Formatting question

[srock77]

I have an old 250GB SSD which was previously used as my win10 Boot drive. It has been replaced with a larger faster boot drive. I want to reuse it as a data drive.

In Administrative tools There are 3 partitions .There is a reserved system partition, a primary partition and a reserved recovery partition I initially reformatted just the primary partition (ExFAT to NTFS). The recovery partitions only make up about 1.5 GB. I think the recovery partiton is used by the SSD for use if a sector becomes unusable, and am thinking I should leave that alone. What about the system partition? I don't need this drive to be bootable any more.

Any thoughts?

Steve

 

[mxnerd]

Just format the whole SSD as one big volume. You don't need any system or recovery partition for data drive.

 

[srock77]

Thanks

Steve

 

[mindless1]

Yes delete all partitions and format as a single NTFS. The recovery partition is not for use if a sector becomes unusable, instead spare area space for that is provisioned by the SSD firmware, and invisible to the OS. No matter what you do to the drive as far as deleting, partitioning, formatting, that spare area will remain.

The recovery partition is (usually) meant to hold a backup of the original Windows installation for recovery purposes if you have to nuke it from orbit, though 1.5GB is pretty small, maybe in this case it only held the minimum needed windows installation files to save an OEM the cost of including a DVD or couple CD discs instead.

 

[MakennaWhite]

You need to format your SSD once. After that you use your system in faster mode.
But, there is no need to do partition of SSD.