Windows 10: Recovery Partition that I did not have with 8.1

I didn't know where else to post this weird one. Did the first Win 10 image on a desktop and noticed a Recovery Partition. On one of two desktops.
Both desktops were installed with Windows 7 Pro oem updated to 8.0/8.1/10 which means it never had a Recovery partition to begin with. It is only 450 mb

It has a WindowsRE folder with boot.sdi + ReAgent.xml + Winre.wim files. I can't read the xml file unless I do some fancy footwork. lol

The only difference between the two is that this one has the 100mb partition and the other doesn't.

Any ideas ? If I delete it, I am afraid I my have to do a clean install for a reason I can't see.

Thanks

:)

 

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

 

upgrade to Win 10 but Too Many Recovery Partitions from Win 8.1

ok i have a question

when i upgraded to Win 8.1 from Win 8 the upgrade added a new 350mb Recovery Partition to my hard drive

then i had trouble and had to restore my pc back to factory original (my pc is a HP pc) this took me back to Win 8 but did not remove the new 350mb Recovery Partition that i got with the first upgrade to Win 8.1

so now after the restore back to factory original i install Win 8.1 again and Win 8.1 add's a new 350mb Recovery Partition so now i have 2 350mb Recovery Partitions and 1 351.8mb Windows RE tools

Windows Defrag see these partitions as Local Disk (\\?\VOLUME and can not defragment them

now i found someone that had restored his computer the same way i did and had 13 350mb Recovery Partitions

Too Many Recovery Partitions

Need Help - Too Many Recovery Partitions

now for my question

what happens to all the people like me that has had this happen to there computers and have a lot of added 350mb Recovery Partitions when thay upgrade to Windows 10

thanks



James

 

It would help if you post the screen shot of disk management for each PC. Also screen shot of the result by opening the Admin command prompt and run: reagentc /info then we can go from there.

 

Yes, you can delete the recovery partition and expand the system partition into the empty space. A Windows 10 recovery or install drive or disk will do the same function for you.

 

What is the purpose of that 100mb recovery partition please? (I'd really like to know)

 

Carried over from Windows 7.
First, it holds the Boot Manager code and the Boot Configuration Database. Second, it reserves space for the startup files required by the BitLocker Drive Encryption feature. If you ever decide to encrypt your system drive using BitLocker, you won’t have to repartition your system drive to make it possible.

For Windows 7/8/10, MBR only:
If you install Windows without formatting the drive, leave it unallocated then Windows will create the reserved partition. If you format the drive first then Windows will put thw WinRe tool in C drive and not creating the reserved partition. Of course you won't have the bitlocker feature available.

 

Nice explanation. I had the two built for me. Got tired of building myself !!

Thank You

 

Why Me don't break into a thread. Make your own.

 

topgungcp please reply to me again, thread got screwed up

 

As said above, the first PC, Windows 7 was installed with the drive pre-formatted so Windows installation put the Recovery Tool in C Drive as seen in the result of Reagentc /info. Winre.wim is in partition 1, which is your C drive.

Second PC. Windows was installed without first formatted the drive as explained in post #6 above.

If you delete those partitions then you won't be able to get into the Recovery Environment from Windows. You must use either the Windows Installation disk or the Recovery disk that you created. Personally I would not delete them because they are there for a reason otherwise MS won't create them.

NOTE: The Recovery environment in your 2nd PC was broken so it was disabled.

 

OK, got it. I image my drives so don't care about recovery. The extra partitions just confuse me.

 

Apologies. It seemed relevant to the topic since you were asking whether the partition was needed. I thought it relevant that you should know the purpose of the recovery partition. I would not have posted here if I thought it did not add to the topic

Apologies again

 

On this system:




If it were me, I would delete the 450mb recovery partition on Disk 1 and expand the C: drive partition into the free space. On a system where vanilla Windows has created the Recovery partition and not the manufacturer of the computer, everything that can be done with that recovery partition can also be done with a Windows Restore Disk, an image disk, or the Windows installation disk. Since I have at least 2 out of those 3 disks available to me (and it sounds like you do to), I have no need to keep the recovery partition. Windows puts that recovery partition there so a user who does not have the resource disks available to them can reinstall Windows (hopefully). If I need to, I can just boot from my Windows installation drive and get the exact same functions.

 

His explanation may be why you ended up with that, makes sense.