THREE Recovery partitions?

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  1. Posts : 40
    windows 10 64 bit
       #31

    final question about diskpart


    Thank you all very much for the help. Everything is working great, but I have a few questions and comments. These are only for understanding and learning, not to change anything. As stated previously, please forgive my ignorance.

    1. In Disk Management, it shows all the partitions but it does not tell you the number of each. Are they labelled from lowest to highest going from left to right? If not, how can you tell which partition is which?

    2. In an attempt to figure out which partition was which, I used diskpart, selected the disk and told it to list partitions. It listed in this order: partition 0, partition4, partition 1, partition2, partition3, and gave sizes of each. I do not understand why it listed this order, or what it means. Two of the partitions were the exact same size (since I had copied one of them from the other), so I still could not tell which number corresponded to which partition in Disk Management (or minitool either).

    Thanks.

    Thanks.
      My Computer


  2. Posts : 1,579
    Windows 10 Pro
       #32

    1. That's what I would expect. However, an MSR if you have one, won't show in Disk Management - so numbering would have to account for that.

    2. Did you use "list par" or "list vol" ? Have never seen "list par" show them in other than numerical order myself.
      My Computer


  3. Posts : 40
    windows 10 64 bit
       #33

    [QUOTE=Word Man;539782]1. That's what I would expect. However, an MSR if you have one, won't show in Disk Management - so numbering would have to account for that.

    2. Did you use "list par" or "list vol" ? Have never seen "list par" show them in other than numerical order myself.[/QUOTE

    Apparently I don't have an MSR. I used list part. Oh well, one more mystery.

    One last question: Does the size of the recovery partition change over time? That is, as restore points are made, are they stored in that recovery partition or somewhere else? If so, what happens when it runs out of space and there is no unallocated space next to it? Should one increase the size of it to give it more room, or leave some space next to it? How does that work?

    Thanks again for the help.
      My Computer


  4. Posts : 15,444
    Windows10
       #34

    [QUOTE=spacecon;539871]
    Word Man said:
    1. That's what I would expect. However, an MSR if you have one, won't show in Disk Management - so numbering would have to account for that.

    2. Did you use "list par" or "list vol" ? Have never seen "list par" show them in other than numerical order myself.[/QUOTE

    Apparently I don't have an MSR. I used list part. Oh well, one more mystery.

    One last question: Does the size of the recovery partition change over time? That is, as restore points are made, are they stored in that recovery partition or somewhere else? If so, what happens when it runs out of space and there is no unallocated space next to it? Should one increase the size of it to give it more room, or leave some space next to it? How does that work?

    Thanks again for the help.
    Restore points have nothing to do with the recovery partition and are stored in hidden folders on c drive.

    The recovery partition on Windows 10 is not like the classic recovery partitions which had a compressed copy of the OS and was typically up to 5GB.

    The windows 10 recovery partition basically contains the software to dynamically rebuild the OS from winsnxs folders within windows.

    This is a principal reason why the windows 10 footprint is smaller than previous versions.

    The recovery partition does not need to be adjusted.
      My Computer


  5. Posts : 1,579
    Windows 10 Pro
       #35

    Recovery partition size may change over time from Windows version to version, build to build, or I guess whenever MS deems appropriate. Normally their default size is changed accordingly for Windows install and, if the existing is not big enough, it'll create a new one.

    Restore points are in the hidden System Volume Information folder, not in the recovery partition.
      My Computer


  6. Posts : 40
    windows 10 64 bit
       #36

    All is good now, this is what it is now.


    Thanks everyone for the help. Everything is the way I want it now and working properly. I got rid of the extra unallocated spaces, and this is what it looks like now in Disk Management.

    THREE Recovery partitions?-disknow.png

    And this is what I get in diskpart. Note the out of sequence, which is trying to tell me something, but not sure what. Also don't know why it is listing a partition that no longer exists?

    THREE Recovery partitions?-diskpartout.png
      My Computer


  7. Posts : 1,579
    Windows 10 Pro
       #37

    spacecon said:
    ...
    And this is what I get in diskpart. Note the out of sequence, which is trying to tell me something, but not sure what. Also don't know why it is listing a partition that no longer exists?

