Way to re-create the Recovery Partition?

Darkstrike · 26 Jan 2020

Hi all...my nephew was futzing around on his laptop 'cleaning' it (he likes to THINK he knows what he is doing...) and deleted the Recovery Partition to save space, but now wants it back in case of a problem down the road. It's running the most recent version of Win10 Home. It was NOT the factory Acer recovery partition - his hard drive had died awhile back and I had installed a new drive and done a fresh install of Win10, so it is the default recovery partition Win10 makes on a fresh install.

For reference (this screenshot is from MY computer, but you get the idea), I am talking about the one you see in the 'Disk Management' window:

Way to re-create the Recovery Partition?-untitled.png

He had 'grown' the main partition 'over' where the Recovery Partition used to be. I shrank the main partition back to what it was before he had deleted the Recovery Partition and now have some nice unallocated space sitting there for me to put the Recovery Partition back into.

Is there an easy way to get this back short of reinstalling Windows from scratch? Thanks! :)

And no, I don't just want a USB drive with the recovery tools. I have those already, but he and I both want the recovery partition back as it can come in handy once and awhile!

Cheers!

f14tomcat · 26 Jan 2020

Simplest and safest way is to do an in-place repair. You won't lose anything, Windows will recreate that Recovery Partition.

Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade

Darkstrike · 26 Jan 2020

Thanks Tomcat - would that mean I would have to set all the Windows settings back up again for him (File Explorer settings, taskbar settings, etc, etc)

f14tomcat · 26 Jan 2020

Darkstrike said:

Thanks Tomcat - would that mean I would have to set all the Windows settings back up again for him (File Explorer settings, taskbar settings, etc, etc)

If you're using an MS account to signon and you have it all synced to your account, most will come back, like themes, etc. Only what I call "Personal tweaks" that are out of the norm would have to be redone. Then again,a clean install would be a lot more than that!

Darkstrike · 26 Jan 2020

The video in the link you sent seems to suggest it will remove programs but keep files. Is there a way to do it without it removing software?

f14tomcat · 26 Jan 2020

Darkstrike said:

The video in the link you sent seems to suggest it will remove programs but keep files. Is there a way to do it without it removing software?

Excuse me? What video link? The link I gave you was to the Tutorial here on Tenforums.

Darkstrike · 26 Jan 2020

f14tomcat said:

Excuse me? What video link? The link I gave you was to the Tutorial here on Tenforums.

The video by 'Steve' about an 8th of the way down the link you posted above?

At 8:37 in the video, options are 'Keep Files' and 'Remove Everything'

'Keep files' specifically mentions it removed programs...?

f14tomcat · 26 Jan 2020

There are 2 options. Keep file and programs or keep files only. You would do keep everything. It's the default.

Way to re-create the Recovery Partition?-2020-01-26_08h57_38.png

Darkstrike · 26 Jan 2020

OK, thanks for the info gents, I'll see what I can do!

mrgeek · 26 Jan 2020

Darkstrike said:

The video by 'Steve' about an 8th of the way down the link you posted above?At 8:37 in the video, options are 'Keep Files' and 'Remove Everything''Keep files' specifically mentions it removed programs...?

See 4:38 - 4:48. This is what you want to do with least disruption. I recently had partition issues and the Repair Install recreated partitions, as they should be. Minor settings may get lost, like custom details columns for File Explorer.