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zbook
Microsoft Windows 10 (64-bit)

Is it safe to delete HP TOOLS partition? I reinstalled Windows and the 460 gb partition was still there so it takes up half of my HDD space. 

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions
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@Savatreatabvr 

You use Disk Management -- which you already used to post the partition layout -- select the empty space, right-click the space, select create new simple volume. Format it NTFS. That should assign a drive letter, but if it does not, right-click the volume and select Change drive letter and paths and select the first available letter after B.

 

When you reboot, you should then see the volume as an available drive.



I am a volunteer and I do not work for, nor represent, HP

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12 REPLIES 12
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@Savatreatabvr 

Something is in error. HP_TOOLS is generally a very small partition as all it contains is a set of HP utilities. If yours really is nearly 500GB, then is is something else.



I am a volunteer and I do not work for, nor represent, HP
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Hi WAWood, no the HP Tools partition is very small but its before the 465.75gb partition that I can't use so I was told by a questionable source that I would need to delete the  HP Tools partition to make the 465.75gb partition usable again bringing my HDD back up to 1 tb. Basically I can only use half of my HDD right now.

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@Savatreatabvr 

My guess is that they were telling you to delete the HP_TOOLS partition so you could then merge the big partition with the one n front of the HP_TOOLS partition.

 

Would be best if you used Disk Management to get a picture of the partition layout and post that back here so we can see what we are dealing with.



I am a volunteer and I do not work for, nor represent, HP
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Untitled1.png

 

Just don't know why I can't use my entire HDD?

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@Savatreatabvr 

You can't expand the OS partition into that space because the HP_TOOLS partition is in the way. And if it were mine, I would leave that alone as it takes up very little space.

 

The simplest way to "use your entire drive" is to create a new primary partition in the unallocated space and use that as a data storage location.



I am a volunteer and I do not work for, nor represent, HP
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Ok, whats the best way to do that?

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@Savatreatabvr 

Go into Disk Management and create a new Primary partition in the unallocated space. I would make it NTFS to allow you to save large (>2GB) files.

 

Once that is done and you restart, Windows will automatically assign it a drive letter and you can start using it.

 

Good Luck



I am a volunteer and I do not work for, nor represent, HP
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So I'll have one HDD with two drives? There's no way to get all of the 1tb under one drive letter?

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@Savatreatabvr 

They aren't drives, they are partitions -- and no, without removing HP_TOOLS, you can not have the two partitions combined because the HP_TOOLS partition is right in the middle between them.

I do this ALL THE TIME -- and I keep the OS partitions and DATA partitions separate because I can run weekly image backups of the OS partition and store them temporarily in the data partition, and then move them offline to external storage.  That gives me a way to restore the OS in literally 10 minutes, should it fail.

If you merge the two large spaces into a single partition, you can't do that.



I am a volunteer and I do not work for, nor represent, HP
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