Why Two Recovery Partitions??

NavyLCDR · 24 Oct 2017

See post #9 for the correct procedure.

Runnerbean · 24 Oct 2017

Samuria said:

Post a screenshot from disk manager lets see what we have

Can't post a screenshot right now but this is what Disk Management shows.

Disk 0

450Mb Healthy (Recovery Partition)

99Mb Healthy (EFI System Recovery)

(C Drive) Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition) 464.77Gb

450Mb Healthy (Recovery Partition)

NavyLCDR · 24 Oct 2017

Runnerbean said:

Can't post a screenshot right now but this is what Disk Management shows.

Disk 0

450Mb Healthy (Recovery Partition)

99Mb Healthy (EFI System Recovery)

(C Drive) Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition) 464.77Gb

450Mb Healthy (Recovery Partition)

Which does not tell you which recovery partition is active, unfortunately. Nor does it show the hidden MSR partition that is likely there. Which is why disk management doesn't do much good in this situation.

Runnerbean · 24 Oct 2017

NavyLCDR said:

Which does not tell you which recovery partition is active, unfortunately. Nor does it show the hidden MSR partition that is likely there. Which is why disk management doesn't do much good in this situation.

All the partitions are highlighted in blue if that's any help. Does that mean they're all Active?

NavyLCDR · 24 Oct 2017

Runnerbean said:

All the partitions are highlighted in blue if that's any help. Does that mean they're all Active?

Nope. That means they are primary partitions. Post #9 tells you how to tell which one is the active recovery partition.

bro67 · 24 Oct 2017

Runnerbean said:

Ok,..I have deleted the Windows.old folders just now thanks to you guys generously helping me with advice.

Lastly,..I'm still confused about having Two Healthy Recovery Partitions @450Mb each. This is what Disk Management labels these two partitions as. "Recovery Partitions".
Nobody has been able to answer why I have two of them when surely only one is needed. Can one of them be safely deleted so that I can claim that 450Mb of space back to the primary partition?

Yes, everyone has been telling you the same thing. It is normal to see two Recovery partitions of the same size. No need to argue about the why or how. It is not taking extra drive space, so why are you worrying so much about it.

It will state active for those partitions, because Windows needs them. As forwhy one in the front of the main partition and one after. That started with 8.

ThrashZone · 24 Oct 2017

Hi,
One hint of a recent 450mb partition is it will be near or at the end of the disk
It can indeed be deleted if one does not expect to use system restore back to when it was created.

The 450mb next to the efi or Fat32 partition at the beginning of the disk I'd leave that one alone.
It may have boot files on it too.
I personally use free minitool to do this type of thing
Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Free

Runnerbean · 24 Oct 2017

NavyLCDR said:

reagentc /info
The result will tell you which recovery partition is active. Make sure to not the results! Then run:
diskpart
select disk 0
list part

This is what I see.

Windows RE Location...........\\?\GLOBAL ROOT\device\harddisk0\partition4\recovery\windowsRE

Boot Configuration Data (BCD) identifier: followed by a long series of numbers and letters.

Recovery Image Location

Recovery image index 0

Custom Image Location

Custom image index 0

Runnerbean · 24 Oct 2017

ThrashZone said:

Hi,
One hint of a recent 450mb partition is it will be near or at the end of the disk

yea,..I've got two of them,..one right at the beginning and the other one is right at the end - both at 450Mb each.

ThrashZone · 24 Oct 2017

Hi,
Yep there you have it
The one on the end can be deleted.