[SOLVED] can the 100mb system partition be safely deleted?

I hope that I'm posting this thread in the right place, if not, please shift it to the right one.

I'd like to create a 20GB primary partition on my disc, but I already have the max of four primaries. The system partition, my OEM install of 7, 7 Ultimate (evaluation OS) and my recovery partition. I understand that without the system partition I cannot add features such a BitLocker, but I don't care for it anyway. It's way too slow creating and removing, and I already have a strong password at startup to begin with. It's also needed for certain upgrades, such as the Anytime Upgrade, but my OEM install has already been upgraded to 7 Pro through this method.

So, is there any reason that I cannot safely delete this partition? I considered making the recovery partition a logical one, but then I'm not sure that I can boot from it, if necessary.

Any advice on this question would be greatly appreciated.

Cat

Before deleting the 100MB partition, lets change the active partition to the one that Windows 7 is located. Reboot and if you find that Windows will not start, use your Windows 7 DVD and perform a Startup Repair. Once you have done this, you should then be able to remove the 100MB partition.

Let us know how things go as I have not done this sequence myself and would love to know how it goes.

There's one problem here, I made my first Windows 7 partition active, attempted to delete the 100MB partition, but the option to delete was not there. So I reversed the active partition back to the 100MB one.

I have Acronis True Image Home 2010 as my main backup, but haven't learned how to do the tricky things yet. But I can do it with Macrium Reflect. You have the choice to make the first OS the active partition, if you want. I'm going to need to shrink the partition some anyway, so it will be a good opportunity to do everything that I need to do first.

I'll let you know how this turns out.

Thanks,
Cat

After making the partition active, you must re-boot to finalize the changes you made.

This is how I remove the 100 mb system partition on machines.

1) Assign a drive letter to the 100 mb system partition in Disk Management.

2) Copy/paste the boot folder and bootmgr file from root of the new drive letter to the drive/partition where Windows is at C:. When it asks to copy bcd and bdc.log, tell it to skip over them since it won't let you anyhow.

3) Open an elevated command prompt. Type the following command then press enter:

bcdedit /export C:\boot\bcd

4) Go back to disk management and set the C: drive as the active partition.

5) Reboot.

6) Use you favorite partition management software to format the 100 mb partiton and expand C: to reclaim the space.

Thanks for the responses. Last night, before TorrentG's post, I made the "C" partition the active one, attempted to delete the 100MB one, but it would not delete. I was using the built in partition tool in Win 7.

So then, with Macrium Reflect, I made a backup of all partitions except the 100MB one. Then I restored, making the "C" partition the active one. Afterwards, I tried to boot, but no go. Then I used my Ultimate disc to make a startup repair, it still showed the "BOOTMGR" as missing. I repeated the procedure with the same results.

By this time, late last night, my computer was in a mess. I was getting tired, so I waited until this morning to recover with my most recent backup with Acronis. Being that my drive was probably a mess, I used the drive cleaner prior to installing the backup, using only one sweep. I've learned that's plenty. I just didn't want to do the recovery on top of a mess.

So I've changed my game plan. I backed up the recovery partition separately, and I'm going to delete it to do what I have to do. I still have the recovery discs that I made, and my recovery partition backed up, so I still have it, if and when I need it.

Then, all I have to do is shrink the partition with my evaluation OS a little, then install the other OS in that space. That would be a lot simpler for me.

My work is cut out for me for the next couple of days. My new printer arrived a while ago (Kodak ESP-3250), one with a lot more features than my ancient Dell 720 Photo Printer. I'll try to get everything done by tomorrow, it seems like everything takes a lot of effort these days, but I'm not going to rush.

Well, time to get started!

Cat

Hi, I also have a question about this "Unallocated Partition/space. I'm in the process of trying to recover it back to my C: drive. Mainly I want to have a clean single partition will all my system files for backing up using Ghost software. This is on my Intel 128GB SSD Drive Windows 7 64bit Pro. I've done some research and I don't know if this is bitlocker or an boot partition in my case. I did use window 7 CD to create this partition and load Windows so I think it applies to my load?

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproinstall/thread/5f9e147e-32de-4a69-80eb-86f1b...

I'll probably follow step 4 to remove this or the suggestions in this post. The only thing is I'm not exactly sure this unallocated space is bitlocker since the link mentions transferring my boot sector to C: drive prior to deleting the space..??

The link says this:
"If you would like to delete that partition after installing Windows 7, you will need to manually create boot files on system partition first."

Well, my C: drive already show my C: drive as active and boot. So, I don't see this as active and think it might not apply in my case. I might try step 4 or just remove this.

Here's a picture of my diskmgr that you can see better:




I see I can't delete this Unallocated Space by Right clicking in disk mgr. It only gives option to create a new volume. So, apparently I'll need to follow the steps in this post to create a volume/drive and then remove it and expand/add it back to C:. I just hope I can find Magic Partition if I need that.Still not certain If this applies to me since my all my critical system boot files,etc appear to be on C: already.?

Again, do I need to try and delete this Unallocated space/partition to add it back/Expand it into my C: drive? Or can I use a different partition manager to add it back to C:?

I've cut up partitions before using Magic Partition software that had a the complete 100GB disk allocated to Windows XP on a Laptop I used for work. I sliced it up to allow 50GB to use for a linux load on a laptop and that worked good. So I could probably use Magic sorftware to give the 101MB back to C if necessary. Thx for any help!