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avaiki

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#182456 16-Oct-2015 11:50
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. . .

morning all,

can members please help me with some (probably really, really) basic hard disc drive advice?

In my disc management window, I see an unassigned volume which is taking up 93.6 gb but is 100% free. When I right-click to see what options I have, the only one available is to "Delete Volume". When I click on that it pops up the message you see in the screengrab > "The selected partition was not created by Windows and might contain data recognized by other operating systems. Do you want to delete this partition?"

The only thing I can think is that the partition contains proprietary software by a tertiary organisation that this computer comes from, in this case TWOA, Te Wananga o Aotearoa.

I am hoping that I might be able to delete this volume, thus returning space to the primary drive which is running very short? Is this what would happen?

thanks for any help,

jason 






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ubergeeknz
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  #1407786 16-Oct-2015 11:54
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Maybe linux or similar, should be safe to blow it away

amazed they didn't blank it before it left :/



trig42
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  #1407789 16-Oct-2015 12:02
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It is possible your computer was imaged from a standard image, and the HDD in the computer is larger than the image file, so it has just left the rest of the drive unassigned.

You should be fine to create a new volume, or extend an existing one on to the unassigned space.

timmmay
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  #1407830 16-Oct-2015 12:54
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Post a full size screenshot so we can read it.



Batman
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  #1407882 16-Oct-2015 13:42
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If it's 100% free then there's nothing on it, not even proprietary software.

gzt

gzt
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  #1407910 16-Oct-2015 14:52
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I cannot read all the details in the screenshot. Iirc in windows deleting that partition will allow you to expand the one next to it and that is all. Anything more complex you need a partition manager.

gzt

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  #1407911 16-Oct-2015 14:54
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Personally I would start again with that machine coming from a different party.

 
 
 
 

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MackinNZ
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  #1407913 16-Oct-2015 14:58
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Make sure you back up the data before resizing the partitions.  Windows disk manager isn't like more advanced partition managers that can resize without data loss. 

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  #1407915 16-Oct-2015 15:03
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Yes it can. It's limited in that it can't resize to the left but that is to the right so it will resize it.

There was a piece off software that kept a local image on the machine for restoring from. Can't recall the name of it but it added some. More boot options to do the restore. Could be for that because I have seen it used on educational pcs for when people screw them up.




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jhsol
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  #1407928 16-Oct-2015 15:37
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richms: Yes it can. It's limited in that it can't resize to the left but that is to the right so it will resize it.

There was a piece off software that kept a local image on the machine for restoring from. Can't recall the name of it but it added some. More boot options to do the restore. Could be for that because I have seen it used on educational pcs for when people screw them up.


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Yea if you are confident there is no important data on it, delete it and extend or create a new partition with its own drive letter. It does sound like a linux partition though (or 3rd party partition at least).

timmmay
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  #1407937 16-Oct-2015 15:45
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Macrium Reflect Free can back up a partition, but the image will be pretty big if there's a lot of data in the partition.

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