I am wondering if I should rearrange the partitions on my SSD, since I am planning to upgrade it in the near-future to a 1TB or higher SSD (VMs take up a lot of space very quickly). I was planning to use a bootable version of GParted to combine the recovery partition that Windows created at the end of the SSD with the one at the beginning, however I've read online that resizing and moving around partitions can cause boot failure in certain systems. Should I go ahead and rearrange the partitions? Also, is there anything else extra I will have to do before and after rearranging the partitions, like telling Windows where WinRE is located on the disk?
You could just clone the old ssd to the new one, and after cloning it you can resize the existing 60.14GB, 3.81Gb and the 400.40GB windows partition. What you are planning to do won't gain any GB's, if it even can be done.
If you really have nothing else to do, move the partitions wherever you want. In real life, it's never necessary, it's just a picture you see. In reality, everything is completely different and relocation is just a changing the visible image. In reality, nothing changes and relocation is not necessary. However, it has no effect on booting as you mistakely thought.
so in other words, rearranging or relocating partitions on SSD drives are a big waste of time, is that correct?
If you have an HDD, it is necessary and you need do it. If you have an SSD it makes no sense. If You rearrange, You'll get only better look. The difference lies in their principle of working and their construction. These things are very different. One is a set of rotating discs, the other is entirely electronics.
Traditional, magnetic-platter hard disks have moving parts. Thus, they are subject to the laws of mechanics. A magnetic hard disk is ~30% faster at the outside of the platter as on the inside. The reason is simple - bigger diameter - more disk sectors per track, faster to read due to less head movement and faster speed (constantly rotating disks always spin faster at the outer diameters - physics is fun). SSDs are pure electronics (NAND logic gates). All parts of the disk have the same access speed. Thus, it doesn't matter where the partitions are (internally, they are everywhere anyway, due to wear leveling).
Impeccable and correct! Thanks for explaining! (I have been whole my life physicist, speciality is electronics)
I know that, except when I go to upgrade the SSD and clone the contents, that recovery partition created at the end will prevent me from extending the main 400GB partition, because of where it's located on the SSD. And I can do that even with the extra recovery partition that seems to be located at the end of the SSD?
I'll admit I did not thoroughly read this entire thread, but what cloning software are you using? I find that the free version of Macrium Reflect allows you to re-size partitions from one drive to the next when you choose a clone option. I use Samsung drives, and they prefer the unallocated partition at the very end of the drive, Their software "Samsung Magician" will do this too after you install windows
I was thinking about using either Clonezilla or the built-in cloning utility that the UEFI on my PC has. Also, that extra partition only appeared after I upgraded to Windows 10 1809 using the Upgrade Assistant.
I'm upgrading notebooks all the time from hdd to ssd. I've been using Terabyte Image for Windows. I've found this to be the most reliable. ie, The Lenovo OneKey recovery still works. With Macrium, yes it boots to your OS ok but the OneKey feature doesn't work (even though the partitions are their). All you need is the imagew64.exe and ifw.ini (edit to add serial, then make read only). You can run it from Windows or WinPE. It's smart enough to leave system/recovery partitions alone & just resize the standard ones.