Questions regarding the Windows Recovery Environment partition (WinRe)

TimeLoss · 28 Sep 2017

These questions may be plainly obvious to many. However before now I have never copied partitions to a new drive and am approaching all of this from a position of ignorance.

I recently installed a 250gb mSata SSD into my laptop meant to boot the operating system while the preexisting hard drive will be used handle the bulk of the laptop's storage.

I reduced my Hard Drive down to 50gb and then made a system image backup as a precaution in case things went wrong. When this was done I used a program to copy the drive to the mSata. Afterwords I removed the older Hard Drive with the intentions of reformatting it before putting it back into the laptop. I have yet to reformat the older Hard Drive.

Everything boots fine on the new drive, however the new drive is missing the "WinRe" Windows Recovery Environment partition which is used to provide certain recovery and troubleshooting options for Windows 10. Without that partition I cannot access the recovery environment or make a recovery drive. Yet nothing short of a full Windows reinstall seems to be able to recreate the WinRe partition.

I have an old 2013 version of Office provided by my College that I am trying to keep and am not keen on reinstalling the OS.

So my questions are as follows:
Is there anyway to restore the WinRe partition in a current Windows 10 installation without a full reinstall?

What are any potential future problems if Windows 10 does not have access to the WinRe partition?

Is there an adequate replacement with the same functionality as the Windows Recovery Environment if I am unable to restore it?

topgundcp · 28 Sep 2017

I reduced my Hard Drive down to 50gb

As time goes by, 50GB is not enough. Try making it around 80GB-100GB

Will help if you post a screen shot of Disk Management:
Screenshot - Take in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums

TimeLoss · 28 Sep 2017

I phrased that wrong, I meant to say that I took everything off the Hard Drive until around 50GB of space was used then copied it over to the 250GB mSATA SDD. Probably too much detail for the purposes of these questions. The new drive boots into Windows fine, but the "WINRE" partition was not transferred over.

Here are the new mSATA SDD partitions:

Questions regarding the Windows Recovery Environment partition (WinRe)-sdd.png

And here are the old Hard Drive partitions:

Questions regarding the Windows Recovery Environment partition (WinRe)-hd.png

On the old Hard Drive, the 872mb "Recovery" partition on the right is probably just left over from when this laptop used Windows 8. But the 300mb "WINRE" partition on the left is what is used by Windows 10's Windows Recovery Environment for certain restore and troubleshooting functionality.

Edit: I should probably further clarify that I am concerned about the long-term health of my laptop without the WinRe partition, as I tend to keep computers for a very long time.

Edit: Edit: Oops, I am still saying it wrong. I meant to say that only 50GB of space was USED, not LEFT

topgundcp · 28 Sep 2017

In Windows 8.1, the Windows disk layout is as followed:
300MB Recovery, 100MB EFI partition, 128MB unformatted partition then C drive.
NOTE: 128MB partition is hidden from disk management, use diskpart command to see it.

In Windows 10:
450MB Recovery, 100MB EFI partition, 16MB unformatted partition then C drive.
NOTE: 16MB partition is hidden from disk management, use diskpart command to see it.

Since you upgraded to 10 from 8.1, the Winre.wim for 10(containing tools for diagnostics/troubleshooting...) has a size ~340MB, hence there's not enough room so the upgrade created an extra Recovery partition after C, normally 450MB to store Winre.wim there.

You did not copy any patition related to Recovery and that's why you lost this option.

Most people in this forum use Macrium Reflect to backup/Restore/copy from one disk to another. My suggestion is to use Macrium to create a backup image from the old disk with all partitions included then restote to the SSD disk.
NOTE: Macrium will adjust the size of the C partition accordingly when you restore the image to the SSD since the disk size is smaller than the old disk.

dalchina · 29 Sep 2017

Edit: I should probably further clarify that I am concerned about the long-term health of my laptop without the WinRe partition, as I tend to keep computers for a very long time.

The integrity of your OS as regards booting normally isn't in question.
Without the Recovery partition you lack the option to boot to Safe Mode and similar modes.

Questions regarding the Windows Recovery Environment partition (WinRe)-6395d1485948376t-boot-advanced-startup-options-windows-10-startup_settings.jpg

The other recovery function you lose is so-called automatic repair- Windows attempt to fix things when it detects you can't boot. In practice this rarely seems to help.

You also lack the convenience of being able to boot to
- Startup repair
- Command Prompt
- System Restore

Is there an adequate replacement with the same functionality as the Windows Recovery Environment if I am unable to restore it?

However you can still boot from a Win 10 install medium and thus access the last 3.

cereberus · 29 Sep 2017

Personally, I delete the winre functions to save space as they are not essential. You can get all the same functionality from a windows installation drive using repair options.

dalchina · 29 Sep 2017

Is 450Mb a worthwhile space saving? I'd have thought not, unless, say, you have a small system disk..

lx07 · 29 Sep 2017

Shrink C by 500MB using disk management - just right click on C and select "shrink".

Create a Recovery partition after C as recommended by Microsoft here : UEFI/GPT-based hard drive partitions | Microsoft Docs

Code:

diskpart
select disk 1
create partition primary
format quick fs=ntfs label="Recovery tools"
assign letter="R"
set id="de94bba4-06d1-4d40-a16a-bfd50179d6ac"
gpt attributes=0x8000000000000001
exit

Then follow the steps here to copy the required Windows RE files and register - Deploy Windows RE | Microsoft Docs

Code:

mkdir R:\Recovery\WindowsRE

xcopy /h C:\Windows\System32\Recovery\Winre.wim R:\Recovery\WindowsRE

Reagentc /setreimage /path R:\Recovery\WindowsRE /target C:\Windows

Then run reagentc /info to check it.

DavidY · 30 Sep 2017

lx07 said:

Then follow the steps here to copy the required Windows RE files and register - Deploy Windows RE | Microsoft Docs

Code:

mkdir R:\Recovery\WindowsRE

xcopy /h C:\Windows\System32\Recovery\Winre.wim R:\Recovery\WindowsRE

Reagentc /setreimage /path R:\Recovery\WindowsRE /target C:\Windows

Then run reagentc /info to check it.

I've been looking through the same documentation because successive windows version upgrades have left my machine with 3 Recovery partitions and I'd like to rationalise down to just one.

However on my machine there is no file: C:\Windows\System32\Recovery\Winre.wim

So the xcopy step wouldn't work for me, and if the OP's machine is the same, they would need to get winre.wim from somewhere - presumably the ISO of the relevant Windows 10 version would have one, although it won't have any machine-specific drivers?

(In my case I can find it on the Recovery partition although curiously it's 670MB which is larger than expected and I've not figured out why yet. )

topgundcp · 30 Sep 2017

However on my machine there is no file: C:\Windows\System32\Recovery\Winre.wim

WinRe.wim is a hidden file. From Folder Options, uncheck "Hide Protected operating system files". If it's not there, run Reagentc /disable

Morer Info: How does Windows boot to advanced recovery option e.g. command prompt? - Page 3 - Windows 10 Forums