    THREE Recovery partitions?-diskpartout.png
    Ugh! I would be nervous about this myself. Looks shady. In this particular case, I would: 1) do a complete disk image to external drive with Macrium Reflect (Free will work), 2) do a clean install of Windows 10, deleting ALL partitions using the "Custom" option, and then 3) restore the imaged 222 GB C: partition to the corresponding slot on the target disk. (ETA: conceptual credit for this suggestion to topgundcp, just feeding back some learnings I've gotten from that member).

    But maybe that's just me. I wouldn't expect that overlap of an "Extended" partition (at offset 992 KB) with a Recovery partition starting at offset 1024 KB. Entirely too wonky for me! ALso - I'm a bit leary of ESP being reduced from 100 MB to 99 MB, not sure if that is significant, though.

    At worst, after 1) - 3) above, you'll have to re-enable the correct WinRE partition using "reagentc /enable" for starters.

    What kind of output do you get from "reagentc /info" at a command prompt at this time?
    Last edited by Word Man; 19 Jan 2016 at 16:28. Reason: attribution
      My Computer


  8. Posts : 15,444
    Windows10
       #38

    Word Man said:
    Ugh! I would be nervous about this myself. Looks shady.
    Totally agree - this is asking for trouble. If it was me I would try your MRF suggestion as well. I have done similar before and it worked.

    The silly thing is that this was totally unnecessary, and now it looks a mess. OP is lucky the main OS partition has not been corrupted.

    Sorry OP - you have probably got lucky and will be able to recover, but from my viewpoint, it is rather frustrating that you did not listen (or understand?) to our advice, and you seemed to have a burning desire to move partitions around for no reason ie you seemed to have got it into your head that partitions needed to be in a specific order.

    Of course, experimenting and doing is part of the learning curve, but the most valuable lesson is that you should ALWAYS make an image backup before messing around with partitions.
      My Computer


  9. Posts : 2,799
    Linux Mint 20.1 Win10Prox64
       #39

    There's some confusion in this thread.
    The original thread starter was using a GPT disk type and the partition layout is correctly shown in post #19.
    @spacecon,
    The partition scheme in your PC is using MBR disk type and they are completely different between the 2's and yet people are still talking about MSR partition which only exists in GPT disk type.
    Just to be clear:
    On a fresh Windows 10 install using GPT, the partition scheme is as follows with 4 partitions:
    1. 450MB Recovery (NTFS)
    2. 100 EFI System (FAT32)
    3. 16MB MSR (unformatted)
    4. C drive


    On a fresh install using MBR, the partition scheme is:
    1. 500 MB System Reserved
    2. C Drive.


    NOTE: There's no 450MB Recovery partition on fresh install using MBR. The 450MB recovery only existed with MBR disk type when you upgrade to Windows 10 from previous version of Windows.
    @spacecon,
    Apparently you did upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 7 and that's why your System Reserved is only 100MB then Windows created an extra 450MB Recovery partition next to C Drive.
    As seen in post #36, even though Windows still boot up and working, your partition scheme is still a mess and might cause problem in future update.
      My Computer


  10. Posts : 40
    windows 10 64 bit
       #40

    I had a reason and I also have backups.


    cereberus said:
    The silly thing is that this was totally unnecessary, and now it looks a mess. OP is lucky the main OS partition has not been corrupted. it is rather frustrating that you did not listen (or understand?) to our advice, and you seemed to have a burning desire to move partitions around for no reason ie you seemed to have got it into your head that partitions needed to be in a specific order. Of course, experimenting and doing is part of the learning curve, but the most valuable lesson is that you should ALWAYS make an image backup before messing around with partitions.
    Cerebrus, I appreciate your comments. Let me first say that I definitely am taking heed of your advice. I admit that I do not understand all of it all the time, but I re-read everything multiple times and try to proceed with caution. That being said,
    1. I did not move the partitions around for no reason. I had the recovery on the right end, after the C drive, and (as you pointed out) it is easier to resize the working C drive and makes backups and restores smaller and easier if the recovery is not on the right side of the C drive. So all I wanted to do was move the recovery to the other side of the C drive so that I could shrink or extend C drive as desired. I would think I am not the first to want to do that, but I don't know, maybe.
    2. I DID make backups (Macrium reflect) and I have those available, so I should be OK. Otherwise I would not have attempted this. So I can restore the image to what it was, but that will once again have the recovery on the right side of C drive.
    Again, thanks for the help. Am I totally off trying to make it easier to shrink/expand my C drive?
      My Computer


 

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