Vista Tutorial - Disk Management

Hi Boblink,

Yes, got it now.

It shows 2 primary partitions, 4 logical drives inside an extended partition ( one of these is named Back Up, it's 65.86gb ), then another primary partition which contains your Eisa configuration - that's seven - all allocated to Disk 0.

You are asking


Hmmm, I will ask Oldbloke or barman58 to have a look - they're pretty expert at this kind of thing.

SIW2

hi boblink,
if you can confirm how i see your drive situation.

you have one drive
your main drive contains the system partition and six others and is working ok
but shows a primary EISA partition 0f 18.06 GB that you want to convert to free space so that you may add it to you backup drive

firstly the EISA drive partition is your hidden system recovery recovery drive ( is this by any chance a dell machine? although others do use the same system)

due to the lock on the special EISA partition Disk manager in windows will not touch it, nor will many commercial programs.

the first thing to try check your system documentation is see if you can invoke the partition from the initial boot menu before windows boot, and if you are lucky you will be able to free the partition using the manufacturers utility, You may have to create restore disks to enable the option to clear this partition.

if this is not possible all is not lost if you have a look at the instructions Here

hope the explanation is clear but if you have any questions please post back and ask them before you do anything.

also if you do go ahead with this deletion of the eisa partition then windows will not be able to merge it with your backup you should be able to extend the last partition (OneKey) into the free space. if you wish to merge or move partitions you will need to use something like Gparted.
If you do go ahead remember the essential three things to be done - Backup Backup and Backup

Thank you for your POST Bar-man, the system is a Lenovo (not a Dell) and the
configuration that you described (one drive your main drive contains the
system partition and six others and is working ok but shows a primary EISA
partition 0f 18.06 GB that you want to convert to free space so that you may
add it to you backup drive. Firstly the EISA drive partition is your hidden
system recovery recovery drive is almost correct). The 18.06GB EISA is what I
inadvertently created by Partitioning an EXTERNAL / Irremovable Disk Drive
(it is NOT part of the Lenovo system). If in fact this 18.06GB Drive is
Hidden System Recovery that would be very strange since as I mentioned, I
just created it (ran into the problem and POSTED a request for help).
The Lenovo Hidden System Recovery program is called OneKey and it resides on
the "C" Drive (Partition) along with the OS.
What I wanted to do was create a Drive (Partition) where I could store the
OneKey images / backups since the "C" Drive is only 30GB (for BOTH Vista and
OneKey). I confused myself and Partioned the Exteral Drive instead of
Partitioning one of the Partitions that I created on the Lenovo Hard Drive.
Hope this explains things a little better.
Bob

OK so you have two drives, but are only showing one physical device drive 0

two physical drives I would expect to see as follows...



namely a drive 0 and a drive 1 as in my two drive system

this is where I get confused as your screenshot shows only one drive



all this aside if you wish to delete the EISA partition you will have to go down the route using Diskpart.exe as in my original post. once this partition is deleted you should be able to extend the 19GB OneKey partition into the free space created

Thanks Nigel, I am not familiar with Diskpart.exe which appears to be a DOS based program. Can you send me a link to instructions for Diskpart.exe?
Thanks, Bob

Please disregard the previous note (request for instructions), which IS
POSTED on the MS Newsgroup board.
Thanks,
Bob

OK just for your info ...

According to their site all lenovo machines ship from the factory with the following partitions to the hard drive installed

C: system drive containing windows 30GB
Hidden EISA recovery disk 18-20GB
D: Drive - data drive Remaining Space on the drive

this would be displayed in the disk manager as Disk0

Your screen shot shows this except that the d: drive has been further partitioned into D:, E:, F:, G:, & H: Drives.

It does not show any indication of an external drive

The full command set for the diskpart Command Line utility is Here

The specific instructions for deleting an EISA partition is Here

Deleting the EISA partition will remove your ability to perform a OneKey system restore.

hope this clarifies what I read your Screen shot to be indicating, all the best

Thank you for ALL your help Nigel, I appreciate the Lenovo information, which I am familar with since (for no apparent reason) they shipped the system with the OS, OneKey and OneKey Backups, on a 30GB "C" Drive although they had a 270GB "D" available. After numerous complaintts they came up with a patch, which I installed this morning and then started encountering my self inflicted problems.
In any event, a couple of comments / questions.
You that that "Your screen shot shows this except that the d: drive has been further partitioned into D:, E:, F:, G:, & H: Drives". True, I partitioned the "D" Drive into seperate Drives / Partitions for: Programs, Data files, Photos and BU Files.
You also wrote eleting the EISA partition will remove your ability to perform a OneKey system restore", which makes NO SENSE to me since this Partition is on the External Drive which I created (not Lenovo).
Am I missing something?
Also, for some reason the External Drive does NOT appear when I click on Start ---> Computer (it DID appear until I started playing around with things).
I also re-named the External Drive, could it be that the new Drive letter ("Z" Drive") for the External Drive (that INCLUDES the 16.08 EISA), won't show up until I restart my system?
Thanks again for the great help.
Bob

Hi,

Thanks for having a look Nigel.

He has 8 volumes listed at the top of the Disk management window, but only 7 allocated to Disk 0. Like you, I would have expected to see his external hd allocated to Disk 1.


Bob - now I've looked at your screenshot again, I wonder if your external drive is allocated as Disk 4 or 5 - i.e. off the bottom of the page.

Could you go into Disk Management and scroll down the bottom window and if you find your external drive there, post another screenshot? (Might be a good idea to restart before doing that.)

You might find it is still showing the full amount of drive space.

Thanks SIW2

Yes I think it's a good idea to reboot.

if windows can't see the external drive then there is no way that Disk management or Diskpart will be able to do anything to it.

This is where my confusion stems from, as the screen shot you provided shows the internal drive only, deleting the EISA partition ON THIS DRIVE will stop the recovery process working.

If you could reboot and post another screenshot that shows the both drives I should hopefully be able to guide you further.

As for the 30GB system drive on the lenovo, Which if the size is changed will also stop the recovery process, hopefully lenovo with the patch issued are finally listening to their users - its been an issue around the lenovo forums for some time now