard Mini Tool". It allowed me to convert the Cdrive back to Primary, whereas Easeus wouldn't. Something about not being able to convert System or Boot Drives. I think it was more of a safety feature on their part as they get a lot of people doing the wrong thing with the right tool and then bye bye to the system drive. Anyhow this little tool did the job in all of 5 minutes including boot time. For now I'll just use a new folder for the small amount of Data or a flash drive until I figure which of the 2/OEM or Recovery partitions that I want to either change or delete. I think you said something about one of them just being add-ons. I think one of mine is Acer Arcade. Does that sound right? It just say 3.50 GB Healthy Primary, so I have to believe that is the OEM. I'll figure it out and I always have Acronis True Image which I've just updated the build on, so I guess I'm good to go. PS My C drive is 577 GB, so I'm not really hurting for space. Thanks again Patcooke for all the help and suggestions you've given me. More people like you are sorely needed to get people like me in the know.

Sorry about the double post.
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[julio99]

Thanks for the feedback (and the personal comment ). With Acronis images and all your data safely backed up I'd use the opportunity to do a full spring clean!

Would it not be more prudent to do the "Spring Cleanup before the disk image backup? The reasoning being if I back it all up before I clean, I'm just putting back the same junk when I do the Recovery. Unless I'm missing something. Feel free to clue me in again.

 

[Super Sarge]

Problem would be if you tossed something out with the bathwater during cleanup that was essential for booting or access to the OS, and did not have backup you would be up the creek without a paddle

 

[julio99]

Problem would be if you tossed something out with the bathwater during cleanup that was essential for booting or access to the OS, and did not have backup you would be up the creek without a paddle

Understood! I noticed below your post your setup. You must have a bit of fun with your machine as it appears to be quite the kick butt setup!!! Always nice to have a clean mean machine!

 

[Super Sarge]

Thanks, someday I might take the plunge and put a Linux flavor on one of the hard drives, but not as yet I only play in linux using a the CD/DVD Ubantu version

 

[julio99]

Thanks, someday I might take the plunge and put a Linux flavor on one of the hard drives, but not as yet I only play in linux using a the CD/DVD Ubantu version

The "Cooler Arctic cooling freezer" I'm assuming is some kind of device to keep your machine from overheating? I use a Targus cooling pad for my laptop. The fan always seems to be offset from the fan on the laptop. You have any ideas on a quality cooling pad that covers more of the bottom of the laptop or maybe one that has the corners covered instead of the middle???

 

[patcooke]

Far as the "back up before or after" question is concerned, I'd do both initially, keeping the first one until you're sure there's nothing left in there that you forgot about and using the "after" as the basis for your long term back up strategy.