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Noldor
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How to delete a system dynamic partition

Tue May 03, 2016 4:50 pm

So, the title specify the issue: I would like to know whether there is a way to delete a system dynamic partition during Windows install. Basically, during usage, my laptop drive was converted to dynamic (I think when I created more than 4 partitions on it, albeit I'm not 100% sure). Initially, that wasn't an issue, but, later, I realized that, due to the partition being dynamic, I can no longer manipulate them during Windows install. My drive had 5 partitions: a Recovery partition which existed beforehand, a system partition with windows and three additional partitions. None can be deleted during install and only the system partition can be formatted. The inability to delete, modify and create partitions during Windows install is quite annoying, so is there a way to solve this?
For the moment, I chose not to perform a clean disk command with diskpart because it would delete the Recovery Partition as well. Even though it would not be a big deal, I'd prefer not to delete it if there are other options.
 
biffzinker
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Re: How to delete a system dynamic partition

Tue May 03, 2016 6:36 pm

Convert in Diskpart is likely the option your looking for but I believe it is destructive so you will need to do a backup before trying it out.

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blahsaysblah
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Re: How to delete a system dynamic partition

Tue May 03, 2016 8:55 pm

The good thing about having dynamic boot drive is that you can mirror the "C:" volume(not entire disk, not boot partitions).

The diskpart command would be:
delete partition override

diskpart has very good built-in help.

I dont think what you are asking is possible if you want/need a UEFI install and or just a helpful Win 10 install in case of problems. Note, some UEFI features are disabled w/o a UEFI boot manager/OS installed.

However, start the Win 10 installer, at first or second page, select:
-> Repair, Troubleshoot, Advanced, Command Shell

-> diskpart
do what you want
-> exit

start installer
-> setup, ... Custom install, ...

if you did something wrong, quit installer(click red X), you come back to shell and can redo diskpart/setup loop :)

Clean UEFI Win 10 install has one recovery, one EFI, one ???, one primary and has first partition offset 1024KB (first MB is raw/used by UEFI).

DISKPART> list disk

  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
* Disk 0    Online           74 GB      0 B        *
  Disk 1    Online          931 GB   465 GB        *
  Disk 2    Online          223 GB      0 B        *
DISKPART> list part

  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    Recovery           450 MB  1024 KB
  Partition 2    System             100 MB   451 MB
  Partition 3    Reserved            16 MB   551 MB
  Partition 4    Primary             73 GB   567 MB

DISKPART>li
 
just brew it!
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Re: How to delete a system dynamic partition

Tue Apr 17, 2018 7:12 am

@blahsaysblah - Dynamic partitions and UEFI are not tied to each other AFAIK. You can have either one without the other. At least, this was the case in earlier versions of Windows.

The best way to ensure that there's no partition cruft left to mess up your new install is to back up all of the data partitions and wipe the drive. Then it'll be just like starting from a factory fresh drive.

Edit: Oops, didn't notice that this was a necro. :oops:
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Heiwashin
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Re: How to delete a system dynamic partition

Tue Apr 17, 2018 10:43 am

just brew it! wrote:
@blahsaysblah - Dynamic partitions and UEFI are not tied to each other AFAIK. You can have either one without the other. At least, this was the case in earlier versions of Windows.

The best way to ensure that there's no partition cruft left to mess up your new install is to back up all of the data partitions and wipe the drive. Then it'll be just like starting from a factory fresh drive.

Edit: Oops, didn't notice that this was a necro. :oops:


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