Windows 10: windows 10 Anniversary upgrade created a recovery partition

Hi ,
after windows 10 anniversary upgrade installation i ran Disk Management and found a new created Recovery Partition as shown in picture . 845 MB , Healthy (Recovery partition). Is it necessary or can I delete it ?
The Upgrade installation has been absolutely successful , no problem at all.




:)

 

Recovery partition

I have an HP desktop running windows 10 home. It came with windows 8 and as such I upgraded it to windows 10 ANNIVERSARY VERSION).

It also came configured with a recovery image partition and am wondering if the upgrade upgraded the recovery partition to windows 10 from 8. It would seem as the recovery image partition is nothing more than an image as can be created from the backup page.

Any advice on how i can know what the existing partition contains? Was it upgraded to reinstall windows 8 or 10? What will happen if I use the partition to restore the computer?

Thanks for your help

 

Recovery partition in Windows 10

When you upgrade Windows 8.1 to 10, Windows 10 will create a recovery partition if your system reserved partition (MBR disk) or Recovery Partition doesn't have enough disk space. As you know, Windows can only shrink a partition from the right side,
so you should be able to tell which recovery partition is new created. If you
create Windows 10 recovery disk using a USB drive, then Windows will give you an option to delete the recovery partition.

 

You can check which recovery partition is registered with the command reagentc /info from elevated command prompt. You'll see something like this: Code: Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.14393] (c) 2016 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. C:\Windows\system32>reagentc /info Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) and system reset configuration Information: Windows RE status: Enabled Windows RE location: \\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk0\partition1\Recovery\WindowsRE Boot Configuration Data (BCD) identifier: 3d8f8337-bc56-11e5-a7c5-85493d747884 Recovery image location: Recovery image index: 0 Custom image location: Custom image index: 0 REAGENTC.EXE: Operation Successful. C:\Windows\system32>[/quote] To find which partition the number above you need to check diskpart as disk management doesn't show all partitions (the MSR partition specifically which is partition 3 normally). Again from elevated command prompt: Code: C:\Windows\system32>diskpart Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.14393.0 Copyright (C) 1999-2013 Microsoft Corporation. On computer: WIN10 DISKPART> select disk 0 Disk 0 is now the selected disk. DISKPART> list par 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 32 GB 717 MB Partition 5 Primary 55 GB 33 GB Partition 6 Unknown 23 GB 88 GB Partition 7 Unknown 619 MB 112 GB[/quote]
Perhaps it made a new one as 401MB is not big enough - normally it is 500MB AFAIK.

 

I just upgraded my laptop and I have no additional partition (see Partition Magic disk map below). Are you sure that recovery partition wasn't already present?

 

Hi Steve, I didn't get one either. I think the reason is that my recovery partition is 500MB and yours is 450MB. The OP had a recovery partition of 401MB. According to System builder deployment of Windows 10 for desktop editions

As Winre is (according to your picture) 354.21MB this might explain it - there wasn't enough free space for the required 50MB free space. This is only a guess though.

Anyway reagentc /info will show the registered Winre.wim and if the new partition (probably 5 for the OP) isn't being used it could be deleted. If it is then partition 1 could be deleted - you just don't want to delete the partition with the registered RE image really *Wink

 

To find which partition the number above you need to check diskpart as disk management doesn't show all partitions (the MSR partition specifically which is partition 3 normally). Again from elevated command prompt: Code: C:\Windows\system32>diskpart Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.14393.0 Copyright (C) 1999-2013 Microsoft Corporation. On computer: WIN10 DISKPART> select disk 0 Disk 0 is now the selected disk. DISKPART> list par 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 32 GB 717 MB Partition 5 Primary 55 GB 33 GB Partition 6 Unknown 23 GB 88 GB Partition 7 Unknown 619 MB 112 GB[/quote]
Perhaps it made a new one as 401MB is not big enough - normally it is 500MB AFAIK.[/quote] Hi , Ix07
following your instructions I 've got this below

 

That shows the new partition is being used as your recovery partition. You should not delete it.

You could delete partition 1 and move partition 2 and 3 to the left. You can't do it with MS utilities - you'd have to use something like Partition Wizard

For 401MB I'd not bother - it is not so much space really - but if you could.

 

using the EaseUs Partition Master free edition , I've got this

 

thanks a lot Ix07 for your help
in order to highlight the matter it is worth to mention the following :
when I create a backup using windows 7 included program omits partition 1 ( WINRE 401 MB ....) although Macrium Reflect and Acronis True Image don't . So, when restore from a System Image (backup) windows 7 backup program
fails , but Macrium Reflect and Acronis True Image restore successfully .

 

Does not surprise me - the Windows 7 tool has not been developed for years (clue is in the name). The 3rd party apps are just so superior.

 

Quite so - and it was only in 1511 that it was recommended WinRE came after C. Always in the past it was recommended (had to be perhaps?) before C. Not surprising Win 7 backup gets confused.

 

It looks like I'm going to have to completely reinstall Windows to get the Anniversary update. My laptop has a 450MB WINRE partition (before EFI and C partitions), and the update won't install at all. It generates an error that the recovery partition is too small. In the past, upgrades just created an extra recovery partition. Not that I want one.... This is on an HP x360 Spectre i7 with a 250GB SSD, and there's plenty of empty space on C. Has anyone seen this behavior?

 

Is this why I saw separate PE10 and PE10 1511 options for creating Macrium rescue media? I didn't know which to choose, to I let it choose, and it downloaded the regular PE10 version (even though the PC it was running on was Win10 AU).

Why does a clean installation from a Win10 AU ISO (onto a partitionless drive) still use 450MB before C then? Microsoft doesn't adhere to their new scheme?

I clean installed Win10 AU and it used the same old 450-99-C: structure.

When I tried upgrading an existing Win10 install to AU, it tacked a second 809MB recovery partition onto the end of C: (the last partition), even though there was unallocated space after C:.

 

I don't think so no. The PE10 1511 version is to support a new Bitlocker encryption option. If you don't use bitlocker it doesn't matter what you use and anyway Macrium will not care about the partition order.

Checking Win PE version?

You are quite right - 1607 still puts WinRE first on clean install

Actually if you partition yourself it doesn't matter at all what order you put your partitions as long as they are the right type. You can put your EFI partition first or last for example. To me the 1511 OEM recommendation makes more sense than what MS themselves currently do on clean install. Perhaps the people writing the installer haven't caught up yet - or perhaps the recommendation is out of date or perhaps they don't talk to each other - who knows.

This is the text of the recommendation for OEM deployment dated 25th August so 3 weeks after 1607 was released...

OEM deployment of Windows 10 for desktop editions