Do not delete your Windows Recovery Partition without reading this!

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  1. Posts : 15,441
    Windows10
       #41

    hdmi said:
    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.........
    There is one good reason for keeping WinRe enabled. Macrium Reflect requires an active winre.wim to produce a winre rescue drive. I use that as it does not need the large winpe download, and also backing up over wifi needs winre mode. I also find Reflect picks up non standard drivers more effectively than winpe mode.
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  2. Posts : 1,203
    11 Home
       #42

    cereberus said:
    There is one good reason for keeping WinRe enabled. Macrium Reflect requires an active winre.wim to produce a winre rescue drive. I use that as it does not need the large winpe download, and also backing up over wifi needs winre mode. I also find Reflect picks up non standard drivers more effectively than winpe mode.
    That's not a problem to me, as I don't use Macrium Reflect, and in fact it is one of those multiple reasons why I never do. I know that I could always rebuild my Recovery partition should I ever need to, but no matter how hard I kept trying to imagine a situation where that might actually be needed, I always kept failing, so eventually I gave up.
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  3. Posts : 15,441
    Windows10
       #43

    hdmi said:
    That's not a problem to me, as I don't use Macrium Reflect, and in fact it is one of those multiple reasons why I never do. I know that I could always rebuild my Recovery partition should I ever need to, but no matter how hard I kept trying to imagine a situation where that might actually be needed, I always kept failing, so eventually I gave up.
    It is not mandatory to have WinRe with Reflect - I do not see that is a specific valid reason not to use Reflect UNLESS image backing up over wifi is important. Of course, you can have your own personal preferences to use other image tools (or not as you prefer).

    My point was WinRe has a specific user for me. It would be boring if we were all the same.
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  4. Posts : 31,459
    10 Home x64 (22H2) (10 Pro on 2nd pc)
       #44

    cereberus said:
    There is one good reason for keeping WinRe enabled. Macrium Reflect requires an active winre.wim to produce a winre rescue drive.
    It doesn't have to be enabled, just present on the system. Macrium reflect will copy winre.wim from C:\Windows\System32\Recovery if it's there, which it is when disabled.

    Macrium said:
    The folowing folders, and sub-folders are searched for file WinRE.wim
    C:\Windows\System32\Recovery
    <ALL VOLUMES>\Recovery
    Rescue Media Builder - Knowledgebase 8.0 - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase
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  5. Posts : 1,203
    11 Home
       #45

    cereberus said:
    It is not mandatory to have WinRe with Reflect
    I know. That's why I was only referring to the part about producing a WinRE rescue drive in order to avoid the large WinPE download. I.e., by choosing to use the bootable ISO of Acronis, I can simply avoid both of these two limitations/drawbacks at once. It's kind of like killing two birds with one stone in this regard, therefore I have added it to my list of multiple reasons why I don't use Macrium Reflect.
    - I do not see that is a specific valid reason not to use Reflect UNLESS image backing up over wifi is important.
    I don't create images over WiFi. Yet, despite that, I do consider the aforementioned limitations/drawbacks valid reasons why someone would want to avoid using Macrium Reflect. They certainly are not the ONLY valid reasons. But then, they all add up...
    Of course, you can have your own personal preferences to use other image tools (or not as you prefer).
    Personal preferences have no effective impact on which tools I decide to use. As a trained software developer, an important part of my job is to apply maths as a strategy to eliminate human biases like this, it is what I have been doing for a living. It is a preference alright. Just not much of a personal one, as it is first and foremost about plain logic being delivered, coldly, and in the strictest possible sense. A methodically calculated answer to a professional problem.
    My point was WinRe has a specific user for me. It would be boring if we were all the same.
    Of course. You wouldn't believe me if I told you how categorically different I think I am, but statistical research has shown elsewhere that there exists a distinct correlation of sorts between being so overly different that it actually becomes rare and therefore usually too hard to even begin to discuss─only about 2-2.5% of general population fits the description of what I am trying to point to here BTW─and suffering an elevated risk of experiencing bore-outs. This might come across as a little bit too vague, I admit, but I don't intend to derail this thread, so I'll only add that Dr. James T. Webb, Ph.D was the author of many publications and some books that help to explain quite a few interesting discoveries.
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  6. Posts : 50,055
    Windows 10 Home 64bit 21H1 and insider builds
       #46

    hdmi said:
    I know. That's why I was only referring to the part about producing a WinRE rescue drive in order to avoid the large WinPE download. I.e., by choosing to use the bootable ISO of Acronis, I can simply avoid both of these two limitations/drawbacks at once. It's kind of like killing two birds with one stone in this regard, therefore I have added it to my list of multiple reasons why I don't use Macrium Reflect.

