Windows 10: I got two recovery-partitions

After upgrade from previous 10 to Creators-upgrade I got two recovery-partitions next to the OS-partition.

So, one of the "old" Win-OS and the second for the upgrade.

Is it safe to remove one of them and which one .............??

How can I find out which one is the latest recovery-partition ??

:)

 

windows 10 upgrade installed two recovery partitions

I upgraded to Win 10 from Win 8.1 and now I have two recovery partitions. Why do I need two recovery partitions and can I delete one. I assume one of them is for windows 8.1

 

Windows 10 recovery partition

I recently bought a Toshiba computer which came with windows 8.1. The hard drive contained a win. 8.1 recovery partition, and I also created a usb recovery drive.

Then I did the upgrade to win.10 and once installed I created a usb recovery drive. At the very end of this procedure I got the message: "completed. Everything on the recovery partition on your hard drive has been copied to the usb drive."

What I need to know is what partition is it referring to? If a recovery partition was created during the upgrade to Win.10 then I can assume that the Win. 10 recovery partition was copied to the usb recovery drive, but if not, then all I did was create another
Win. 8.1 usb recovery drive. If this is the case then I have two usb Win. 8.1 recovery drives, both of which are worthless for diagnosing, repairing or reinstalling Win.10. So, in effect, I have no way to fix my Win.10 if it goes down.

This is a sad situation, and it makes me wonder why I upgraded in the first place.

So, what to do? Keep Win.10 with no recovery partitions or usb recovery drives to protect me, or go back to Win. 8.1 where I am protected with the recovery partition and USB recovery drive?

Is there anyone else out there who is dealing with this situation, and if so what are you doing about it?

Let me know.

Tiffany

 

From a command prompt (admin) run:

reagentc /info
diskpart
select disk 0
list part

Code: Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.15063] (c) 2017 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. C:\WINDOWS\system32>reagentc /info Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) and system reset configuration Information: Windows RE status: Enabled Windows RE location: \\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk0\partition4\Recovery\WindowsRE Boot Configuration Data (BCD) identifier: fcaab81a-8717-11e6-843d-aa73efa5da58 Recovery image location: Recovery image index: 0 Custom image location: Custom image index: 0 REAGENTC.EXE: Operation Successful. C:\WINDOWS\system32>diskpart Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.15063.0 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. On computer: JOHN-LAPTOP DISKPART> select disk 0 Disk 0 is now the selected disk. DISKPART> list part Partition ### Type Size Offset ------------- ---------------- ------- ------- Partition 1 System 100 MB 1024 KB Partition 2 Reserved 16 MB 101 MB Partition 3 Primary 446 GB 121 MB Partition 4 Recovery 825 MB 446 GB[/quote] On my computer partition 4 is the active recovery partition, but you have to be careful because the 16 MB Reserved partition will not show up in disk management. Windows RE Location tells you which partition is the active recovery partition.

 

Very good ! So now we can choose which partition to remove,if possible.
Would be great if we can give this useless space to the OS-partition, next to it.

Do you think we can safely do this, without negative consequences, and HOW................??

Other option is reinstall, or else you get again an extra partition, each time you make an upgrade.

btw; can we put all these partitions (on one SSD) together ,and format afterwards, before Windows reinstalls ?

You can see two partitions ; nr.3=456MB and nr.4=455MB So ,one of these two partitions " is too much" , can you see whch one is in use now , or which one is from previous upgrade ? 3 or 4 ?

 

The previous post by NavyLCDR tells you how to tell which is active one.

The other many be safely removed.

 

Sorry, its not clear to me !
You can see ; there are two (2) recovery-partitions on one(1) SSD. One of them is too much, you only need one recovery-partition.
Question remains; which one is in use and which one is useless space ! nr3 or nr4 ??
My situation is different then NavyLCDR , he has only one (1) recovery-partition and so it should be.

 

Your screen shot doesn't show the required information.
@NavyLCDR said to run reagentc /info

It will tell you what partition is registered as the recovery image.

This is mine and as you can see it is partition 1.
Code: Windows PowerShell Copyright (C) 2016 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. PS C:\Windows\system32> reagentc /info Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) and system reset configuration Information: Windows RE status: Enabled Windows RE location: \\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk0\partition1\Recovery\WindowsRE Boot Configuration Data (BCD) identifier: 3be03281-176e-11e7-b4ff-c30418e09fae Recovery image location: Recovery image index: 0 Custom image location: Custom image index: 0 REAGENTC.EXE: Operation Successful. PS C:\Windows\system32>[/quote]

For you it will be either 3 or 4 or (possibly) nothing. The one that isn't being used can be deleted. Probably for you the registered image will be in 3 and 4 can be deleted but you should check.

If you are not sure post the results of that command as it is cut off in your screenshot above.

 

Well, made the CMD again , and this is what we got now. It still does not tell us which is in use recovery nr.4-partition or recovery nr.3-partition .After looking at it, can you tell me which one to remove,safely ,and can we give this space ( which becomes unallocated!) to an other partition on this SSD ( to the OS-partition)......?

 

I can't really read your picture. Perhaps my eyes are bad. Paste it in text if you can.

It looks like it says Code: Windows RE status: Disabled[/quote]

If that is correct then we can delete 3 and register 4. Or delete both.

It depends really if you want to be able to use the Recovery Console in future or not.

 

The windows re status is disabled. That means neither is valid.

Just delete both - they are not that important - you can always use a usn installation drive to do the same thing anyway.

If you really want one, delete two old ones, download latest iso, double click on it and run setup.exe.

 

Yes, you have seen it well ! So ,the rec-partition is disabled and the location seems to be not known...............!!
My system-recovery is disabled in "my pc-system", which you can configure in Windows.
This Recovery Console is ment for system-copies ? Or when using the Windows Recovery-CD?
How can we delete 3 ( making it unallocated and then how to use this space again) and how to register 4....?

 

Recovery Console is pointless really if you have a USB key with Windows Installer on it because you can boot from that instead.

It is up to you really - it depends what you want to achieve. The easiest would be to delete both and forget about it. As long as you keep a Windows Installer USB you'll be fine.

Personally I would delete partition 4, extend 3 to take the unallocated space and replace the WinRE.wim with this.

Then register it with Reagentc /setreimage

 

" delete partition 4, extend 3 to take the unallocated space and replace the WinRE.wim with this " ..........you have more experience then I have , how can I do this in a SAFE way ( dont want to lose my OS !)

 

The most simple and obvious thing thing would be to do nothing at all. It is a perfectly sensible response. These partitions are not taking much space and are not doing anything.

Presumably they do bug you (as they would me) as you opened a thread about it.

I'm sorry if I was too fast and didn't give clear enough instructions but you have to understand that deleting partitions will cause you a problem if you delete the wrong one. If you delete the partition with all your data on it would be tiresome.

Anyway, this is what I would do.

Go to disk management (type *Start then type "Create and format ..." and you'll get a screen like this

• Right click on the last partition (number 4 in your case, the one on the RHS) and select "Delete volume".
• Then click on the one a bit further to the left and click on "Extend"
• Again right click on it and select "Mount". Pick a letter. "W" for example.
• Then download the recovery tools from here : Windows 10 Recovery Tools - Bootable Rescue Disk - - Windows 10 Forums
• Copy the .wim to the new extended partion and rename it WinRE.wim.
• Then register it by running the reagentc command something like this Code: C:\Windows\System32\Reagentc /setreimage /path T:\Recovery\WindowsRE /target W:\Windows[/quote] Source

Hmmm. I've re-read this and it isn't much better than my first attempt. I hope you get the idea though.