Macrium with Red line on Disk C

Mister · Jan 3, 2023

I would like to use a Macrium clone to move system files from the C disc drive nvme 500 GB to the new m.2 nvme SSD of 1 TB. The question is that c drive has a red line partition. (see the image below) It has 4 partitions and the last one is in red. Do I have to move all 4 partitions on a new drive?

Ghot · Jan 3, 2023

Mister said:
I would like to use a Macrium clone to move system files from the C disc drive nvme 500 GB to the new m.2 nvme SSD of 1 TB. The question is that c drive has a red line partition. (see the image below) It has 4 partitions and the last one is in red. Do I have to move all 4 partitions on a new drive?View attachment 49009

The partition with the RED line is just too full, which is why it's RED.
That partition with the RED line is the Recovery partition, which you don't really need.

This is really all you need to boot Windows...

If you want to, you can use the free program Minitool Partition Wizard, to shrink the C:\ partition 375 MB, and then increase the Recovery partition by 375 MB. That will get rid of the RED line.

Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Wizard Free

As an all-in-one free partition manager and disk manager software, MiniTool Partition Wizard Free helps manage disk space safely on Windows 11/10/8/7.

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If Macrium will let you clone the drive with the RED line there... then just do it. It won't hurt anything.

If it won't let you clone it...then you have a couple choices...

1. Delete the Recovery partition, Tutorial
2. Resize it, so it's no longer "full"

Mister · Jan 3, 2023

If I understand well you mean to move only 3 blue partitions, leaving out the red one to a new empty 1TB ?

Ghot · Jan 3, 2023

Mister said:
If I understand well you mean to move only 3 blue partitions, leaving out the red one to a new empty 1TB ?

If Macrium will let you clone the drive with the RED line there... then just do it. It won't hurt anything.

If it won't let you clone it because of the RED line... then you have a couple choices...

1. Delete the Recovery partition, Tutorial
2. Resize it, so it's no longer "full"

If you want to, you can use the free program Minitool Partition Wizard, to shrink the C:\ partition by 1 GB, and then increase the Recovery partition by 1 GB. That will get rid of the RED line.

Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Wizard Free

As an all-in-one free partition manager and disk manager software, MiniTool Partition Wizard Free helps manage disk space safely on Windows 11/10/8/7.

www.partitionwizard.com

Ghot · Jan 3, 2023

Macrium's "bootable Rescue Media", gives you access to Command Prompt, so you don't really need the Recovery partition.

Also, with the "bootable Rescue Media", you can access your backups even if Windows won't boot.
So again, you don't really need the Recovery partition.

@Mister

If it were me, I'd just delete the Recovery Partition.
This works for Windows 11 also...

How to Delete Recovery Partition in Windows 10

How to Delete Recovery Partition in Windows 10 In Windows 10, there can be a Windows recovery partition or computer manufacturer OEM factory recovery partition available on the Windows disk. The Windows Recovery Partition allows you to boot into Windows r

www.tenforums.com

After the Recovery Partition is deleted, THEN do your clone.

SIW2 · Jan 3, 2023

at admin cmd prompt type:
reagentc /disable

which should move the winre file from the recovery partition to windows\system32\recovery and reset the xml entries

then later if you run reagentc /enable it will move winre.wim to a recovery partition ( if it exists) or to a hidden folder on %systemdrive%

as far as I can tell the separate recovery partition is useful for people using bitlocker.

jumanji · Jan 3, 2023

Ghot said:
If Macrium will let you clone the drive with the RED line there... then just do it. It won't hurt anything...........

I have an OEM 12GB Image partition which is full and Red.

Macrium will have no difficulty in cloning the nearly full Image partition.

SIW2 · Jan 3, 2023

It will show the red warning if a partition has less than 10% free space.

OEM recovery partitions are often tight with perhaps only 1gb or less in excess of the space taken by the recovery files. Doesn't really matter if you are not going to write to it. They will often contain what is necessary for compete return to factory condition.

The MS recovery partition is much smaller and usually only contains what is needed to boot winre.wim

As far as I can tell, the separate MS recovery partition is not needed unless you are a bitlocker fan. Autofailover seems to work fine if it is on %systemdrive% ( or somewhere else ) instead.

tomdsr · Jan 3, 2023

SIW2 said:
It will show the red warning if a partition has less than 10% free space.

