HDD Partitions and Partitioning

Hey guys,

I have bought a new HP laptop and a new SSD. I have spent the last week trying to transfer the whole installation onto my SSD and now I have everything working how I need it.

I also have made a recovery disk that promises to restore my laptop to its original state (partitions and all).

Now, my goal is to remove the unallocated space at the beginning of my drive (by shifting my partitions over) and also to identify and remove any unwanted partitions. I hope you guys can educate and help me out :)

I have attached a picture from EaseUS Partition Master which shows my drives and partitions.

• The first disk is my main HDD, I was unable to swap the positions of the two disks due to the nature of the laptop and the fact that my SSD is mSata.
• The third disk is a USB drive. Ignore this also.

Of the partitions on disk 2, the ones that I know about are:

• EFI Partition, used to tell my computer which OS to boot into.
• Windows partition storing my Windows installation... my C:\ drive
• Unallocated, space that has not yet been converted to a partition.

PS. The reason that the disk is using GPT and not MBR is that my HP laptop's HDD was originally GPT and I didn't want to change that for the new HDD.

There are two partitions that I do not know about. The first one, marked as a reserved partition, does not even show up in Windows Disk Management. So I am REALLY curious what it is, what it is used for etc. The second says it is unused, but it is a large amount of space for unused, so again, if anyone could enlighten me...
I also want to know what are the benefits if any for leaving unallocated space on the HDD and why, and how best to go about maximising the space in my HDD.

Thanks in advance,

Dipun.

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