Bitlocker Creates Second Recovery Partition

jeezde · May 16, 2022

hi,

after enabling Bitlocker on C drive, I ended up with two two recovery partitions
I can remember a warning about shrinking C drive and creating a new partition, but I did not take much care of it, I just proceeded.

Would be safe to merge those recovery partitions or even delete one of them, I'm on small SSD and ever MB counts?

Anyway, Windows booting and running is fine.

glasskuter · May 31, 2022

I believe this is by design if bitlocker is enabled. When you do full disk encryption, the bootable system files have to remain on an unencrypted partition. The software that does an unencryption also resides on its own unencrypted partition.

And no, you should leave the recovery partitions alone. There are other ways of clearing up disk space, like keeping regular backups of your system on external media, then removing restore points and disabling system restore. Most laptops have a slot where you can install a second data drive and move all your personal files to it. At the very least, you can transfer files you rarely use to an external drive or to the cloud. Regularly use disk cleanup to remove stuff Windows no longer needs. Regularly clear out your browsers cache.

You have a 512gb boot drive which is twice the size of mine. That is more than sufficient if you use smart file/folder maintenance practices.

cereberus · Jun 1, 2022

jeezde said:
hi,

after enabling Bitlocker on C drive, I ended up with two two recovery partitions
I can remember a warning about shrinking C drive and creating a new partition, but I did not take much care of it, I just proceeded.

View attachment 29259

Would be safe to merge those recovery partitions or even delete one of them, I'm on small SSD and ever MB counts?

Anyway, Windows booting and running is fine.

There is no way using bitlocker created a new recovery partition. That was created upgrading your version of Windows at some time.

Run following admin command

reagentc /info and it will tell you which is active - post image here.

It is probably the first one, partition 4 (there is also a hidden msr partition).

Once we know, we can delete the redundant partition.

It is no big deal just deleting them but if you do, you could not reset your pc without using a usb installation drive.

cereberus · Jun 1, 2022

glasskuter said:
I believe this is by design if bitlocker is enabled. When you do full disk encryption, the bootable system files have to remain on an unencrypted partition. The software that does an unencryption also resides on its own unencrypted partition.

And no, you should leave the recovery partitions alone. There are other ways of clearing up disk space, like keeping regular backups of your system on external media, then removing restore points and disabling system restore. Most laptops have a slot where you can install a second data drive and move all your personal files to it. At the very least, you can transfer files you rarely use to an external drive or to the cloud. Regularly use disk cleanup to remove stuff Windows no longer needs. Regularly clear out your browsers cache.

You have a 512gb boot drive which is twice the size of mine. That is more than sufficient if you use smart file/folder maintenance practices.

I am sorry but this is not true about creating recovery partition - see my other post.

CornishRattler · Jun 1, 2022

cereberus said:
I am sorry but this is not true about creating recovery partition - see my other post.

I agree, would have been created by a Windows update

glasskuter · Jun 1, 2022

Sorry, guess I read the following explanation incorrectly. BitLocker creates a separate Recovery Partition even when a dedicated System Partition exists.

cereberus · Jun 1, 2022

glasskuter said:
Sorry, guess I read the following explanation incorrectly. BitLocker creates a separate Recovery Partition even when a dedicated System Partition exists.

Hmmm that post is confusing, and I have never seen that behavior. I guess it is possible if the efi partition was too small but ops is large at 512mb?

I think Occam's Razor principle applies here (simplest answer is usually right) i.e. 2nd recovery partition was created by a windows upgrade.

johnlgalt · Jun 4, 2022

jeezde said:
I can remember a warning about shrinking C drive and creating a new partition, but I did not take much care of it, I just proceeded.

OP says a very specific warning also was thrown up when he enabled BitLocker.

zbook · Jun 4, 2022

Please run: (currently requires Ten Forums logon)

https://www.tenforums.com/attachments/bsod-crashes-debugging/361213d1646305529-post-problem-reports-here-batch-files-use-bsod-debugging-diskparinfo.bat

Post a share link into this thread using one drive, drop box, or google drive.

ThrashZone · Jun 5, 2022

Hi,
604mb was to small so the system created a new one 621mb most are suggesting enlarge an existing to 750mb for future increases

Sort of stupid of windows doing this but you can stop this nonsense making the 621mg should be the last one created "run the scripts to see" into 1024mg or 1gb and that should stop ms from creating more in the future and frankly 1gb on a 500gb+- os disk is nothing

System reserved should be before C partition not after but may not matter if it's large enough
But this stuff is mainly why ms likes gpt disks instead of mbr windows can create as many of these silly partitions as it needs to and you/ we get to live with the partition clutter :zany:

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