Windows 10: How to Reconfigure Creators Update Recovery Partition?

My Dell Inspiron 7537 laptop running W10 Home finally updated via Windows Update yesterday!

All is fine but I noticed a new 924MB recovery partition has been added to the end of the drive making the original 450MB recovery partition at the start of the drive redundant (see drive map).

I could use MiniTool Partition Wizard (MPW) to delete the first 450MB recovery partition, move the 99MB and 16MB system partitions 2 & 3 to the start of the drive then expand the main OS partition to use up the space released.

Will relocating the system partitions 2 & 3 using MPW cause any problems such as rendering the PC unbootable? Is there a recommended way of deleting the original recovery partition and recovering the disk space?





:)

 

Windows 10 Updates

How many times will i have to reconfigure all my options because of your stupid updates, this "creator's update" even deleted my restore points. nice job microsoft.

 

CU Privacy Settings (KB4013214) remains dormant

Hello,

Issue as such can be a result of some changes in the configuration settings after the
Creators Update. To better assist you with your concern, we recommend that you check on this
link
to be guided on how you can reconfigure your privacy settings.

Give us an update with the outcome.

 

That is exactly the order MS recommend.

The new partition layout resembles the traditional partition layouts from Windows 8.1, except the Windows RE partition is now moved to the end of the drive, and there is no longer a need for a separate full-system recovery partition.


Manufacturing Windows Engineering Guide | Microsoft Docs

It will certainly boot if you rearrange your partitions like that.

It isn't terribly important as you don't really need a recovery partition if you have a installation USB but for completeness after you have finished moving the partitions you will need to use the reagentc command to reregister the WinRE image. Currently it is partition 5 - if you delete a partition the recovery image will be in in partition 4. It is described here Deploy Windows RE | Microsoft Docs

Esentially you temporarily assign the recovery partition a letter (eg T) in diskpart

• diskpart
• select disk 0
• select partition 4
• assign letter=T

Then reregister the WinRE image from command prompt

• Reagenc /disable
• Reagentc /setreimage /path T:\Recovery\WindowsRE /target C:\Windows
• Reagenc /enable
• Reagentc /info

 

Just curious, what did they include in the 925mb recovery partition, that partition is twice the prior size

 

Most of the space is taken up by winre.wim but only 61% of the partition space is used:

 

Size often seems a bit random when at end of drive - never worked out why.

 

Code: DISKPART> list part Partition ### Type Size Offset ------------- ---------------- ------- ------- Partition 1 Reserved 128 MB 17 KB (MSR) Partition 2 System 200 MB 129 MB (EFI) Partition 3 Primary 464 GB 329 MB (Windows) Partition 4 Recovery 1000 MB 464 GB (Recovery) DISKPART>[/quote] I created the partition manually as above

The partition 1 "Reserved" is created automatically by "convert GPT"
then I did not create 16MB MSR which seems useless

Any advice ?

 

WinRE is bigger than standard. Mine is 362 while yours is 554. Perhaps it has some customisations.

The rules for Recovery partition size have big jumps based on the size of the WinRE.wim

UEFI/GPT-based hard drive partitions | Microsoft Docs

568+320 = 878 which is about 924. More or less *Smile

 

I created the partition manually as above

The partition 1 "Reserved" is created automatically by "convert GPT"
then I did not create 16MB MSR which seems useless

Any advice ?[/quote] 128MB reserved is created when you format GPT disk but you can delete it. You certainly don't need it on system disk and I don't think you need it on data disks either as OSX doesn't create it and these disks work fine with Windows.

I'd put EFI first. 200MB is fine although 100MB is probably sufficient unless you are dual booting. I dual boot with OSX and it expects a 200MB ESP.

Probably you are right and the MSR is useless (Windows seems to work OK without) but MS say to create it so I do - it should come before C and be 16MB only. Perhaps it will be required for something in future.

3 and 4 look OK.

There is a script for doing it here which includes the GPT flags etc you need to set Code: rem == CreatePartitions-UEFI.txt == rem == These commands are used with DiskPart to rem create four partitions rem for a UEFI/GPT-based PC. rem Adjust the partition sizes to fill the drive rem as necessary. == select disk 0 clean convert gpt rem == 1. System partition ========================= create partition efi size=100 rem ** NOTE: For Advanced Format 4Kn drives, rem change this value to size = 260 ** format quick fs=fat32 label="System" assign letter="S" rem == 2. Microsoft Reserved (MSR) partition ======= create partition msr size=16 rem == 3. Windows partition ======================== rem == a. Create the Windows partition ========== create partition primary rem == b. Create space for the recovery tools === shrink minimum=500 rem ** NOTE: Update this size to match the rem size of the recovery tools rem (winre.wim) plus free space ** rem == c. Prepare the Windows partition ========= format quick fs=ntfs label="Windows" assign letter="W" rem === 4. Recovery tools partition ================ create partition primary format quick fs=ntfs label="Recovery tools" assign letter="R" set id="de94bba4-06d1-4d40-a16a-bfd50179d6ac" gpt attributes=0x8000000000000001 list volume exit[/quote]

 

No customisations. I just let Windows Update upgrade to the CU and the larger partition at the end of the drive is what it decided to install.

 

thanks for your help, lx07

still thinking about this

I am now convinced I will remove the Recovery partition and put WinRE in "C:\Recovery" directory which exists in standard installation
In case of problem on main Windows partition, WinPE on USB key is a also a good recovery

 

Thanks to all for your help.

I just updated another PC to the CU and that just replaced the previous recovery partition at the end of the drive with a larger 900MB+ recovery partition.

I modified the partitions on my laptop as mentioned in post 1. MiniTool Partition Wizard gave an error trying to extend Drive C: whilst in Windows so I booted to KYHI's recovery disk and used Partition Wizard from there which worked. Does Partition Wizard often give errors when you try to reconfigure the C: drive?

I used the commands recommended by lx07 post 2 to reconfigure Win RE on my laptop. I got an error saying that drive T could not be accessed but reagentc /info reports the recovery environment is correctly configured and I checked it works. Go figure.

 

It should say it can't do it and ask you to reboot. It then makes changes to C before Windows starts as it can't move C while it is in use - same as running it from PE really. I've only used it to do that once (to swap C and the partition I had for OSX) though. Normally I create partitions manually and reinstall as moving partitions is very slow.

Don't know about that. Perhaps the letter wasn't assigned. Still if it works there is nothing to worry about.