philipxcui wrote:
Hi, I recently got the g550jk-DS71. It's a nice machine but the 750 GB drive is divided into 2 disks. Which I would understand if one is around 20gb just for the operating system. But both of them are about 300gb, equally divided.
Does anyone know how to combine both drives into a C disk?
I'm not super smart with this kinda things, if there's step by step or a video it would be great 🙂
philipxcui, Asus has a habit of splitting all drives into at least 2 mounted volumes, not to mention the hidden recovery partition(s).
You can use the Windows Storage Management tool to merge free space, and you used to be able to use it to delete all partitions, but some will be "locked" and you need to use diskpart cmd line to delete those partitions before you can use the space they free up to add to the partition(s) you want to keep.
For me I backed up my recovery partition with Asus Backtracker, and used that recovery flash drive to restore to a backup 2.5" drive that I use as a backup in case something happens to my drive or recovery flash drive - or both 🙂
The idea is you want to back up anything on the partitions you are about to delete.
Lets start with the easy one first, the 2nd bay 1TB drive - it also had 2 partitions, so I copied everything off of the 2nd partition, and deleted it using the Windows Storage Manager, and here it it after adding the free space to the first partition - all 1TB now in 1 partition.
And, I deleted the D partition on the boot RAID, and combined the space into the C partition.
Here is a Macrium view of the partitions before I deleted the D partition on the boot drive:
You need to delete the partitions between the C and D partitions before you can absorb the free space from the deleted D partition into the C partition.
This is the after the first partition reduction
And, then I used diskpart to delete the other locked partitions I didn't need on the boot drive and extended my C drive with the free space from those deleted partitions. In this image I have moved the 1TB drive to an external USB 3.0 enclosure, and put in a Samsung 512GB 840 Pro SSD - which still shows the partitioning from being a boot drive earlier on.
Delete and Remove Locked Partition, Hidden Recovery, Diagnostic Partition or EFI (there are lots of other examples - google is your friend)
http://andreagx.blogspot.com/2011/01/windows-7-delete-and-remove-locked.html
As an example, I will use diskpart now to delete the recovery partitions on the Samsung 512GB SSD, as I don't use it as a boot drive any longer, and I am running out space - damned Steam Sales!! 😉
You need to run the cmds in a cmd shell running as Administrator:
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.3.9600]
(c) 2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
C:\WINDOWS\system32>diskpart
Microsoft DiskPart version 6.3.9600
Copyright (C) 1999-2013 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: HMSCOTT-G750H
DISKPART> list
Microsoft DiskPart version 6.3.9600
DISK - Display a list of disks. For example, LIST DISK.
PARTITION - Display a list of partitions on the selected disk.
For example, LIST PARTITION.
VOLUME - Display a list of volumes. For example, LIST VOLUME.
VDISK - Displays a list of virtual disks.
DISKPART> list disk
Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 476 GB 1024 KB *
Disk 1 Online 238 GB 1028 MB *
DISKPART> select
Microsoft DiskPart version 6.3.9600
DISK - Shift the focus to a disk. For example, SELECT DISK.
PARTITION - Shift the focus to a partition. For example, SELECT PARTITION.
VOLUME - Shift the focus to a volume. For example, SELECT VOLUME.
VDISK - Shift the focus to a virtual disk. For example, SELECT VDISK.
DISKPART> select disk 0
Disk 0 is now the selected disk.
DISKPART> list partition
Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 System 100 MB 1024 KB
Partition 2 Recovery 900 MB 101 MB
Partition 3 Reserved 128 MB 1001 MB
Partition 4 Primary 455 GB 1129 MB
Partition 5 Recovery 350 MB 456 GB
Partition 6 Recovery 20 GB 456 GB
DISKPART> select partition 6
Partition 6 is now the selected partition.
DISKPART> delete partition override
DiskPart successfully deleted the selected partition.
DISKPART> select partition 5
Partition 5 is now the selected partition.
DISKPART> delete partition override
DiskPart successfully deleted the selected partition.
DISKPART> select partition 1
Partition 1 is now the selected partition.
DISKPART> delete partition override
DiskPart successfully deleted the selected partition.
DISKPART> select partition 2
Partition 2 is now the selected partition.
DISKPART> delete partition override
DiskPart successfully deleted the selected partition.
DISKPART> select partition 3
Partition 3 is now the selected partition.
DISKPART> delete partition override
DiskPart successfully deleted the selected partition.
DISKPART> list partition
Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 4 Primary 455 GB 1129 MB
DISKPART>
Here is the after view of deleting the partitions and extending C partition with the free space. Note, you can't absorb freed space "in front" of the partition you are trying to extend without turning it into a Dynamic partition, which has it's drawbacks, so I haven't done it. I may back off the data and reformat the Samsung 512 SSD in the future to get that last 1.1GB 🙂
See how easy that was! 🙂
Just make sure that before you delete partitions you back up the Recovery partition(s) with Asus Backtracker - and back up your personal stuff too - and don't make any mistakes! If you delete a partition it's gone... so make sure you are selecting the correct disk and correct partition before doing the delete partition override command.
Please post a before snippet (using Windows snipping tool) of the Partitioning on your laptop before you start hacking away at it, just in case there is something else there that needs to be considered.
