Where did these 2 extra drives come from?

after installing an msata ssd along with my normal storage hdd i noticed that there appeared 2 extra drives in "My Computer" first one is named "SYSTEM DRIV(D " other extra drive is called "Lenovo Recovery (F "...i have no idea how it got there. I haven't made a recovery disc seeing that i would much rather prefer a clean install if ever my system malfunctions anyways. Any insights/suggestions about these extra drives?

 

SYSTEM_DRV is for the bootloader if I'm not wrong. LENOVO_RECOVERY is for making recovery disks, and for recovering the system without using recovery disks (press the ThinkVantage button during boot).

 

oh thats cool, so its no trouble just leaving it there? I don't really need it but then again...its not really a burden to just keep it there as well. What do you suggest i do?

 

@wackedwithbamboo: Your new SSD is now the C: (boot/system) drive and the HDD becomes a storage drive. The previously hidden partitions are now exposed as logical drives along with what used to be the C: drive. You can always go into Disk Management, delete those partitions and merge everything into one partition, then do a quick NTFS format of that partition. (Of course, first, make sure you save whatever you need to save, like the various documents in the old My Documents folder.)

Well, that's what I did anyway.

 

do not delete SYSTEM_DRV (it's small anyway) but you can delete the recovery partition if you already have your recovery discs burned and don't want to use the RnR application. Since that partition is sized at about 16GB, taking up valuable SSD real estate, I deleted it and resized the C drive to fill the space.

 

The HDD is now a storage drive. What's the use of SYSTEM_DRV partition?

 

Is it possible to somehow merge the SYSTEM_DRV with our main partition? I've read you shouldn't delete it if you want your comp to actually boot. I wouldn't mind condensing my drive down to a single partition if possible. Just for simplicity sake. Would like to just have C:SSD and D:HDD.

 

Acronis Disk Director can do this quite easily...

 

Yes.

No, it was needed only when the HDD was the boot drive ( C: ). But now that the SSD has been installed and set up as the boot drive, the HDD becomes a storage drive.

Sure, just go into Disk Management, delete those partitions and merge everything into one partition, then do a quick NTFS format of that partition ( D: ).

 

Ah, but I tend to still boot into my HDD on occasion to run some marketing programs. So essentially it is required to boot? Is it save to merge it into the main partition? I thought I read somewhere they were having issues with that... maybe not.

I meant I want to get rid of the two SYSTEM_DRV partitions (one for SSD, one for HDD). So I end up with my C:SSD and D:HDD as the only two partitions. I don't want to merge those two (if that is what is being said). But it seems from your info above I'd need those partitions to boot into those drives.

 

IIRC the system_drv partition is related to the Windows boot loader/BIOS and so is somewhat essential (unless you don't want your computer to boot Think of it as the undeveloped Siamese twin to the C: OS partition