Windows 10: THREE Recovery partitions?

Partitions deleted and C:/ expanded. Thanks guys!

 

Sorry to bust into this thread at such a later date, but I am in this exact position and I am hoping not to make you go through all the same motions. In my case I had the 495MB partition labelled as "recovery partition" sitting in between the space allocated for my C drive and a bunch of unallocated space, and I wanted to use the unallocated as part of my C drive. So I used Mini Tool Partition Wizard to move the recovery partition to the right of unallocated space so the unallocated was adjacent to C drive. Then I extended C drive. Now I have the following in disk management (left to right) : 100MB System Reserved, 222GB C drive, 1.1GB unallocated space, and finally on the right is 495MB Recovery partition.

This is all how I wanted it to be, only the problem is now when I run an elevated command of reagent /info, I get Windows RE status disabled. And when I type the command reagent /enable, I get: The Windows RE image was not found. How do I re-register to let Windows know where to find the recovery partition. It is partition 3 of disk 0. That is also what it was called before I moved things around. Thanks for helping.

 

Firstly please check with diskpart it is 3 not 4 as you may have a small MSR partition which is not shown in disk management between system and C. From elevated command prompt:

Code: diskpart select disk 0 list partition[/quote] Identify which partition is for RE by looking at the size (it will be either 3 or 4 - I'll assume 4 here) then still in diskpart:
Code: select partition 4 assign letter=T[/quote]
Then in file explorer you'll see T drive mapped. Check it doesn't look empty from properties (the Recovery directory is hidden system directory so you'd need to show hidden files and unhide system files in file explorer view to see it - there is no need - if the partition properties looks something like this then that will do).





From another elevated command prompt register the image and check. Code: Reagentc /setreimage /path T:\Recovery\WindowsRE /target C:\Windows Reagentc /info[/quote] If it worked then back in diskpart Code: remove letter=T exit[/quote]
More detailed steps can be found here Deploy Windows RE but you need to check the drive letters (you want to use C not W for the windows directory as you have an existing install).

Let us know if you have a problem.

 

Thank you very much for the help. I did run into a problem. I have to apologize that I am so illiterate in disk management. I ran into problems, but now it is working, but I do not know for sure how/why and also I have some questions.

I followed the instructions up through naming T partition and looking for it in file explorer. File explorer said the drive could not be accessed, it was not ready. At command prompt I got a similar response when trying to access T:. I went into MiniTool Partition Wizard and I could explore the partition and it looked reasonable. Out of desperation and not knowing what I was doing, I thought maybe the unallocated space between the C drive and the recovery partition might be a problem (at that point, the recovery partition was all the way on the right). So I moved the unallocated space to the far right, so that the recovery partition was just to the right of C drive, adjacent to it, and the unallocated space was on the far right. At that point I rebooted and then the recovery environment appeared to be working because when I did a command for reagent /info it told me RE status is enabled. So that is good, but I am totally lost as to what made it work, because as a test I once again put unallocated space between the C drive partition and the recovery partition to see if now it would no longer work again. But it still appears to be working even with the space between them, so apparently that was not the problem after all. So I have no idea, but I would like to understand because surely I will run into this again.

Along those same lines, I have a question about moving partitions. Earlier in this thread you told the OP to move the recovery partition all the way to the left so that he could extend the C drive into the unallocated spaces to the right. But to do that, he would have to move the recovery to the left side of C drive partition. How do you do that? I would like to move mine so that it is to the left of C drive, but I cannot figure how to do it. It only lets me move partitions to the left or right if there is unallocated space adjacent. Thanks for the help, and please pardon my ignorance.

 

I can't really understand what you are saying with that huge block of text.

I did try to read it several times it but I can't understand it. I get confused by left and right (I have a small mole on my left wrist to help).

The partition layout should look like this (ideally)





Configure UEFI/GPT-Based Hard Drive Partitions

It doesn't really matter if they are in a different order long as all the partitions exist and are correctly defined.

 

Sorry I was too wordy. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it hurts. This is what I have now and it is working now. What I am wondering is if there is a way to move the recovery partition over to the left before C, adjacent to the System Reserved partition? You had told someone to do that, but I don't know how. If so, how? Or is that not a good thing to do? Thanks.

 

I would leave it as it is (you can extend C to use the free 148GB).

Ideally (according to MS anyway) the recovery partition would be partition 1. Like this Code: Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.10586] (c) 2015 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. C:\WINDOWS\system32>diskpart Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.10586 Copyright (C) 1999-2013 Microsoft Corporation. On computer: HALI-WIN10 DISKPART> select disk 0 Disk 0 is now the selected disk. DISKPART> list partition Partition ### Type Size Offset ------------- ---------------- ------- ------- Partition 1 Recovery 500 MB 20 KB Partition 2 System 200 MB 500 MB Partition 3 Reserved 16 MB 701 MB Partition 4 Primary 110 GB 717 MB DISKPART>[/quote]
To do that before extending C you'd have to move it 500MB to the right, then System reserved 500MB to the right, then recovery to the far left (position 1) then extend C. Finally then re-register WinRE in Partition 1. Hope that makes sense *Smile

However lots of OEM seem to put the recovery on the right (like you have it) so if it is working I'd leave it.

 

To do that before extending C you'd have to move it 500MB to the right, then System reserved 500MB to the right, then recovery to the far left (position 1) then extend C. Finally then re-register WinRE in Partition 1. Hope that makes sense *Smile

However lots of OEM seem to put the recovery on the right (like you have it) so if it is working I'd leave it.[/quote] Yes, that is how I want to make mine look, just like you have it here. And I understand your instructions of where to move things. What I cannot figure out is how to move the recovery to the far left position. I am using MiniTool Partition Wizard and it won't let me move anything to the left unless there is blank space adjacent. That is, it won't let me "jump over" the system partition to get to the far left. I can free up space at the left, but then I am stuck since I cannot move the recovery there. How do I do that?

 

You have to copy the recovery partition into the free space at the beginning of the disc instead of moving it. Then you will have to assign it a drive letter and run the reagentc /setreimage /path command again.

 

Ok, thanks. So how do I copy the recovery partition into the free space at the beginning of the disk? That is, what are the actual steps/commands to do that?

 

In MinTool Partition Wizard you highlight the existing recovery partition and click the copy icon then you select the free space at the beginning of the disk to copy it to.

 

Everbody seems to be forgetting the 16MB msr partition that cannot be moved even with tools like minitool partition manager. No only do you have to move partitiins around, you need to delete and recreate the partition.

All that needs to be done here as said earlier is move recovery to far right and expand c drive so order is

efi, msr, c drive, recovery.

It does not matter in the slightest if recovery is at one end or other end.

All my pcs which were upgrades to 10 are setup like that.

The recommended order is simply to have the three sysytem partitions on left, followed by c drive, then it is easy to shrink c drive and create other drive partitions to left using windows. It is not a requirement of eufi.

You would go though a lot of effort, with a risk of screwing things up for ABSOLUTELY NO GAIN!

 

I just delete it. Never had a negative impact with it gone.

Agreed!

 

True but defeats the point of OP trying to get the ideal (but pointless here) layout!

 

That is exactly why I wanted to re-order things, to make it easier to shrink and expand C drive. This helps somewhat in making backups and moving to a smaller hard drive. For whatever reason, I do not have the 16MB msr. I made plenty of backup images before fooling around with this, otherwise I would definitely leave well enough alone.