prevent windows 7 from making extra partitions for install

some of you may have noticed win 7 will try to create a extra 100mb partition on a fresh drive or if you have deleted your existing partition.

this can be a nightmare waiting for those using backup software and are not aware of this. i ran into this myself and didnt even think to also backup the 100mb partition and my backup was useless. the 100mb partition has the mbr and other system files now according to what ms has said..

to prevent this either install to a drive that has already been formatted and do not delete the partitions you want otherwise win7 will make a "extra" one all on its own.

if you have already deleted the old partitions or are using a brand new fresh disk you can use diskpart to fix this.

put the win7 disc in the drive when it starts up click install now. then choose the repair option. make sure the use tools option is checked and click next.

choose command prompt.

now type in this order:

diskpart
list disk (if you have more than one drive)
select disk 0 (disk 0 will be default if you only have one drive)
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=ntfs quick
exit

now restart and this time install win7 normally but do not delete the partitions you have made doing the above and win7 will all be installed to a single partition and you can now simply back it up as normal and are able to restore as normal

hope this helps a few out

 

There is another way to do this, for people that don't want to mess with diskpart. I used this on my latest Win 7 installation, and it worked like a charm. Here's the link:

http://www.shivaranjan.com/2009/05/...ystem-reserved-partition-during-installation/

Basically, you use the drive options (advanced), create your system partition, then delete that partition (leaving only the 100mb system reserved partition), then extend the system reserved partition.

In the end, either way will eliminate the 100mb system reserved partition.