Windows 10: what partitions does windows automatically create during instalation

That guess might go along with this: "We recommend adding a separate partition for the Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) at the end of the hard drive. With this partition order, if future updates require adding to or replacing the Windows RE tools partition, Windows will be able to manage the partition size automatically." [excerpted from link in my prior post]

By "go along with", I mean maybe MS isn't willing to commit to 128 MB MSR (already whacked down to 16 MB now) being enough for "the future" expansion of WinRE and they're dodging this by suggesting WinRE be placed at the end, having left behind a "token" 16 MB MSR.

 

This allows future updates to Windows RE to grow the Windows RE partition by shrinking the Windows partition.

If you go back and look at any upgrade partition shceme - you will see the OEM winre partition before the windows partition..
And the upgrade winre right after the windows partition.. the reason is because you shrink from the right,, so leaving winre far right allows for shrinkage of C to expand RE..

Has nothing to do with MSR partition..

 

We have to be careful when referring to a Recovery partition, since there are two types. We also have to acknowledge configurations by OEMs can be different from a user install.

Microsoft recommends a 260 MB EFI partition for Native 4K drives, so some OEMs are using that but the Windows Install still uses 100 MB. I have not done a clean install with the latest releases in case they have even changed.

Converting a drive to GPT in a Windows environment will add a 128 MB partition in the wrong place, so I will usually let the install do that.

The 450 MB WinRE partition, as we all know was expanded from 300 MB (for UEFI) after the debacle that was the 8 to 8.1 upgrade.... And we know the Small Recovery partitions are in front of the C: partition except when they added the extra one after the C: partition because that one was easy to shrink.

 

Hi,

First of all , thanks for all the replies.

As far as I'm concerned, nothing to do with OEM stuff.
All my machines were upgrade installs converted into fresh installs on a "clean" disk afterwards.
I can't recall exactly when I started using W10, I guess I just did when they offered the free upgrade but I'm willing to start afresh with any current version just to find out.

The only thing that triggered my curiosity is that MS talks about a 16Mb MSR partition whilst I've never seen any of those on my machines. Not that it really matters, just curious that's all.
Just to be clear, I'm talking setup doing its thing. Not the user sysprepping a machine.

Cheers, *Wink

EDIT: Apologies to TS. I feel I've thread-jacked your thread for the sake of a 16Mb question.........

 

Acknowledged, @Kyhi . I confess I grabbed that excerpt and interpreted it out of context (i.e., I missed the key word "separate" for this WinRE they talk about - and thank you @Saltgrass in helping me realize that). I was on a path of interpreting MSR for "future use" to mean in case they wanted to increase the size of the WinRE (the one at front of the disk) in the future. Now I'm realizing that "they" includes OEMs (as opposed to only MS). I had thought perhaps the shift from 128 MB MSR to 16 MB MSR in the Win10 builds evolution (noted by topgundcp) was directly related to the growth of the WinRE from former size to the current 450 MB and was trying to rationalize it that way in response to fdegrove's question.

Love these discussions and thank you guys for letting me reveal my ignorance from time to time - it's about the best way I learn, through my mistakes.*Wink