OEM recovery partitions are often tight with perhaps only 1gb or less in excess of the space taken by the recovery files. Doesn't really matter if you are not going to write to it. They will often contain what is necessary for compete return to factory condition.

The MS recovery partition is much smaller and usually only contains what is needed to boot winre.wim

As far as I can tell, the separate MS recovery partition is not needed unless you are a bitlocker fan. Autofailover seems to work fine if it is on %systemdrive% ( or somewhere else ) instead.

I hear an echo..... (meaning this was already said)

glasskuter · Jan 3, 2023

Mister said:
se a Macrium clone to move system files from the C disc drive nvme 500 GB to the new m.2

I never clone when installing a new drive, but restore a Macrium image instead. The restore process in Macrium allows the user to resize the partitions. You just drag and drop the partitions from the image onto the desired drive one at a time. When you get to the C: partition use the size slider to extend the partition size. With cloning small to larger drive, one has to mess with resizing the partitions to allocate the additional space afterwards. Why have to do that when one can do it all in one fell swoop. Restoring an image is faster as well.

cereberus · Jan 3, 2023

SIW2 said:
As far as I can tell, the separate MS recovery partition is not needed unless you are a bitlocker fan. Autofailover seems to work fine if it is on %systemdrive% ( or somewhere else ) instead.

Huh?

We have discussed the recovery partition zillions of times.

It is the default setup and needed to do "Reset My PC" without using any usb installation drives.

You can get rid of the partition, moving winre.win to C:\Recovery folder BUT that requires positive effort by users who have some understand how to use reagentc commands (and vast majority of users will not).

So for most users, I strongly recommend they leave things alone unless they are proficient in use of reagentc commands.

SIW2 · Jan 3, 2023

cereberus said:
Huh?

We have discussed the recovery partition zillions of times.

It is the default setup and needed to do "Reset My PC" without using any usb installation drives.

You can get rid of the partition, moving winre.win to C:\Recovery folder BUT that requires positive effort by users who have some understand how to use reagentc commands (and vast majority of users will not).

So for most users, I strongly recommend they leave things alone unless they are proficient in use of reagentc commands.

Is there something wrong with your system?

I can do reset without separate recovery partition or usb installation stick.

As far as I can tell, the separate MS recovery partition is not needed unless you are a bitlocker fan. Autofailover seems to work fine if it is on %systemdrive% ( or somewhere else ) instead.

cereberus · Jan 3, 2023

SIW2 said:
Is there something wrong with your system?

I can do reset without separate recovery partition or usb installation stick.

This is only possible if you already have winre.wim on C drive BUT this is a non standard setup. Yoou may well have run "reagentc /disable" in the past.

The standard MS Default setup is with Winre.wim in recovery partition and no winre.wim on C drive.

If you just delete the Recovery partition, there is no Winre.wim to do a recovery.

You have to run "reagentc /disable" before deleting Winre.wim which MOVES Winre.Wim to c:\windows\system32\recovery.

Then you can delete the recovery partition which no longer contains Winre.wim.

After that, you can run "reagentc /enable" which moves the Winre.Wim from c:\windows\system32\recovery to c:\recovery\WindowsRE

That is how it works from a default setup.

As @NavyLCDR always says, you should always run "reagentc /disable" to park Winre.Wim to c:\windows\system32\recovery first before deleting any recovery partition.

SIW2 · Jan 4, 2023

yes, I know
which is why I posted this, perhaps you misunderstood

As far as I can tell, the separate MS recovery partition is not needed unless you are a bitlocker fan. Autofailover seems to work fine if it is on %systemdrive% ( or somewhere else ) instead.

cereberus · Jan 4, 2023

SIW2 said:
yes, I know
which is why I posted this, perhaps you misunderstood

No - I was just pointing out DEFAULT setup works how I said and vast majority of people do not know how to use reagentc commands and can easily end up with no winre.wim by mistake.

f14tomcat · Jan 9, 2023

The "Red" lined partition ( all whopping 587mb of it) is totally meaningless in your Clone scenario. It's simply Macrium saying it has detected a partition that is under it's assigned threshold for storage. It has absolutely nothing to do with copying or cloning it. Ignore the RED line and go on with your Cloning. It is much ado about nothing.