I have an ASUS RoG G750JX 32 GB RAM WIN 10

[G+_Timothy Carey]

I have an ASUS RoG G750JX 32 GB RAM WIN 10. I recently swapped out my HDD for an SSD. I cloned the drive using the application Reflect. The HDD is 750 GB and the SSD is 1 TB. This is for the boot drive. The new drive now only has the partitions up to the space of the old drive and there is a big gray section at the end. I was going to expand the C using windows disk management, but it gave me a warning that it would become dynamic and I wouldn't be able to boot from it unless it is the original. This makes me nervous but I want 1 TB. Also there are five other partitions which came that way with the new PC. Can I delete the other partitions which C is in the middle of them. I want to create an ISO at this point and fall back to that if anything goes wrong. In order they are

SYSTEM (None) FAT32(LBA) Primary 25.4 MB/100 MB

Recovery (None) NTFS Primary 647 MB/900 MB

(none ) Udformatted Primary 128 MB/128 MB

OS (C:) NTFS Primary 62.5 GB/279.45 GB

Data(D:) NTFS Primary 148.3 MB/403.07 GB

Restore (none) NTFS Primary 8.4 GB/15.01 GB

279 GB gray area.

Every partition except Data (D:) and the gray area have the windows symbol by them. Can someone help me with this expansion problem and also home to create the correct ISO and how to restore everything with it.

[G+_Paul Hutchinson]

I'd put the old drive back in, hook up the new drive as an external with a USB enclosure or adapter cable and wipe the new drive clean by deleting all partitions. (I'm assuming you don't have other Win10 PC's you can use)

 

Next I'd make the install media for a clean install. Then I'd install the new SSD and perform a clean Win10 install. Finally I'd hookup the old drive via USB and copy over all the documents and media you want to keep.

howtogeek.com - How to do a Clean Install of Windows 10, the Easy Way

[G+_Dan Hockey]

Some OEM's will put a restore partition in there in order to save a few cents by not giving you a disk. You have to boot from the restore partition in order to reinstall windows.

 

backup-utility.com - Create Windows 10 Recovery Disk for System Repair or Reset

[G+_Ben Reese]

Ideally, you'd backup your data and reinstall Windows. That's not always possible. 3rd part partition utilities can expand the volumes even if Windows Diskpart can't. Gparted or Partition Magic are probably my top choices. Since D drive is at the end and borders the unpartitioned space, that would be the easiest to expand. If you want one large volume, you can probably move everything from D to C then delete D and expand C to fill the drive.

 

All done at your own risk, of course. But I've had pretty good success. Even cloned a 2TB MBR drive to a 3TB drive, converted it to GPT, and expanded it to fill the 3TB.

[G+_John Sullivan]

You had a 750 GB hard drive and swapped it for a 1 TB SSD. That's about 250 GB difference, and that is what is represented by your "279 GB gray area" that you mentioned.

 

You also have an "Unformatted Primary" partition of 128 MB, which is blank, and a Data(D:) drive which is almost blank (148 MB used out of 403 GB)

 

I have used GParted and Partition Magic, and both work well. Right now I'm using Easeus Partition Master, which I recommend .

 

You can use any of those utilities to delete the above mentioned partitions (128MB Unformatted and 403 GB Data) and then Move your remaining partitions to the "left" (Each utility will display your partitions in a bar graph from left to right ... you can delete the un-needed ones, move everything else so that is on the left end of the graph, and then expand your main partition to the right to take up the unused space)

 

You should be careful not to delete the 100 MB System partition, as this is probably where the boot information (BCD) is stored. The 15 GB Restore partition contains the original Windows files, which you will need if you want to repair or reinstall Windows.

 

You already have Macrium Reflect, so just go ahead and use it to create a "System Image" of the whole drive (what you refer to as an ISO, although it won't be in that exact file format). Should you ever need to re-install Windows, you can use your System Image, which will not only contains Windows, but also any Windows Updates you've installed, plus any other program files you've installed and all your data. It will be a complete (compressed) copy of your hard drive.

 

You should create an image now of all your partitions, then start deleting the unused partitions and moving the remaining ones around to the way you want them. Then create a new Image. You can expect each Image to take up about 1/3 of the disk space of your original partitions (depending on how much compression you use).

 

I have done this a few times, with no problems, but as others have mentioned, anything can go wrong at any time, so proceed slowly.

 

ps. programs like Partition Master will allow you to delete / Move partitions in any way that you want, but will have an "Apply" button. None of the changes you make will be permanent until you click Apply, so you can pretty much do what you want and then Cancel the whole thing (until you click Apply)

[G+_Marcus Hall]

Aomei Partition will expand the partition to the end of the drive. I believe the home - personal version is free.

