Too many Recovery Partitions???

Does this look odd to anyone? Should I have this many partitions? Especially 3 Recovery Partitions......can I get rid of them and how do I know which one and do it safely?

Laptop Manufactures put on Recovery Partitions. One includes tools for Diagnostics, another is for Setting computer back to Factory settings etc. The recovery partitions are 1/2GB Unless you are desperate for Disk Space, I would leave it alone

spunk said:

Laptop Manufactures put on Recovery Partitions. One includes tools for Diagnostics, another is for Setting computer back to Factory settings etc. The recovery partitions are 1/2GB Unless you are desperate for Disk Space, I would leave it alone

From what I saw in the screen shot, this is not the case. Even though just a few hundred MB's taken but people want to have a nice, well organized partition layout.
@rdburke
You must have done a couple of upgrade/in place repair, each time it will create an extra 450MB partition.
Open admin command prompt and type: reagentc /info
The result should tell you which recovery partition is being used counting from left to right.
NOTE: There's a hidden 16MB MSR partition which you don't see in disk management

Once you identify which one is used then you can delete the other Recovery partitions using diskpart

By default Windows setup on clean disk creates a 450 MB recovery (RE) partition at the beginning of the disk. Logically thinking the location of this partition is wrong, which is why Windows upgrade might create a new one; upgrade needs some space to modify RE partition but can't expand it because System, MSR and Windows partitions are blocking the way, therefore upgrade creates a new one after the Windows partition shrinking it if needed.

An ideal disk partitioning on a GPT partitioned disk would place System (99 MB) and MSR (hidden 16 MB) partitions at the beginning of the disk, then Windows partition and add RE partition at the end of the disk:

Unfortunately Windows setup does not follow these clear guidelines set by Microsoft, makers of Windows. Strange but true.

To put the RE partition at end of the disk and making it somewhat bigger than default 450 MB allows upgrades to add data to it without creating a new RE partition. For an upgrade to be able to use an existing RE partition instead of creating a new one, it must have enough free space:

• If RE partition is less than 500 MB, it must have at least 50 MB of free space
• If RE partition is 500 MB or larger, it must have at least 320 MB of free space
• If RE partition is larger than 1 GB, it should have at least 1 GB free

Read more about GPT partitioning: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/win...ive-partitions

Kari

Unfortunately Windows setup does not follow these clear guidelines set by Microsoft, makers of Windows. Strange but true.

Yup Strange, But true..

Kari said:

By default Windows setup on clean disk creates a 450 MB recovery (RE) partition at the beginning of the disk. Logically thinking the location of this partition is wrong, which is why Windows upgrade might create a new one; upgrade needs some space to modify RE partition but can't expand it because System, MSR and Windows partitions are blocking the way, therefore upgrade creates a new one after the Windows partition shrinking it if needed.

An ideal disk partitioning on a GPT partitioned disk would place System (99 MB) and MSR (hidden 16 MB) partitions at the beginning of the disk, then Windows partition and add RE partition at the end of the disk:

Unfortunately Windows setup does not follow these clear guidelines set by Microsoft, makers of Windows. Strange but true.

To put the RE partition at end of the disk and making it somewhat bigger than default 450 MB allows upgrades to add data to it without creating a new RE partition. For an upgrade to be able to use an existing RE partition instead of creating a new one, it must have enough free space:

• If RE partition is less than 500 MB, it must have at least 50 MB of free space
• If RE partition is 500 MB or larger, it must have at least 320 MB of free space
• If RE partition is larger than 1 GB, it should have at least 1 GB free

Read more about GPT partitioning: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/win...ive-partitions

Kari

Thanks for all the help my friends.......I am going to do a clean install soon and I will take care of this. I have been running Insider Builds for quite some time and stuff got overlooked.