Partitions galore

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I was recently working on a friends computer for him that was not booting but in order to repair it I needed some partition software and used the Easus Partition Master Free. I was very pleased with the operation I carried out on his hard drive using this software via my laptop and whilst working on his, I noticed the software's assessment of my own computer partitions. I am still stumped as to why there could possibly be 9 of them. Quite clearly this is incorrect, or is there a glitch in the 'free software'
I am loath to start tinkering to remove the three unallocated micro partitions that appear to be there until I am sure they are there, has anyone any experience of this software?

partitions.PNG
 

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What did you use to partition the driive in the first place?
 

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No the hard drive on my laptop shown above is as it came from Sony
 
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Archive7

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No the hard drive on my laptop shown above is as it came from Sony
I would leave things as they are now, as it must be a Sony thing.
Is there another similar software that you can use for "second opinion" diagnosis?
 

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I have just sorted my brothers Lenovo laptop.' Again' There are six partitions.I recon that one is MBR one recovery one C system. and three Lenovo rubbish spam and god knows what partitions.
 

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Waste of HDD space if you ask me, I never understood the point of having recovery partitions on a hard drive, cos when they hard dive breaks, you haven't got anything to recover from and the manufacturer usually demands an extortionate fee to supply restore CDs or DVDs which costs them micropennies to produce...
 

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why there could possibly be 9 of them
That's many, some can be deleted but on the other hand, if everything works it does not really matter in practice (except if needing space, kill the recovery partition if presumed never to be used, and allocate that space to C or other partiton in use). Always make a complete disk image (recommending: Macrium Reflect, with tested winpe boot usb stick) before experimenting :O)

Am always doing fresh OS install, and end up with efi & C (then shrinking C to 50 gb for os and programs, and creating a D for files). Even the efi can be omitted if one really wants.

Here's the setup on my main laptop, must admit I like the looks, zero ghost partitions.
 

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I doubt Easus Free Partition Master can do much to join, part or reconfigure partitions, just let the user know there are a few discrepancies that may entice a purchase of the full version. I'd leave the drive alone
 

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You cannot delete the "unallocated" partitions. There is nothing to delete - hence unallocated. You could expand neighbouring partitions to include the space but would require a program such as Partition Magic which should show the actual physical relationships/locations of the spaces. I have seen similar small bits on other peoples computers usually when there are mixed filing systems but unless you already have the required software they are so small as to not be worth bothering with.
 

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I am loath to start tinkering to remove the three unallocated micro partitions that appear to be there until I am sure they are there, has anyone any experience of this software?

Yes Topper, better not to tinkr. Your system is most likely to be Windows 8 or upards. You are booting in GPT mode (see screen shot) not MBR. Your PC not using BIO to boot but the more modern EFI/UEFI. It means, that whe booting, one or more special partitions on te hard disk are read when booting. That is the EFI partition. If you delete it, the PC might not be able to start again.

The rest is your c-drive and recovery. The sony partition is probably used when recovering the system for dedicated sony notebook software. The other unused partition, which are only a few kb, are leftovers since the partition sizes are always multiples of 8 like with RAM.
 

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I doubt Easus Free Partition Master can do much to join, part or reconfigure partitions, just let the user know there are a few discrepancies that may entice a purchase of the full version. I'd leave the drive alone

Not true I have used it extensively for a couple of years now
 

Topper

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You cannot delete the "unallocated" partitions. There is nothing to delete - hence unallocated. You could expand neighbouring partitions to include the space but would require a program such as Partition Magic which should show the actual physical relationships/locations of the spaces. I have seen similar small bits on other peoples computers usually when there are mixed filing systems but unless you already have the required software they are so small as to not be worth bothering with.

Correct Dave you can only absorb unallocated space, into another partition, I just think it is poor that Sony send out drives in such a mess, but as mentioned I may just leave it.
 

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If it were me ..experimenting in this way with someone elses drive ..
My first job would be to bit clone the drive onto a clean drive ...preferably with a clone dock ...and perform all experimentation on the copy ..
better to play safe imo.
rgds
VS
 

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What is there to clean up? Only 2 partitions are actually unallocaterd, size 473 KB and 871 KB, thats just over 1 MB. You might manage to get rid of 1 partition with still a bit left over unallocated. The reason beeing that all the other partitions, OS and recovery, are placed unfavorably, hence the leftovers. In order ro get rid of the lwftovers you need to get rid of the recovery and UEFI partition, change your boot mode to MBR (I would not do that) and the you get a clean sheet like in the pic above. Believe you me, its not worth the trouble.
 

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What is there to clean up? Only 2 partitions are actually unallocaterd, size 473 KB and 871 KB, thats just over 1 MB. You might manage to get rid of 1 partition with still a bit left over unallocated. The reason beeing that all the other partitions, OS and recovery, are placed unfavorably, hence the leftovers. In order ro get rid of the lwftovers you need to get rid of the recovery and UEFI partition, change your boot mode to MBR (I would not do that) and the you get a clean sheet like in the pic above. Believe you me, its not worth the trouble.
Totally agree ..you could well end up with an unbootable paperweight..
 

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If it were me ..experimenting in this way with someone elses drive ..
My first job would be to bit clone the drive onto a clean drive ...preferably with a clone dock ...and perform all experimentation on the copy ..
better to play safe imo.
rgds
VS


Not experimenting Evan, my friend's PC was not booting and would not go into repair mode, so I connected the drive as a USB drive to my laptop and repaired what I could with MS tools, there were a number of areas of damage that were repaired or marked as unusable but it still would not boot. The MBR was sitting on such an area of damage and I had to then repair the MBR with the OEM disk, but his CD rom was not working either and I did not have a spare SATA DVD/CD which further complication what should have been a simple fix, he uses USB flash drives all the time and it is his older PC which he rarely uses. It was when I was examining his drive I noticed all the partitions on mine.
@mickwig @Vipersan @Chris1979 perhaps I am not seeing straight but there are definitely three extra partitions and three unallocated amounts, but yes I have no intentions of doing anything with them but I just have never seen such a thing on a hard drive before
 
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