Do not delete your Windows Recovery Partition without reading this!

cereberus · 05 Apr 2022

I was messing around with reagentc and I disabled winre, deleted partition and renabled it and sure, winre got re-enabled.

However I could not find winre.wim in windows\system32\recovery - the folder WindowsRE just did not exist, even when I has unhidden system files.

This really puzzled me, until I discovered a folder called Recovery in the Root drive of C. Sure enough, there was WinRe.wim in full glory.

This was on Windows 11 by the way So has something changed between W10 and W11?

I will do a clean install of W11 and W10 when I get a moment to check this.

Bree · 05 Apr 2022

cereberus said:

...This really puzzled me, until I discovered a folder called Recovery in the Root drive of C. Sure enough, there was WinRe.wim in full glory.
This was on Windows 11 by the way So has something changed between W10 and W11?

No, nothing has changed. Reagentc will prefer to make a recovery partition if possible, but sometimes it can't. In that case it puts it into C:\Recovery instead. I have one machine that upgraded from Win7 to Win10 years ago. Being an MBR install with 4 existing partitions the upgrade to 10 had no option but to to put it on C:.

cereberus · 05 Apr 2022

Bree said:

No, nothing has changed. Reagentc will prefer to make a recovery partition if possible, but sometimes it can't. In that case it puts it into C:\Recovery instead. I have one machine that upgraded from Win7 to Win10 years ago. Being an MBR install with 4 existing partitions the upgrade to 10 had no option but to to put it on C:.

That is not what I am saying. I deliberately removed partition so it would be on C drive, and others here say recovery partition is put under system32 folder which I see in other devices but mine was put in root drive.

Edit - just reread @Kyhi's explanation. So if I understand it correctly, the recovery folder under system32 is a parking space, but when enabled, winre.wim is in root recovery or new partition if available.

As an aside, I went through some hoops and loops using setreimage to get it enabled from system32. Now I realise I was overthinking it.

Bree · 05 Apr 2022

cereberus said:

Edit - just reread @Kyhi's explanation. So if I understand it correctly, the recovery folder under system32 is a parking space, but when enabled, winre.wim is in root recovery or new partition if available.

Yes, that is my understanding too. There is only ever one copy of winRE.wim, it's either in system32 when not enabled, or moved out to a partition or the C:\Recovery folder when enabled. That's what makes it vital to turn off the recovery environment before deleting any recovery partition.

Compumind · 05 Apr 2022

Kyhi · 05 Apr 2022

Yes winre parks in system32 - if recovery partition is present the wimre is moved to that partition when recovery enabled.. If partition not present, then winre moved to hidden "Recovery" folder on OS partition when recovery enabled

kado897 · 06 Apr 2022

Bree said:

No, nothing has changed. Reagentc will prefer to make a recovery partition if possible, but sometimes it can't. In that case it puts it into C:\Recovery instead. I have one machine that upgraded from Win7 to Win10 years ago. Being an MBR install with 4 existing partitions the upgrade to 10 had no option but to to put it on C:.

I've got both a recovery partition and C:\Recovery. This is Win 10 UEFI and has always been Win 10. I've never played with Reagentc so perhaps there is always a c:\Recovery.

hdmi · 06 Apr 2022

Kyhi said:

Yes winre parks in system32 - if recovery partition is present the wimre is moved to that partition when recovery enabled.. If partition not present, then winre moved to hidden "Recovery" folder on OS partition when recovery enabled

That's why I always enable recovery before I delete that partition. It's because if I don't, then I can't properly get rid of this WinRE.wim file, that it puts in C:\Windows\System32\Recovery where it keeps consuming valuable internal SSD space for no good reason at all. Instead, the file belongs on a USB flash drive that has been formatted with Ventoy and that also has the Windows Installation bootable ISO file on it─along with all the various OTHER bootable image files that might one day be of similar good use. That is, in a hopefully VERY distant future that would ideally be NEVER. It is the exact opposite logical reasoning to what has previously been suggested on here, as the WinRE is not normally needed until you run into a specific type of problem, one that is linked logically to repairing/restoring the Windows System partition's contents (such as, e.g, no longer being able to boot in Windows due to said contents having been corrupted somehow) and therefore potentially related also to the specific task of fixing primary internal storage hardware failure. So, it belongs in a separate cupboard with the rest of system backup Tools, at least if the goal is to have a tidier workspace as opposed to just creating yet another typical-old mess─the latter option being more akin to Microsoft's traditional style of always naturally getting things hopelessly wrong, etc.........

Bree · 06 Apr 2022

kado897 said:

I've got both a recovery partition and C:\Recovery. This is Win 10 UEFI and has always been Win 10. I've never played with Reagentc so perhaps there is always a c:\Recovery.

Yes, there is always a C:\Recovery folder, even when the recovery environment is in a partition of its own. There is only a C:\Recovery\WindowsRE folder when C:\Recovery contains the recovery environment.

Do not delete your Windows Recovery Partition without reading this!-recovery-no-winre.png.jpg

Do not delete your Windows Recovery Partition without reading this!-recovery-winre.png

kado897 · 06 Apr 2022

Bree said:

Yes, there is always a C:\Recovery folder, even when the recovery environment is in a partition of its own. There is only a C:\Recovery\WindowsRE folder when C:\Recovery contains the recovery environment.

Ah, ok thanks Bree.