Windows doesn’t normally assign a drive letter to these partitions, so you’ll only see them when you use Disk Management or similar utility. In Windows 10 and Windows 8/8.1, the Power User Menu is the easiest way to start Disk Management . When you install Windows 10 or Windows 8/7 on a clean formatted disk, it first creates a partition on the disk at the beginning of the hard disk. Re: What are all these partitions?

The first three are the Windows Critical partitions and there is one hidden which makes 4.

The Image partition contains the OEM factory install components which would be used if you might want to use a Win 10 recovery drive to take your system back to … disk 1 this is your 256gb ssd for os/programs [ ] 500mb - efi system partition this partition is required for windows to boot to gpt on uefi [ ] 40mb - oem partition this is the diagnostics partition for running pre-boot diagnostics Partitioning a drive is when you divide the total storage of a drive into different pieces. I want to clean install, something I am very familiar with, but not since the new uefi, gpt, legacy etc. Some I feel are left over from the Windows 8.1 and maybe Windows 10 … If however you have a recovery partition that is (in future) too small to allow a bigger WinRE.wim then during an upgrade the Windows installer will create another bigger recovery partition after C: as it can't extend the size of a partition before C: There are many threads on this forum with people having multiple recovery partitions because of this. How to Partition a Hard Drive in Windows Open Disk Management , the tool included in all versions of Windows that lets you partition drives, among a number of other things. I have upgraded my Windows 8.1 system to Windows 10 through the Windows update app and have created an installation media USB stick.

When a hard drive is installed in a computer, it must be partitioned before you can format and use it. As it’s installed on any UEFI / GPT machine, Windows 10 can automatically partition the disk. I did a clean install od Windows 10 on my Alienware Alpha. disk 0 this is your 3tb hdd for data [d:] 2794.39gb - primary this is your primary data partition, encompassing your entire data drive. After the install I noticed that I have a lot of partitions. Let’s Go Exploring Win10 Clean Install Default Disk Layout. Windows 7, 8, and 10 create a special “System Reserved” partition when you install them on a clean disk.