Insider Preview builds creating recovery partition

larc919 · 30 Oct 2015

Installation insists on creating a small recovery partition, which I neither need nor want, with each new build starting with 10547. Since I have several Windows 10 install disks, a recovery partition offers me nothing I don't already have readily available. It's a fairly simple matter to delete the extra partition and merge space space back into C, but I shouldn't have to do that. Is there any way to keep those partitions from getting created?

caperjack · 01 Nov 2015

surprised no one answered yet, not even sure i have the correct one ,but i am going to say, No! and i will add i dont get them ,,are you doing a fresh install each time , or an upgrade each time

edit ,correction - I do get 1,but not every time I upgrade, and its in case you have to go back to previous build ,or need to do a recovery ,,if you upgrade via the windows updates as I do

JohnC · 01 Nov 2015

I have a 450 MB recovery partition. It is 100% free space, I don't know why that was created and it is certainty not needed. I didn't notice it before the last two builds either. I doubt there is any simple way to modify the install process so it won't happen again.

Gas · 01 Nov 2015

JohnC said:

I have a 450 MB recovery partition. It is 100% free space, I don't know why that was created and it is certainty not needed. I didn't notice it before the last two builds either. I doubt there is any simple way to modify the install process so it won't happen again.

Hi JohnC & Lark919 I switch between a W10 PRO & a W10 insider preview build 10565 (using system images) in both OS's i have a 500 MB of o system reserved partition created during installation; never had any recovery partion, I hope this may help you both

larc919 · 01 Nov 2015

caperjack said:

No! and i will add i dont get them ,,are you doing a fresh install each time , or an upgrade each time

I'm just doing upgrade installs. On top of that, the system isn't GPT but MBR. During installation a chunk at the end of the C partition is bitten off and the recovery partition is created.

topgundcp · 01 Nov 2015

JohnC said:

I have a 450 MB recovery partition. It is 100% free space, I don't know why that was created and it is certainty not needed. I didn't notice it before the last two builds either. I doubt there is any simple way to modify the install process so it won't happen again.

This 450MB Recovery partition is not empty. Just hidden and disk management does not report correctly on hidden folder. And yes, it is certainly needed to boot into Recovery Environment for trouble shooting. Here's the content of the 450MB Recovery partition:

Insider Preview builds creating recovery partition-.jpg

@Gas
Hi JohnC & Lark919 I switch between a W10 PRO & a W10 insider preview build 10565 (using system images) in both OS's i have a 500 MB of o system reserved partition created during installation; never had any recovery partion, I hope this may help you both

Your Windows was installed using MBR partition scheme, the 500 MB partition is called System Reserved and C drive. Different from GPT partition scheme, Windows would create 4 partitions: 450MB Recovery, 100MB EFI System, 16MB unformatted and C Drive.

lx07 · 06 Nov 2015

I had this issue clean installing 10576. If you delete all partitions installation will create a recovery partition when you click on the "new" button (it does warn you that it "may" though)..

What you can do is (on the Windows Setup "Where do you want to install Windows" screen)

Delete all existing partitions
Click "New" - this will create the 500 mb recovery partition and primary partition with the remaining space on a MBR scheme.
Delete the primary partition leaving just the recovery partition and unallocated space.
Extend the recovery partition so it takes the whole drive.
Format
Click next to install.

In this case the WinRE will be put in a hidden directory called "Recovery" on the C: drive. Note bitlocker will not work if you do this - it needs a separate partition.

larc919 · 06 Nov 2015

halasz said:

I had this issue clean installing 10576. If you delete all partitions installation will create a recovery partition when you click on the "new" button (it does warn you that it "may" though)...

Problem is I don't want to do a clean install with each new Fast Ring build and have to re-install everything else I have on C as well. I'm just not willing to jump through a lot of hoops to circumvent something I can easily correct with MiniTool Partition Wizard after it happens. My problem is that extra partition shouldn't be created with an MBR system in the first place, even with the update-type of installation I'm doing. It happened again with 10586, BTW. My first action after installation completed was to delete the extra partition and merge the hijacked space back into C.