    I don't create images over WiFi. Yet, despite that, I do consider the aforementioned limitations/drawbacks valid reasons why someone would want to avoid using Macrium Reflect. They certainly are not the ONLY valid reasons. But then, they all add up...

    Personal preferences have no effective impact on which tools I decide to use. As a trained software developer, an important part of my job is to apply maths as a strategy to eliminate human biases like this, it is what I have been doing for a living. It is a preference alright. Just not much of a personal one, as it is first and foremost about plain logic being delivered, coldly, and in the strictest possible sense. A methodically calculated answer to a professional problem.

    Of course. You wouldn't believe me if I told you how categorically different I think I am, but statistical research has shown elsewhere that there exists a distinct correlation of sorts between being so overly different that it actually becomes rare and therefore usually too hard to even begin to discuss─only about 2-2.5% of general population fits the description of what I am trying to point to here BTW─and suffering an elevated risk of experiencing bore-outs. This might come across as a little bit too vague, I admit, but I don't intend to derail this thread, so I'll only add that Dr. James T. Webb, Ph.D was the author of many publications and some books that help to explain quite a few interesting discoveries.
    The WinPE download is a lot smaller than it used to be in W7 as only the bits needed are downloaded now, not the whole WAIK.
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  7. Posts : 1,203
    11 Home
       #47

    kado897 said:
    The WinPE download is a lot smaller than it used to be in W7 as only the bits needed are downloaded now, not the whole WAIK.
    It's 1.58GB for the ADK, 2.95GB for the WinPE addon, so... still 4.53GB in total.
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  8. Posts : 11
    Win 10 Pro x64 22H2
       #48

    I just noticed this thread today, and it reminded me of some recent experiences when changing from a SATA to M.2 SSD using Macrium Reflect Free to back up and restore using an image. The original SATA SSD had a weird partition order, with an unused recovery partition first, and the active recovery partition last.

    When restoring, I dragged the partitions around, eliminating the unused recovery partition and putting the partitions into Microsoft's recommended order (System, MSR, Windows, Recovery).

    I was initially unable to reboot the new configuration, and after unsuccessfully trying a few things (fix boot problems in Macrium etc.), I finally got it fixed by configuring my BIOS to UEFI mode. It was set to CSM before, but used the UEFI option within CSM. That didn't work. It had to be forced to UEFI.

    All was well after that, except the actual recovery partition, according to reagentc, was the Windows partition and not the separate partition designated and allocated for that purpose. I finally fixed that by using diskpart to temporarily assign an R: drive letter to the designated separate recovery partition, finding the winre.wim and ReAgent.xml on a windows ISO I had, and copying them to the proper directory on the R: drive. Then I used the /setreimage option to reagentc to specify the location on the R: drive for the Windows RE image. Then I unassigned the R: drive letter to prevent accidental access to the recovery partition.

    This all worked fine, although it took a long time to figure out. One post I read earlier on tenforums talked about extracting winre.wim and ReAgent.xml from a numbered subdirectory of the install.esd archive in the \sources directory of the ISO. That post said it didn't matter which of the directories 1 through 7 you used to get those files. Unfortunately, I can't find that post now.

    After reading this post though, I got paranoid, thinking I might have extracted the Windows RE image for the wrong Windows version. I used the "1" subdirectory of the install.esd archive, although I use Windows 10 Pro. So as a test, I tried extracting to my data hard drive the winre.wim and ReAgent.xml from the subdirectories 1, 4, and 6 (Windows Home, Education and Pro) of the install.esd archive, giving them different names. Using the Windows fc.exe (file compare) utility, I determined that for these 3 Windows versions at least, all of the winre.wim and ReAgent.xml were binary identical.

    So it was a relief knowing I didn't have to do yet more work to get it all right.

