HP Tools partition on new upgraded hard disk

[halifa]

I've just upgraded my hard disk from 500MB to 1TB using advice from this forum. Everything working well, but after the cloning process I see I have a small partition called HP-TOOLS. Can I delete this?

[Huffer]

I would not. I believe that is the UEFI diagnostic partition. I assume you used an HP recovery disk to reinstall the OS?

[halifa]

Many thanks. I used EaseUS to clone the 500MB disk to the new 1TB one.

[Huffer · Accepted solution]

Same end result. You copied over the factory original partitions and that one you do not want to mess with. 

[halifa]

Thanks for the confirmation. This is how the disk looks now, if you have any further comment.

What I'm trying to do is join the unallocated partition to C:, and I'm beginning to realise that probably only a reclone will do that. EaseUS has a facility to set the size of C: after cloning, which wasn't initially clear.

[Huffer]

Yes an advanced partition utility (e.g. Paragon Partition Manager or Partition Commander or the like) could move the start of the HP_Tools Partition further to the right and you can make a recovery disk and then delete the D:\ partition, but the simpler way would be to do a proportional clone or ask the clone to create a much larger C:\ drive to push everything to the right during the clone. You did a literal exact clone, leaving all the real estate you added with the bigger drive as unused. 

[halifa]

When I used CMS BounceBack many years ago, that would have automatically have created a larger C: partition. I'll have to do a re-clone with EaseUS and be sure to tell it to do the same.