delete my partitions

The image partition is not needed IF you have made a recovery image AND you have tested it.  The other partitions ARE REQUIRED to boot the system -- particularly the ESP partition.  If you delete that you will end up with an un-bootable system.

Before you do delete the image partition, be sure you make AND TEST the recovery media under Reflect.

I would carefully read the documentation on what's required for a UEFI system before you do anything.  Some of what you're proposing to delete is required for the system to function.

You CAN remove the Dell factory image now -- everything else has a function and is needed.

docs.microsoft.com/.../configure-uefigpt-based-hard-drive-partitions

hello ejn63 - thank you.  

Are you saying that I need to keep all partitions except the image partition?  Maybe I am not stated my question clearly.  I want to reduce number of partitions to TWO - ESP(volume 4) and  SamSung-960(volume 0).  Please let me know if this solution will work.

This is how I am going to test:

(1) Backup all my nine volumes to an external hard and my internal D driver(disk 1) using the Reflect's "image this disk" option.

(2) After the above backup is done, I will use Reflect to verify the image file.

(3) I will then delete all partitions except ESP and SamSung partitions using the windows 10 disk manager or diskpart software.

(4) Reboot the system, if it failed to boot, I will restore the drive with the recovery media Reflect USB jump drive.

Any comments?

Thank you once again.  

Happy holidays to all!!!

With one exception -- the Dell diagnostic partition -- everything else is standard issue in the drive setup.

I would strongly suggest you NOT delete the diagnostic partition -- it will be needed if under warranty you need to work with a technician before hardware repair.

ejn63 - thank you for the document link.  Yes, I will read the document carefully next and make sure I understand the UEFI system well before I do anything drastic.

This document is from Microsoft.  Do Dell provide another information on how they configure their partitions?  For example, do dell provide the tools to re-image my partition after I changed my hardware?

After my read, I will add my comments on this issue.

Thank you once again.

ejn63 - totally agree on NOT deleting the Dell diagnostic partition. My laptop is still under the warranty.

Which one is the Dell diagnostic partition? Is volume 7 with the label DELLSUPPORT?  Thank you for your suggestion.  

OK, I will only delete Image (volume 6) to reclaim its disk space but leave other partitions intact.   I will continue my reading on this subject.  I think I can eventually delete volume 1, 2 and 3 (see below).

Volume #  Ltr  Label                 Fs        Type        Size     Status     Info

 ----------  ---  -----------        -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------

 Volume 0     C   SamSung-960  NTFS   Partition    203 GB  Healthy    Boot    

 Volume 1     M   M-PARTITION   NTFS   Partition   1126 MB  Healthy            

 Volume 2     N   N-PARTITION   NTFS   Partition     11 GB    Healthy            

 Volume 3     O   O-PARTITION   NTFS   Partition   2037 MB  Healthy            

 Volume 4          ESP                 FAT32  Partition    500 MB  Healthy    System  

 Volume 5          WINRETOOLS   NTFS   Partition    462 MB  Healthy    Hidden  

 Volume 6          Image              NTFS   Partition     11 GB   Healthy    Hidden  

 Volume 7          DELLSUPPORT  NTFS   Partition   1148 MB  Healthy    Hidden

I am not really sure exactly what you are asking.  Your title for the thread is basically how Dell suggests setting up partitions.  The answer to that is to look at the way Dell set them up.  Each partition has a specific purpose.  The Recovery partition with the WinRE Tools is for recovery options, the larger one will hold data needed to rebuild your system.  The System EFI is essential for booting.

Your initial post has a Diskpart listing showing Volumes.  It would be better for the discussion if you were to select a specific drive and they do a lis par command to get the partitions showing in the correct order.  The other way is to take a snipping tool picture of the Disk Management window and expand the columns so the descriptions can be read.  You can attach a picture using the Rich formatting option.

The OEM partitions on the drive are there for a reason.  If you do not EVER desire to take advantage of their purpose you may not need .

Just for the heck of it, open an adminstrative command prompt and type reagentc /info and include the listing.

If you wanted, you could do a bcdedit /enum all command and follow where and how the partitions are being used.  Some systems can start a diagnostic utility from within Windows.  If the partition involved with that was to be removed, you would lose that ability.

If you don't use the Dell OEM utilities then the best thing for you is to do a clean install.  Even that will put 4 partitions on the drive.  I suggest to use a new drive and kept the original one safe.

Saltgrass - thank you.  I am going to take a break now and will circle back to this subject later.

Actually, I just noticed that you listed the VOLUMES on your disk, which hides the MSR partition, so you may actually have one. Use the diskpart “list partition” command instead, after entering “select disk 0” to specify your internal disk. That will show the MSR partition if it exists and list them in the sequence they exist on disk.

You can absolutely delete the Dell diagnostic partition since the diagnostics are now stored in UEFI firmware. Maybe you’d need it if your system used Legacy boot mode, but you’re not. I’ve wiped my whole drive and I can still boot into diagnostics from the F12 boot selection menu.

