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. When a hard drive is installed in a computer, it must be partitioned before you can format and use it. 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 … I want to clean install, something I am very familiar with, but not since the new uefi, gpt, legacy etc. 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. After the install I noticed that I have a lot of partitions. 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.

Partitioning a drive is when you divide the total storage of a drive into different pieces. The first three are the Windows Critical partitions and there is one hidden which makes 4. disk 0 this is your 3tb hdd for data [d:] 2794.39gb - primary this is your primary data partition, encompassing your entire data drive. 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 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. In Windows 10 and Windows 8/8.1, the Power User Menu is the easiest way to start Disk Management . Some I feel are left over from the Windows 8.1 and maybe Windows 10 … Windows 7, 8, and 10 create a special “System Reserved” partition when you install them on a clean disk. Let’s Go Exploring Win10 Clean Install Default Disk Layout.

I have upgraded my Windows 8.1 system to Windows 10 through the Windows update app and have created an installation media USB stick. 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. Re: What are all these partitions?