Windows 10: Partitions on C Drive

I am not sure how or when this occurred but I somehow seem to have ended up with 2 Healthy (recovery partition) both of which are different sizes.





I assume I don't need both, but how do I determine which is being used?

Anyone??

TIA

:)

 

C Drive partitions

Hi,

The Recovery partition is not needed, but some of your Recovery features may not work without booting with a Repair CD or Installation Media... I delete mine...

One thing to consider though is the location of the Recovery Partition...

If it is before the EFI and\or C:\ Partitions, deleting it may mess up your boot...

Deleting it when in this position will be of little benefit anyway as it's in the wrong place to add it back to C:\...

The machine on which I delete the Recovery partition without issues, it is after C:\...

On my other machine where it is the first partition on the drive, I just leave it...

BTW... It would be a good idea to include both the EFI and Recovery in any image backup... Just in case...

 

c drive partition

It's much less involved to run a 3rd party utility..

 

From an elevated ("run as administrator") command prompt run:

reagentc /info

 

Wondering Same thing myself actually for my Windows 10 Home Install--

My reagentc /info results

Windows RE status: Enabled
Windows RE location: \\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk0\partition4\Recovery\WindowsRE
Boot Configuration Data (BCD) identifier: c870480f-b4a9-11e5-8260-40e230ceb70a
Recovery image location:
Recovery image index: 0
Custom image location:
Custom image index: 0

REAGENTC.EXE: Operation Successful.

 

You can also explore the Recovery partitions by running MiniTool Partition Wizard, right click on the partition and select explore:
Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Free

 

Ok One is the Original Asus Windows 8.1 System Recovery Image, and other is Windows RE (I suppose Windows 10 Recovery Parition)

 

Windows RE is only the troubleshooting menu that you get when you hold down shift and click restart from the power icon. It won't contain any system images. The Windows 8.1 factory system image won't do you much good after the upgrade to Windows 10 unless you have software (either factory restore discs or an option in bios) that will access it to restore the factory software load with.

Windows 10, by default, won't use an actual image to restore itself. Instead it uses files in the WinSxS to rebuild itself. So a clean install will only create 2 or 3 partitions - the OS partition, a small partition that contains the boot files, and a small recovery partition that contains nothing more than the troubleshooting menu. Sometimes the boot files partition and the recovery partition get combined.

 

Yeah my problem major one is I forgot to make the Recovery disc originally when I got the PC, guess to in a hurry to upgrade to Windows 10 like my old system was, didn't even find I had DVD's and extra USB drive til I already had 10 installed. Guess i'm SOL if hard drive ever dies and have problems going back to 10, which I hope I don't, but I guess will deal with it then I suppose, not sure if I can do much now

 

You can retrieve your Windows 8 product key with Showkey:
Showkey - Windows 10 Forums

and you can make a vanilla Windows 8.1 install DVD or flash drive:
Create installation media for Windows 8.1 - Windows Help


Also, since you have had Windows 10 on this computer once now, you can reinstall it any time later and skip entering the product key and it will activate using digital entitlement.

 

Oh Excellent, that relieves my worries then, and will remake a Vanialla Windows 8.1 Flash drive, may have one from old system, not sure at the moment will have to check lol, as well as get Windows 8 Product key with Showkey shortly.

 

These are the results when I ran 'reagentc /info'





It mentions partition 5, but the partitions aren't numbered - so still not being sure which is the unnecessary one I ran Partition Tool and this was the result..





The highlighted disc is the system one, disc 2 being a 'clone' backup created by Casper.

From these results I assume that the one being used is the WINRE partition (650MB) and the other partition Recovery Partition of 858MB is the one I can get rid of.
The Recovery Partition (18.8GB~) is the OEM partition which has the original 8.1 system backup and I'll get rid of that too.

Can anyone confirm if I'm right or wrong.

TIA

 

I would think that would be correct, and you can always restore it from your backup copy if it isn't!