Can a partition exist without a volume?

There appears to be a partition that seemingly has no volume associated to it.

Selecting the D volume (5), which contains the affected partition, results in the primary partition (2) being selected as well:

DISKPART> select volume 5

DISKPART> list volume

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
  Volume 0     C   OS           NTFS   Partition    914 GB  Healthy    Boot
  Volume 1         ESP          FAT32  Partition    150 MB  Healthy    System
  Volume 2         WINRETOOLS   NTFS   Partition    990 MB  Healthy    Hidden
  Volume 3         Image        NTFS   Partition     14 GB  Healthy    Hidden
  Volume 4         DELLSUPPORT  NTFS   Partition   1380 MB  Healthy    Hidden
* Volume 5     D   PM981a       NTFS   Partition    476 GB  Healthy
  Volume 6     E   misc         NTFS   Removable     57 GB  Healthy

DISKPART> list partition

  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    Reserved            15 MB    17 KB
* Partition 2    Primary            476 GB    16 MB

Then, selecting the reserved partition (1) clears the selected volume:

DISKPART> select partition 1

DISKPART> list partition

  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
* Partition 1    Reserved            15 MB    17 KB
  Partition 2    Primary            476 GB    16 MB

DISKPART> list volume

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
  Volume 0     C   OS           NTFS   Partition    914 GB  Healthy    Boot
  Volume 1         ESP          FAT32  Partition    150 MB  Healthy    System
  Volume 2         WINRETOOLS   NTFS   Partition    990 MB  Healthy    Hidden
  Volume 3         Image        NTFS   Partition     14 GB  Healthy    Hidden
  Volume 4         DELLSUPPORT  NTFS   Partition   1380 MB  Healthy    Hidden
  Volume 5     D   PM981a       NTFS   Partition    476 GB  Healthy
  Volume 6     E   misc         NTFS   Removable     57 GB  Healthy

Re-selecting partition 2 sets volume 5 back to being selected.

Is there a hidden or implicit volume that partition 1 is associated to, or can one exist independently?

Here are some screens (The OEM D drive was imaged onto the larger C drive, so may be whey the labels in Disk Management are missing):

Disk Management

Macrium

Solution 1:

The 15 MB space you see is probably the Microsoft Reserved Partition (MSR):

A Microsoft Reserved Partition (MSR) is a partition of a data storage device, which is created to reserve a portion of disk space for possible subsequent use by a Windows operating system installed on a separate partition. No meaningful data is stored within the MSR; though from the MSR, chunks may be taken for the creation of new partitions, which themselves may contain data structures.

The GUID Partition Table (GPT) label for this partition type is E3C9E316-0B5C-4DB8-817D-F92DF00215AE.

You may check its GUID to verify if it's indeed the MSR.

This pseudo-partition is not formatted and doesn't have a file-system, therefore is not counted as a volume by diskpart. The term "volume" means a partition that is formatted with a file-system.

The diskpart documentation says more:

You can only give focus to a partition on the selected disk. After a partition has focus, the related volume (if any) also has focus. After a volume has focus, the related disk and partition also have focus if the volume maps to a single specific partition. If this isn't the case, focus on the disk and partition is lost.

So when you selected volume 5, it contained only one partition with a file-system, so this was also selected.

However, when you selected the MSR, which doesn't contain a file-system, this wasn't enough to select any volume, including volume 5.

(I agree that the volume/partition terminology as used in diskpart is confusing.)