On a UEFI system, you need the following partitions:

EFI (aka System or ESP, usually 100-500MB)

MSR (aka Reserved, usually 16-128MB)

Windows Recovery (usually 450MB-1GB in size)

OS

The sequence can be different than what I listed, and in fact it’s best to have the Recovery partition after the OS partition since that allows future Win10 releases to expand it as needed by shrinking your C drive a bit. If the Recovery partition is somewhere else when an expansion is needed, Windows will shrink the C drive by the amount needed to create an entirely new Recovery partition, make one there, and leave the old one sitting there as useless dead weight.

You seem to be missing an MSR partition though. That needs to exist after the EFI partition and before the OS partition and be at least 16MB in size; by default it’s immediately after the EFI partition and 16MB. Diskpart can create one using the “create partition MSR” command, but you’d have to get it created in the right place.

jphughan - thank you.

Yes. I do have the MSR.  I noticed it when I used Reflect.  I also did a dump of all partition using the methods you have described.

DISKPART> select disk 0

Disk 0 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> list partition

 Partition       Type              Size     Offset       LABEL

 -----------  -------------  -------  ---------   -----------------------------   

 Partition 1    System         500 MB  1024 KB   ESP

 Partition 2    Reserved       128 MB   501 MB   MSR

 Partition 3    Primary          203 GB   629 MB   SamSung-960 (my C drive)

 Partition 4    Recovery        462 MB   204 GB   WINRETOOLS

 Partition 5    Recovery          11 GB   205 GB   Image

 Partition 6    Recovery       1148 MB   216 GB  DELLSUPPORT

 Partition 7    Primary        1126 MB   217 GB    M-PARTITION

 Partition 8    Primary            11 GB   218 GB    N-PARTITION

 Partition 9    Primary         2037 MB   230 GB   O-PARTITION

jphughan - if I read your post correctly, I need to keep the following:

MUST - partition 1, 2, 3

Most likely to keep partition 4 and 6 for the Dell tech support (my laptop is still under the warranty)

Definitely delete partition 5 because that image partition is useless because I change the hardware (replaced the SSD WITH the NVMe drive).

Still not sure to delete partition 7, 8 and 9.  Any thought on these three partitions.

Thank you once again.

The factory image doesn’t necessarily become useless just because you switched to an NVMe drive, fyi. But if you would be comfortable performing a clean install if ever required instead (maybe you’d even prefer a clean install?), you may as well get rid of it anyway. I think factory images can be downloaded nowadays anyway too, as long as you have another PC and a sufficiently large flash drive to create bootable media to restore it.

Anyhow, keep Partitions 1-4. Partition 5 can definitely be deleted, and 6 can be as well since you use UEFI booting. I have no idea what Partitions 7-9 are. Those seem like partitions you would have manually created, but if you don’t recognize them, according to your originally posted volumes list, they’re all assigned drive letters, so you should be able to browse them to see what they are and whether you need them.

In terms of reclaiming space, this layout does mean that you can’t easily allocate any reclaimed space to your C drive, if that’s what you had hoped, because Partition 4 will still be there. If you want to fix that, the easiest way would be to capture an image of that partition using Macrium Reflect Free, then delete that partition (using the diskpart command “delete partition override”), then extend your C drive to fill all of the now-contiguous free space you’ll have, MINUS the amount required for the Recovery partition. Then restore the image of that partition into that last bit of free space.

Your partitions are a little messed up.  For instance, why do you have two 11 GB partitions?

The attachment below is probably what you started with.

jphughan/Salgrass,

Thank you to both of you.  I think I have enough info to play around with these partitions.

Happy holidays to all you.

Latest update:

BEFORE:

Partition       Type              Size     Offset       LABEL

-----------  -------------  -------  ---------   -----------------------------  

Partition 1    System         500 MB  1024 KB   ESP

Partition 2    Reserved       128 MB   501 MB   MSR

Partition 3    Primary          203 GB   629 MB   SamSung-960 (my C drive)

Partition 4    Recovery        462 MB   204 GB   WINRETOOLS

Partition 5    Recovery          11 GB   205 GB   Image

Partition 6    Recovery       1148 MB   216 GB  DELLSUPPORT

Partition 7    Primary        1126 MB   217 GB    M-PARTITION

Partition 8    Primary            11 GB   218 GB    N-PARTITION

Partition 9    Primary         2037 MB   230 GB   O-PARTITION

AFTER:

 Partition ###  Type              Size         Offset

 -------------  ----------------  -------         -------

 Partition 1    System             500 MB  1024 KB

 Partition 2    Reserved          128 MB   501 MB

 Partition 3    Primary            231 GB   629 MB

 Partition 4    Primary            461 MB   232 GB

There is 27.86 GB to be reclaimed after I deleted partition 5 thru 9.  Then I used AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard Edition (v6.6) to merge the reclaimed space with partition 3.  As you can see that partition 3 has 231 GB after the merge.  However, I noticed that partition 4's type changed from Recovery to Primary; I need to find out whether I can mark partition 4 as Recovery type.

Side note - I run this command chkdsk c: /F after the successful reboot.

Thank you.