Question re: Recovery partitions, Macrium

robkay · 27 Mar 2020

My project is to clone my HDD C: to a new, larger SSD. I think I have things pretty well figured out, but I am not comfortable with the situation in my current Recovery Partition. Below is a pic of my current partitioning scheme.

Question re: Recovery partitions, Macrium-partitionpic00.png

As far as I can figure out, the partitions purposes are as follows (correct me if I'm wrong):
1- This appears to me to be the original, Lenovo OEM Win 8 recovery partition and is obsolete now that I am on W10 1909.
2- Windows "System" partition.
3- The MS Reserved partition.
4- My W10 O/S partition.
5- One of my Data partitions
6- Another Data partition
7- This one is a bit of a mystery. It is "explorable" with EaseUS, however shows absolutely no content. My conclusions is that it is an abandoned Recovery partition that got created somewhere through the updates from Win 8 to 8.1, to various updates to Win 10.
8- This is my current Recovery Partition. It is over 8g in size which is ridiculous.
In exploring it with EaseUS, it appears that when this one got created they created a folder named "Recovery" with a subfolder called "WindowsRE" and this is the current MS Windows recover environment.
However it appears that they pulled along the contents of the old Lenovo OEM Recovery partition which are in a folder named "Recovery Image" with a subfolder named "Lenovo." All of the files here are dated like 2013 and this is where the disk consumption is occurring. Install.wim is 6gb and there is one called wdrive.zip at 450mb. I'm pretty sure all of this stuff is Windows 8, so I don't need any of that.

I think I want to have a (MS) Recovery Partition, however I want to get rid of that "Recovery Image" folder, as Lenovo's recovery crap does me no good since it is Win8 and is consuming several gb's of space.

Does anyone have any direction on how I can do that? With UEFI/GPT I don't think you can assign a drive letter to the partition anymore to possibly maintain the contents of the partition.

Thanks in advance!

dalchina · 27 Mar 2020

Hi, the 8th ought to be your factory reset partition.

Macrium Reflect has an option on the left of its GUI which should automatically select the partitions required to fully image all partitions comprising Windows. 'Create an image of the partitions'

If you click that, the relevant partitions should be ticked. Typically 4 for a UEFI installation.

The current recovery partition number (5 in my example) can be identified thus:

Question re: Recovery partitions, Macrium-1.png

and compared with this list:

Question re: Recovery partitions, Macrium-2.png

A current recovery partition might look like this:

Question re: Recovery partitions, Macrium-3.png

robkay · 27 Mar 2020

Thanks for the reply. I didn't see all of the detailed imaging at first. Thanks for your trouble in doing that!

Right--I think I got the Macrium part. But, I would never want to do a factory reset as it would put me back on Win8. All I care about is a MS Recovery Partition and in W10 I believe it is now placed at the end of the list. (I know that they prefer it to be before the data partitions. That I can fix in the cloning. Actually--my data is going to end up being external anyway.)

Regarding your 3rd pic under "A current recovery partition might look like this:", yes! That is the kind of currently dated stuff that is in the "Windows RE" folder in that partition. That is what I would expect. However, the folder named "Recovery Image" is where all of the old Lenovo stuff that I do not want is, and that is what I want to get rid of. I don't want to carry an 8g recover folder over to my new SSD.

So, my question, really is how to preserve the 8- Recovery Partition (or create a new one) without that 6g's+ of Lenovo crap.

dalchina · 27 Mar 2020

I think you may be asking the wrong question - at least I hope so. I've never heard of an 8Gb Win 10 Recovery partition. Its name is a big clue.

a. Check which is your current recovery partition. I've given you the tools. Please use them.
b. You can delete any partition using a partition manager of course.

I'd also amend my previous comment as I recall that sometimes MR doesn't get that selection right, so use the admin command prompt as I've shown.

robkay · 27 Mar 2020

Thanks. Yes, I've already done all of that and, yes, "8" is the current recovery partition pointed to.
I know--like I said originally, 8g is ridiculous and it appears to be because they pulled along the contents of the original Lenovo factory reset partition. Let me put a couple more images below to better illustrate what is in "8". Be sure to note the dates and file sizes. Also, please read the comments I added to my post above. THX!

Question re: Recovery partitions, Macrium-partitionpic10.png

Question re: Recovery partitions, Macrium-partitionpic11.png

Question re: Recovery partitions, Macrium-partitionpic12.png

dalchina · 27 Mar 2020

If you were to allocate it a drive letter you may be able to delete what you don't want in that partition, then remove the drive letter and shrink the partition.

E.g.

Not sure if you've used the command prompt as I showed to prove that's the current recovery partition. Please confirm- it sounds as if you may have.

robkay · 27 Mar 2020

Not sure if you've used the command prompt as I showed to prove that's the current recovery partition. Please confirm- it sounds as if you may have.

Yes, I've already done all of that and, yes, "8" is the current recovery partition pointed to.

If you were to allocate it a drive letter you may be able to delete what you don't want in that partition, then remove the drive letter and shrink the partition.

In your illustration, is your 'Disk 1 Samsung' drive GPT or MBR? Because under GPT I don't think MS let's you assign a drive letter to the partition anymore. I have EaseUS which has the option to change drive letters, but for those system and recovery partitions the option is not in the drop-down menu. -THX

Kyhi · 27 Mar 2020

8 - is your OEM Factory Recovery - from 2013

robkay · 27 Mar 2020

Yes, 2013. That s/b visible in the 3rd image in post 5 above. Pretty sure that's going to be Win 8 because that's what the machine came with new. THX

dalchina · 27 Mar 2020

Mine's GPT. And other threads on tenforums have used the allocation of a drive letter to a recovery partition.

There are two other possible approaches:

a. Build a new Recovery partition - I think this is how:
How to Create a Recovery Partition in Windows 10 (Custom Factory Reset)

(not something I've looked into).

or

b. Clean install Win 10 on your new disk
Then transfer just your C: partition from your old disk in place of the new one created on your new disk.