Windows 10: Fresh Install Windows 10 - Recovery Partition

Hi,

I have an ASUS which came with 8.1 OEM. I upgraded to Win 10 and now am about to do a fresh install of Win 10 (using this tool: Windows 10) on it.

It has 2 recovery partitions 20 GB and 500 MB.

Q1. During fresh install, do I need to delete both recovery partitions?

Q2. Just to confirm, recovery partitions only keep the newly installed OS backup right? I.e. wondering if I can keep older OS recovery on that?

Thanks *Smile

:)

 

recovery partition in windows 10

OK, I've just done a clean install of Windows 7 onto 1TB of a 1.8TB fresh drive, and upgraded to Windows 10.

I have ended up with a system partition, (unused space), the Windows 10 partition, and a recovery partition.

Can I now delete this recovery partition ? I will assume this is OK as it is no great loss to start again.

 

After upgrading through Windows Update from Windows 7 to Windows 10 I now have a 3rd partition named "Recovery"

If you fresh install Windows 10 on a GPT disk (UEFI boot mode enabled), it does create
an EFI, MRS (won't show in Disk Management), Recovery, and C: drive. If you install Windows 10 on
an MBR disk, it only needs System Reserved partition and C: drive. When you upgrade Windows 8.1 to 10, Windows 10 will create a recovery partition if your system reserved partition (MBR disk) or Recovery Partition
doesn't have enough disk space. As you know, Windows can only shrink a partition from the right side, so the 450 MB recovery partition is new created, which should not be deleted if you want to use recovery options. To see more details, you can read:

windows 10 recovery partition

 

How to clean install Windows 7/8/8.1/10 64-bit in UEFI Boot Mode.

If you want to do a complete clean install and if you have backed up your important files.

Normally, you do not need to turn Secure Boot off to install Windows 8/8.1/10 in UEFI Boot Mode. You only need to turn Secure Boot off to install Windows 7.

You do not need to change the boot order of drives in your UEFI firmware (BIOS) settings.
- Connect your Windows 7/8/8.1/10 USB flash drive (Note: FAT32 file system) or insert your Windows 7/8/8.1/10 DVD.
- Restart the computer.
- Press the correct key to enter the boot menu (see this link for help). Or, if you have a Lenovo computer, you can also press the NOVO button when the computer is turned off and then select "Boot Menu"
- Select to boot from the "UEFI: USB/DVD device name".

On the Which type of installation do you want? screen, select the "Custom: Install Windows only (advanced)" option.

On the Where do you want to install Windows? screen, you'll need to delete all of the partitions (see screenshot below). Select a partition and click on the "Delete" option for each partition.





Once you have deleted all of the partitions, you only see Drive 0 Unallocated Space (see screenshot below).

Click on the "Next" button. The installation of Windows will begin. All the required partitions are created automatically during the install.

Or, if you know what you're doing, you can click on the "New" button and create a separate data partition.





Other instructions.

- How to download and clean install Windows 8.1 if you have an OEM computer with UEFI firmware (BIOS) embedded Windows 8/8.1 product key. -> link
- Here is info about UEFI Boot Mode (installing using the GPT partition style) and Legacy BIOS Boot Mode (installing using the MBR partition style). -> link

 

The Recovery Partitions are a lazy way of providing you with an option to re-install Windows (8) when your system does not work anymore for whatever reason except of course you fried the Hard-drive

Be aware that Asus does NOT provide you easily with a backup or that you can easily download a recovery file.

In my personal opinion it would be best to keep the Asus recovery partition to make sure that if your system crashes, you can go back to the original OS that was delivered with the PC.

Good Luck

 

I for one went back to 8.1 - 10 still has to many permission issues for me at this time..

That 20GB partition has your factory setup (OS, Drivers and apps)

you can keep that partition (if it is the last partition) delete all other partitions then install windows 10 to unallocated disk space
you can copy all the files on that partition to a USB and removed partition completely
or remove partition completely, and/if > then clean reinstall 8.1 and Asus drivers and any apps

 

In the process of upgrading to and clean installing Windows 10 on our family PCs, I did not go through the process to delete recovery partitions shown above. Generally I wound up with multiple small but empty (100% free) recovery partitions on the hard drives of the PCs. In some cases, the 16-20 GB recovery partitions also now show as being empty. And they are not always mapped as D: anymore. I went through the process described in the tutorial 4287-reset-recovery-image on one of the PCs so far. This seemed to work. Can I simply delete all the other empty recovery, EFI and OEM partitions? Or are they not really empty?

 

They may or may not be something you want to delete. I'll bet you they are NOT empty. They may look empty when you view them in Disk Management. However, if you look up how to use the diskpart command (carefully) from a command prompt (don't remember if it needs to be an admin/elevated command prompt), you will find they are not empty. There are ways to get rid of those from the older OS install using diskpart or third party partition tools but you really need a tutorial or guide on exactly what you're doing if you want to retain all the recovery/bootability features of you newer (or even older) OS.

Don't know about ASUS but ACER and DELL provide ways of creating factory restore media which would serve the same backup purpose as the factory restore partition, in which case you may then opt to create recovery media first and then just blow that multi-GB partition away to allocate to your clean OS install.

 

If you want to keep the recovery partition information just run the tool to make a Windows 8 recovery drive. Then during your windows 10 clean install you can nuke the partitions.

 

OP clearly said they upgraded to Win10. So how are they now supposed to make a Windows 8 Recovery Drive? Not challenging what you said, just want to know how to do this.

 

I would recommend you consider using ASUS Backtracker to create separate media on a 16 GB flash drive from your restore partition with original drivers (the 20 GB one) BEFORE you do a clean install. This should enable you to restore your laptop (I assume this is what you're talking about based on your other thread) to its out-of-the box state. Go ahead and make a Windows 8.1 recovery drive if you want but would you not have the manufacturer's own factory store in addition at the expense of a $10 flash drive?

Hopefully, ASUS Backtracker works as well under your current Win 10 upgraded status.

If it interests you, you can have a look at this: (again, specific to the model of laptop you posted in your other thread). Read the 2 boxes at the top of the start of the video and follow link in second box on the video if you want (or need) to see making Windows 8/8.1 recovery media rather than ASUS' factory restore media - BUT, like Mark said above, you're not going to be doing that from a Win 10 upgraded system.

Once you have this separate factory restore in hand, you should have no qualms about blowing away EVERY partition in the clean install you're asking about.

Any chance you made and kept a full disk image from before the Win 10 upgrade?

 

Hello All, I left the recovery partitions are they were. Indeed they were not empty. And, although I see no need to keep the OEM Windows 8 files from 2013, I can delete them later. We do not use our whole hard disks anyway as we have our media on a NAS server.

What I have done though was to follow the tutorial from DavidY about creating provisioning packages. I then made new recovery USBs using 32GB sticks. For PCs with quite a number of Steam games on them, the 32GB was not enough. So I had the family members delete games that they were not using anymore until I could get the recoveries onto the 32GB sticks. I guess I could have procured some 64GB sticks. But it was time for some clean-up anyway. Thanks for the advice / help.

 

Last month I performed clean installation of Windows 10 Version 1511, during which no recovery partition was created, and Windows RE was put into the Windows partition.

Now there is no recovery partition on my ASUS.

 

Matthew, this was an old thread, and your comments add nothing to it.

If you have a problem, and it is not evident what the problem is, from your post, please start your own thread, rather than resurrecting or hijacking old ones, referring to different problems.

 

OMG! Why would I want or need to delete ALL partitions - including my HP recovery partition? Surely that would leave me with no way to recover my PC if the clean installation went wrong? I'd be scared stiff to do that!