In other words, will the system image tool in Control Panel detect un-allocated space and convert it to a healthy primary partition adjacent to my C partition so that I can finally merge them together with the mini partition tool? So in order for me to add that 35.23 GB of usable disk space to my C partition, do I have to first delete FACTORY IMAGE D and leave it un-allocated when I make a system image backup? I got that problem straightened out finally.

The reason you see my FACTORY IMAGE in my disk management screenshot is because I had to re-image my computer because the mini partition tool didn't do a proper reboot after another operation I was performing earlier. When I dug deeper, I found that the Recovery environment that Windows 10 created and dropped (graciously) in the middle of my two partitions is not assigned a drive letter, but rather some signature code that makes it unique to the current OS.

So now I can't use the 'Merge' feature in the mini partition tool to add the 35.23 GB of usable drive to my C partition. What I didn't expect is when I formatted the partition and made it NTFS letter drive B, I thought when I used the 'Align all partitions feature, that it would put the partition adjacent to partition C but the program states that all partitions are aligned already. I'm grateful to of had a current system image backup (always do) because when I deleted FACTORY IMAGE D, it became un-allocated space. The FACTORY IMAGE D above is useless to my computer now that I have been on Windows 10 Home (latest build) and Windows 10 so graciously dropped a 449MB Recovery Partition right between my partition boot drive C and the original Recovery Environment FACTORY IMAGE D, which I don't need anymore. I'm trying to do something with the mini partition wizard that is raved about on this site.

Minipartitionwizard