Windows 10: Can Partition Type be changed

Thanks,

It appears that only the path needs to be set. To use partition 4, type this in an elevated command prompt.

Code: reagentc /setreimage /path \\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk0\partition4\Recovery\WindowsRE[/quote]
You may wish to check first that your partition 4 does indeed contain the recovery environment. You are looking for the folder that contains Winre.wim. Mini Tools Partition Wizard can explore partitions that have no drive letter and/or are hidden.

It probably isn't necessary to mark the partition as 'Recovery' for it to work, but if you wish the Diskpart Set ID command can be used.

 

I'm still concerned that the note : "There is no volume associated with this partition." appeared in the partition 4 detail.

 

Here's some good information on GPT partitions:
UEFI/GPT-based hard drive partitions | Microsoft Docs

Partition 4 has no volume associated with it because it does not have a drive letter assigned. Normally, recovery partitions won't have drive letters assigned, and thus no volume associated with it.

 

I got this info from my wife's Win 10 machine. I'm not sure what mine showed prior to resizing but assumed it was probably similar.

Partition 4
Type : de94bba4-06d1-4d40-a16a-bfd50179d6ac
Hidden : Yes
Required: Yes
Attrib : 0X8000000000000001
Offset in Bytes: 985471647744
Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
* Volume 3 WINRETOOLS NTFS Partition 450 MB Healthy Hidden

 

Hmmm.... maybe I was mistaken twice in the same thread now.

Further research - no volume associated with it indicates that there is no filesystem on the partition that can be read by Windows. I would go back to what @Bree suggested. Install MiniTool Partition Wizard and try to explore that partition from within MiniTool Partition Wizard and see if it can detect any files and folders there.

A partition is only space set aside on a physical drive for a filesystem - it confines whatever filesystem gets put into that partition to the space set for the partition.

When you format the partition, you create the filesystem in it.

Once the OS recognizes that a filesystem is present, then it assigns a volume to it.

Then, if desired, the OS will assign a drive letter to the volume to make it routinely accessible to the user.

 

Hmm, it appears that resizing the partition did more damage than just changing its ID. What tool did you use?

Before doing anything else, I'd make sure I had a full image of all partitions. I'm not sure what repair options are available for UEFI/GPT drives, all mine are MBR. Let's hope a GPT guru spots this thread.

 

I used EaseUS Partition Master 12.0

 

You can change partition types back and forward - it doesn't affect the partition contents at all as you are updating the partition table not whatever is written to the disk in the partitions location. You could in fact delete the entire partition table and recreate it and you would not lose any data as long as when you recreate it you put in the same start and end positions.

Anyway, assuming you want to set partition 4 to recovery then you can do is as @Bree mentioned earlier - i.e.
set id=de94bba4-06d1-4d40-a16a-bfd50179d6ac

Here I change mine to MS Basic data and back... You can see when type is set to MS Basic Data type (ebd0a0a2-b9e5-4433-87c0-68b6b72699c7) you get the "no volume associated with this partition" message as there is no letter assigned. You don't get this message when it is Recovery type as the OS doesn't expect the recovery partition to be mounted.

Code: PS C:\Windows\system32> diskpart Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.15063.0 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. On computer: MACBOOK DISKPART> sel disk 0 Disk 0 is now the selected disk. DISKPART> sel par 1 Partition 1 is now the selected partition. DISKPART> det par Partition 1 Type : de94bba4-06d1-4d40-a16a-bfd50179d6ac Hidden : Yes Required: Yes Attrib : 0X8000000000000001 Offset in Bytes: 1048576 Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info ---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- -------- * Volume 1 Recovery NTFS Partition 450 MB Healthy Hidden DISKPART> set id=ebd0a0a2-b9e5-4433-87c0-68b6b72699c7 DiskPart successfully set the partition ID. DISKPART> det par Partition 1 Type : ebd0a0a2-b9e5-4433-87c0-68b6b72699c7 Hidden : No Required: Yes Attrib : 0X8000000000000001 Offset in Bytes: 1048576 There is no volume associated with this partition. DISKPART> set id=de94bba4-06d1-4d40-a16a-bfd50179d6ac DiskPart successfully set the partition ID. DISKPART> det par Partition 1 Type : de94bba4-06d1-4d40-a16a-bfd50179d6ac Hidden : Yes Required: Yes Attrib : 0X8000000000000001 Offset in Bytes: 1048576 Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info ---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- -------- * Volume 1 Recovery NTFS Partition 450 MB Healthy Hidden DISKPART>[/quote]

 

Thanks for that demonstration @lx07, you have recreated the situation shown in post #1. It would seem that setting the partition ID to a recovery partition is necessary after all.

Setting the type to MS Basic Data type (ebd0a0a2-b9e5-4433-87c0-68b6b72699c7) appears to be the other damage that was done in the resizing. Correcting that and setting the path with reagentc should be all that's needed (assuming of course that the data in the partition wasn't damaged).

 

That did the trick! Disk Management looks good as does DiskPart partition detail. I tried out Veritas SR 2016 and it also now recognizes this partition needs to be included in the backup.

 

The final test is to see if it is now a workling recovery partition.

Boot to Advanced Startup Options in Windows 10

 

Good news. What is your plan now?

Earlier you had this:
Code: C:\WINDOWS\system32>reagentc /info Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) and system reset configuration Information: Windows RE status: Enabled Windows RE location: \ Boot Configuration Data (BCD) identifier: 3bb76b1b-8c2b-11e2-be6a-9c2a7048d782 Recovery image location: \\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk0\partition7\DELL\Image Recovery image index: 1 Custom image location: Custom image index: 0[/quote] Are you going to register partition 4 as mentioned in post 14? You only need one RE partition so if you register 4 you could delete 2 and 6 Code: Partition ### Type Size Offset ------------- ---------------- ------- ------- * Partition 1 System 500 MB 1024 KB Partition 2 Recovery 40 MB 504 MB Partition 3 Reserved 128 MB 544 MB Partition 4 Primary 618 MB 672 MB Partition 5 Primary 1847 GB 1290 MB Partition 6 Recovery 450 MB 1848 GB Partition 7 Recovery 13 GB 1849 GB[/quote] Or you could register 6 and delete 2 and 4.

Partition 7 is some Dell recovery partition I suppose which you could delete (or not) as you wish.

It doesn't matter really as long as you have one registered that works but I'd certainly delete partition #2 or next upgrade windows will make yet another recovery partition as 40MB is too small to fit the WinRE.wim.

 

I executed the setid change on partition 4. Everything seems to be back where I wanted -- with a larger partition.