@KyhiC:/ Recovery is the folder used to store OEM customizations and Apps.ppkg (Usually created by OEM)
The Apps.ppkg contains the OEM program customizations.
When you recover your OS or create OEM Recovery Drive
The contents from C;\recovery are included in the transfer of system files
In addition to this. If you delete all Recovery partition(s) then this is where WinRe.wim will be stored.
An interesting case is where an upgrade from 7 to 10 cannot create a recovery partition, say on an mbr system with all four partitions already in use for other things. Then the C:\Recovery folder can perform the functions of a recovery partition.
How does Windows boot to advanced recovery option e.g. command prompt? (post #16)....my other system manages to boot to the recovery environment despite having no recovery partition (apparently the free upgrade to 10 was unable to find anywhere to put one, being an MBR which already had four partitions). The Windows RE location is shown by reagentc as:
\\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk0\partition3\Recovery\WindowsRE
But partition 3 is my C: drive. The files that would normally be found in the recovery partition are instead in the hidden and inaccessible C:\Recovery folder, along with a 0 byte hidden file at the root of C: called $WINRE_BACKUP_PARTITION.MARKER
Win7 usually stores winre.wim in c:\Recovery\{long_guid}\
On my system, Win10 stores it in c:\Recovery\WindowsRE\
$WINRE_BACKUP_PARTITION.MARKER seems to be a tag used if you upgraded rather than clean install. Iirc Vista/7 does similar, with tags like $UpgDrv$ or $DRVLTR$.
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