Is unformated primary partition necessary

It is not right to tell people to do things that are not standard, It is there for a reason, period.
Sorry to be blunt but I have to say what need to be said.

You are absolutely right. And if you suggest a "non-standard" solution, make them aware of the possible implications.

Tomorrow, will will do a Macrium image to a unused disk, and uncheck part 2 as my plan in post #13. If it hoses the system so be it nothing lost. Not going to try it on an my current system. In post #17 Topguncp said that 128mb was normal for a Win8.1 to W10 upgrade. (my case) Maybe things will change if and when I do a clean install. Tx again for the replys....

On win8.1, I did the "migration" that NavyLCDR suggested -- moving the stuff from the MSR into the OS partition (using EasyBCD) -- and never suffered any negative results because of that. I did that because I needed more partitions on the drive, and the MSR partition was taking up one of the four permitted.

However, Win10 is new enough, that on another machine, I also have an MSR partition, and even though it now seems unused, I've decided to leave it alone. Since it does not appear to be "broke", I have no intention of "fixing" it!

@topgundcp, @BunnyJ, @whs,

Would you care to elaborate what portion of my reply #2 and the link I posted is factually incorrect? The very first thing that I stated was that Microsoft says the precious MSR unformmated partition is necessary on a GPT disk. Was not the appropriate information and warning given right up front?

meebers said:

Tomorrow, will will do a Macrium image to a unused disk, and uncheck part 2 as my plan in post #13. If it hoses the system so be it nothing lost. Not going to try it on an my current system. In post #17 Topguncp said that 128mb was normal for a Win8.1 to W10 upgrade. (my case) Maybe things will change if and when I do a clean install. Tx again for the replys....

But @meebers, what are you going to do when Microsoft detects that you deleted their "necessary" partition and send their black helicopters to start circling over your house? :

I feel innocent - LOL. I do not recall questioning your statements. My post was purely generic.

whs said:

I feel innocent - LOL. I do not recall questioning your statements. My post was purely generic.

Well, you posted they should be made aware of the implications - and I feel that they were, in post #2 which references the Microsoft website that states the MSR partition is necessary.

NavyLCDR said:

Well, you posted they should be made aware of the implications - and I feel that they were, in post #2 which references the Microsoft website that states the MSR partition is necessary.

Hmm, you lost me. Did I refer to your post #2 ??

whs said:

Hmm, you lost me. Did I refer to your post #2 ??

I apologize. I took your post the wrong way and became overly defensive.

It's OK. That happens to most of us at times.