Windows 10: what partitions does windows automatically create during instalation

i already have my pc updated with windows 10, i recently upgraded my hard drive with a samsung 850 pro ssd but i discovered that my recovery partition no longer works and when i try to do a system image windows says it cannot do it because files are missing . i used the samsung data migration software that came with my ssd, when i go to disk management it shows my three partitions which are

500mb recovery partition

260mb efi system partition

windows c 476.18 gb ntfs , boot,page file, crash dump, primary partition

my question is if i do a clean instal of windows 10 will these partitions be created again during the windows 10 installation automatically or will i loose some . i'm no computer expert so i don't know which ones i really need . i want to be able to recover my pc should i need to and have everything working . someone suggested that i dont need a recovery partition and windows 10 does not create new partitions . i don't know what the efi system partition is and don't know if i need it . i have watched some youtube videos of people doing clean installs of windows 10 and they all seem to differ . during installation when given the choice of where to install windows some people delete all the partitions on their hard drive while others pick which one . can anyone give me a guide and bear in mind i am no expert , which partitions do i really need , my pc came with the 3 partitions listed above, any help would be much appreciated

:)

 

I have upgraded to Windows 10 but need to completely reformat my hard drive to remove past partitions.

Create a Windows 10 reinstallation disk at

Download Windows 10

Boot with it and proceed through the installation procedure until you reach the volume selection screen. Use the disk tools below the volume selection window to remove and create partitions. You can create one large partition if you want. Windows 10 Setup
will create any small partitions it needs during reinstallation.

Finish reinstalling Windows 10. It will activate automatically based on the digital entitlement created during your first Windows 10 installation. No product key is needed.

 

Needs two partitions to boot

You don't need to create any partitions manually to install Windows 10.

Windows 10 setup automatically creates a system reserved partition during setup for storing recovery files.

How to: Perform a clean install of Windows 10

 

Windows will create 4 partitions:

• 450MB Recovery
• 100MB EFI System (Hidden from disk management)
• 16MB MSR
• The rest is your C: Drive

Just follow this link to fresh install:
Solved Gone forever? - Page 2 - Windows 10 Forums

 

MBR and GPT must have an effect as my 250GB SSD has 3 partitions and is GPT:

450MB Recovery
100MB EFI
232+GB C:

This was doing a clean install deleting all partitions and letting the installer create the partitions it wanted.

 

Hey, Ztruker, are you sure you have no MSR? Disk Management won't show it, but diskpart commands will.

 

Code: C:\Users\rrkurtz>diskpart Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.10586 Copyright (C) 1999-2013 Microsoft Corporation. On computer: DESKTOP DISKPART> list disk Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt -------- ------------- ------- ------- --- --- Disk 0 Online 232 GB 1024 KB * Disk 1 Online 1863 GB 1024 KB * Disk 2 Online 1397 GB 1024 KB Disk 3 No Media 0 B 0 B Disk 4 No Media 0 B 0 B DISKPART> sel disk 0 Disk 0 is now the selected disk. DISKPART> list par Partition ### Type Size Offset ------------- ---------------- ------- ------- Partition 1 Recovery 450 MB 1024 KB Partition 2 System 100 MB 451 MB Partition 3 Primary 232 GB 551 MB DISKPART> detail disk Samsung SSD 840 EVO 250GB Disk ID: {E4BF3C3A-B75D-48A2-A7C0-2860DEE59991} Type : SATA Status : Online Path : 0 Target : 0 LUN ID : 0 Location Path : PCIROOT(0)#PCI(1F02)#ATA(C00T00L00) Current Read-only State : No Read-only : No Boot Disk : Yes Pagefile Disk : Yes Hibernation File Disk : No Crashdump Disk : No Clustered Disk : No Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info ---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- -------- Volume 1 C Lenovo_C NTFS Partition 232 GB Healthy Boot Volume 2 RAW Partition 450 MB Healthy Hidden Volume 3 FAT32 Partition 100 MB Healthy System DISKPART>[/quote]

 

OK, thanks, Rich - it's surprising to me that a clean install would come out that way - every day I find a puzzle to attack here at TenForums. Any idea why you got this as opposed to the widely described and discussed inclusion of the 16 MB MSR for Win10 ?

 

Well. In one of his post, he deleted the 16MB MSR partition because he thinks it's not needed and saves 16MB..

@OP
For a fresh install. There must be 4 partitions as mentioned above

 

*Redface Now that you mention it, I do remember deleting two partitions I "thought" I didn't need. I'd completely forgotten about that. I used EaseUS Partition Manager and deleted the 16MB and 1.48GB partitions. This is what it looked like then:





Maybe I should do it one more time, only leave everything once I do a clean install after deleting all partitins on the drive and letting the Windows installer create what it wants.

Backup C:
Clean Install deleting all partitions
Restore C:
Fix boot error with Macrium.

That's what I did before and it worked great.

 

well i downloaded windows 10 on to a usb stick and followed the directions in the link but in diskpart it would not let me clean the c drive . so what i did is rebooted the pc and went in to boot manager and selected usb as boot and it all went smoothly after that and during the set up i just deleted all the partitions on the c drive until only the unallocated drive was remaining and selected that . in diskpart though, the steps you gave me was missing steps i had to type in, in order to try and clean the drive . i had to watch a youtube video which gave me the additional criteria i had to type in . windows created all the new partitions as you said they would so thank you for your help

 

Hi,

On all the EFI/GPT clean installs I did so far the partition scheme turned out like this. Ignoring partition #5 which was created by myself afterwards.
I possibly also moved the Recovery partition so it sits in front of the C:\ drive in case I need to expand that one.
Note the 128Mb partition which I suppose is the MSR partition created when a drive is converted to GPT.

Question is, why 128 Mb and not 16Mb ? Assuming this is the same MSR partition mentioned by you guys.

TIA, *Wink

 

128 MSR partition was always the standard, now it appears they allow 16MB MSR

 

128 MB MSR was in WIndows 8. Windows 10 MSR is 16 MB. See last bullet point under "What's New in Windows 10" on this page: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...(v=vs.85).aspx

 

I always look at the partition scheme on every build of Windows 10. In the earlier build 10125 and prior. MS has been adjusting those partitions until build 10135 and I do have backup of those builds.

Up til build 10125, the partition scheme was always the same as for Windows 8.1 and they made it permanent (450, 100, 16 and C drive for GPT disk)from build 10135 because more space needed to store WinRE.wim. So If you upgraded from the early build of Windows 10, you'll get that 128MB MSR.

Now, if you do a fresh install of the current build (10586), you'll get 16MB MSR. I guess MS figures that it does not need that much space for MSR partition. However, on a regular (non Windows OS) GPT data disk, the MSR partition still is 128MB and is the first partition of the disk. You can change the partition scheme as shown in this thread using Macrium:
Solved Help With Partition Management - Windows 10 Forums