    - - - Updated - - -

    andyc56 said:
    One post I read earlier on tenforums talked about extracting winre.wim and ReAgent.xml from a numbered subdirectory of the install.esd archive in the \sources directory of the ISO. That post said it didn't matter which of the directories 1 through 7 you used to get those files. Unfortunately, I can't find that post now.
    I found the post in question (too late to edit my original post).
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  9. Posts : 18,424
    Windows 11 Pro
       #49

    andyc56 said:
    I just noticed this thread today, and it reminded me of some recent experiences when changing from a SATA to M.2 SSD using Macrium Reflect Free to back up and restore using an image. The original SATA SSD had a weird partition order, with an unused recovery partition first, and the active recovery partition last.

    When restoring, I dragged the partitions around, eliminating the unused recovery partition and putting the partitions into Microsoft's recommended order (System, MSR, Windows, Recovery).

    I was initially unable to reboot the new configuration, and after unsuccessfully trying a few things (fix boot problems in Macrium etc.), I finally got it fixed by configuring my BIOS to UEFI mode. It was set to CSM before, but used the UEFI option within CSM. That didn't work. It had to be forced to UEFI.

    All was well after that, except the actual recovery partition, according to reagentc, was the Windows partition and not the separate partition designated and allocated for that purpose. I finally fixed that by using diskpart to temporarily assign an R: drive letter to the designated separate recovery partition, finding the winre.wim and ReAgent.xml on a windows ISO I had, and copying them to the proper directory on the R: drive. Then I used the /setreimage option to reagentc to specify the location on the R: drive for the Windows RE image. Then I unassigned the R: drive letter to prevent accidental access to the recovery partition.

    This all worked fine, although it took a long time to figure out. One post I read earlier on tenforums talked about extracting winre.wim and ReAgent.xml from a numbered subdirectory of the install.esd archive in the \sources directory of the ISO. That post said it didn't matter which of the directories 1 through 7 you used to get those files. Unfortunately, I can't find that post now.

    After reading this post though, I got paranoid, thinking I might have extracted the Windows RE image for the wrong Windows version. I used the "1" subdirectory of the install.esd archive, although I use Windows 10 Pro. So as a test, I tried extracting to my data hard drive the winre.wim and ReAgent.xml from the subdirectories 1, 4, and 6 (Windows Home, Education and Pro) of the install.esd archive, giving them different names. Using the Windows fc.exe (file compare) utility, I determined that for these 3 Windows versions at least, all of the winre.wim and ReAgent.xml were binary identical.

    So it was a relief knowing I didn't have to do yet more work to get it all right.

    - - - Updated - - -



    I found the post in question (too late to edit my original post).
    Run:
    reagentc /disable

    Delete all the recovery partitions you want.

    Then run:
    reagentc /enable

    Yes, it really is just that simple.
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  10. Posts : 11
    Win 10 Pro x64 22H2
       #50

    NavyLCDR said:
    Run:
    reagentc /disable

    Delete all the recovery partitions you want.

    Then run:
    reagentc /enable

    Yes, it really is just that simple.
    There was an image backup, then a partition rearrangement of the image, then a restore involved. Prior to the backup, the partitions looked like this:

    Partition 1: Formerly a recovery partition, but inactive, as reagentc /info said the actual recovery partition was partition 5
    Partition 2: System (100 MB FAT32)
    Partition 3: MSR (16 MB)
    Partition 4: Windows OS
    Partition 5: Recovery (active according to reagentc /info)

    So I backed this up to an image on an external USB hard drive. The image contained these 5 partitions. During the Macrium restore process using a bootable rescue USB stick along with the external USB hard drive containing the image, I used the Macrium drag and drop feature to delete the inactive recovery partition of the image (Partition 1 above), and move and resize the OS partition. I did not delete any active recovery partition of the image. After the drag and drop within Macrium, the new structure looked like this:

    Partition 1: System (100 MB FAT32)
    Partition 2: MSR (16 MB)
    Partition 3: Windows OS (enlarged)
    Partition 4: Recovery

    Upon restore, reagentc /info said the recovery partition was Partition 3 above (the OS partition, not the desired recovery partition). One of the many things I tried was to do the following:

    reagentc /disable
    followed by
    reagentc /enable

    But this simply put the recovery partition back on Partition 3 (the Windows OS partition) again. I am absolutely 100% sure of this.

    Are you saying that before the backup, I should have done a reagentc /disable, then after the restore, a reagentc /enable?
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