[G+_Timothy Carey]

Paul Hutchinson There are certain programs that come with the computer I would like to keep like USB Power I would like to keep. I thought I remembered somebody updating my same computer and extending.

[G+_Timothy Carey]

Marcus Hall Will I have to start over? My new SSD from crucial was supposed to come with acronis but the link didn't work and they said it would be a while until they have it working. My main concern is that C will be bootable. Windows has this warning dynamic volume won't be unless it is something about original. Not sure what that means.

[G+_Timothy Carey]

Ben Reese Yes that might work because I don't really want the last two petitions after C. If I create an ISO after all this can I use it to go back to this state later. Any settings I should know about? And THANKS

[G+_Timothy Carey]

cosmic Ray Man or Woman. Thanks a lot. I thought all of this was possible that the windows this management scared me. Thankfully I have all my personal files on a flash drive and not even on the computer yet. After all the deletions and partition arranging is done do I really need the restore partition if I have the ISO ? Also do you have insights into into using this image to bring everything back , if say the computer drive crashes or I just want to start over. Do you boot from my flash drive? This will be very useful because I have a physical disability and use speech recognition built into windows. Them I won't have to restore it. I just tried making an image with Reflect and it filled my 32 GB. Thinking it didn't compress.

[G+_Ben Reese]

You can probably find all the original software on the manufacturer support page for your computer. Drivers, utilities, manuals should all be available for download. Since it's Windows 10, you can just install fresh without issues.

 

Honestly, if you have all your data stored somewhere else, I'd just wipe it completely clean and install Windows fresh as a "clean" install. Just take note of home/pro and probably pre-download at least the drivers before you begin.

 

During the install you should be able to delete all the partition info and install it all on one large partition. If you don't have an option to with the Window installer gui, Ctrl+F10 at the drive select screen should give you an Admin command prompt where you can use Diskpart to clean the disk.

 

As for getting a backup image to restore later, Acronis or pretty much any other major drive backup software will do that. Windows 10 Pro (and maybe home) should backup utility built-in. The one on Windows should create a VHDX file that you can actually even boot to if you need to (my main "C" drive is VHDX file sitting on an SSD).

 

I don't know if any backup utility will create an ISO, necessarily. Most will probably create a proprietary backup format that you can't restore without their utility which is why I'm really starting to like the backup built into Windows.

[G+_Marcus Hall]

I like Ben Reese's suggestion. However, I have used Easeus Free Backup to clone the boot drive to a new SSD and after booting on new SSD used Aomei Partition to expand partition to end of drive. You do not need to start over if the SSD will boot.

[G+_John Sullivan]

Timothy Carey: Macrium Reflect website has a Restore utility that you can download and use to create a bootable CD/DVD. (You can also create one from inside Reflect) If you ever need to Restore your System Image, you boot to the Restore disk and it will open a basic version of Macrium Reflect. You select Restore and show it where your saved Image is, and where you want it Restored to. (Other System Imaging tools will have a similar utility to create a bootable disk.)

 

Yes, a 32 GB flash drive may not be large enough to store your Image, depending on how large a partition(s) you are creating the Image from. The compression is adjustable, but you should figure on at least 65% of the original partitions. That all depends on how "compressible" your data is ... text is much more compressible than .exe files, and images may actually end up slightly larger.

 

Much better to use an external hard drive, and have room to store more than one Image over time.

[G+_Timothy Carey]

Ben Reese Thank you very much. But if you drive is cleared and empty, how how do I go online to download windows 10 or even run the insulation tool. From a flash drive?

[G+_Timothy Carey]

cosmic Ray Thanks again.

[G+_Ben Reese]

Timothy Carey yes, sorry. You would need to download the ISO from Microsoft.com first.

 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10ISO

 

Now.... If you visit the page on Windows, you get a link to download the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool. If you come to the page from mobile or from Linux, you get a link to download the ISO directly.

Freebie tip: If you are on Windows and want the ISO, you can open the Chrome developer console and emulate a mobile device. Reload the page from there and you'll get the option to download an ISO.

[G+_Timothy Carey]

cosmic Ray To make a bootable media can I also use Easeus Partition Master, or partition magic instead of Reflect? So making an image doesn't get you anywhere unless you make that bootable media. Can this also be on a flash drive?

[G+_Timothy Carey]

cosmic Ray I tried aomei It didn't like the 1 TB . Before that I tried Partition master and I do find a way to get rid of most of the unallocated but 1 GB use this address I can do? It seems to matter what order you do things. I'm just trying to get rid of the two partitions before C and the 2 partitions after C plus the unallocated After that . What I had to do was Delete the last partition Delete D then make a partition in the unallocated. Then merge C to new partition. After that I can't merge everything to see. So I still have the two partitions before C which equals 1 GB