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Resizing Partitions using DD11 on SSD

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I recently installed a new mSATA SSD on my Thinkpad laptop. The 256 GB Crucial SSD is currently installed as the only drive. I had used True Image 2012 to clone the original drive to the SSD but decided later to do a clean install instead. The cloning copied the Recovery Partition to the SSD and I used this to restore the computer to it's original state. What I find is there are 3 partitions on this SSD now. I've attached screen shots of Admin Tools showing the drives as well as the Computer shot. The third (R) partition seems to be Office 2010 but doesn't seem to be accessible. This is a new computer bought in November. It does come with Office 2010 preloaded and I have the option of buying the license. I assume that's what this partition is.

The problem is the Recovery Partition. It's free space is 4KB and there is the constant message of low disk space that's really annoying. My thought is to take some of the free space from (Q) and expand (R). I don't see how I can do this. I would think I'd shrink (R) and then assign that space to (Q) by then expanding that partition. I only see resizing the (R) drive but not being able to specify taking space from (Q). That's confusing. Hope I haven't made a total mess of that.

What am I missing? I hesitate doing anything at this point having been working on getting everything updated the past few days. I don't have that warm feeling of doing this without some sound advice. I need to of course do a backup before doing anything at this point for sure.

Any advice wold be welcomed.

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admin_tools.png 74.48 KB
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The first thing I would recommend is creating a backup of the entire drive (in case anything goes wrong when making partitioning changes).

Normally, recovery partitions have more space available than that. Have you looked at the partition's contents to see if anything is there that shouldn't be? Like if a large video file got saved there by mistake? Maybe you could just move something off and then you wouldn't have the space problem.

Otherwise, you would probably need to take space from the Windows (C:) partition and give that to Q:. I don't see R: in the Disk Management screenshot so it's probably not a real drive. You can use Disk Management to shrink C: a bit. This can be done while Windows is running. Then use DD to resize Q: larger (move the left side over). Note that moving the recovery partition may prevent it from working correctly (you may have to fix it or trigger it manually, if needed).

Another option you could try is just remove the Q: drive letter assignment from the recovery partition. You could always assign it back later if it became necessary.