Solved Too Many Recovery Partitions?

ThrashZone · Nov 17, 2021

Hi,
If the op posts a disk management screen shot maybe it can be fixed.

lafargeotte · Nov 17, 2021

Hi,
Thank you all for your help.
I have ascertained the current recovery partition.
As you all correctly pointed out, those furthur right are the older ones, and I will delete them.
Thanks for all your help.

ThrashZone · Nov 17, 2021

lafargeotte said:
Hi,
Thank you all for your help.
I have ascertained the current recovery partition.
As you all correctly pointed out, those furthur right are the older ones, and I will delete them.
Thanks for all your help.

Hi,
I'm assuming the closest to C should be resized so ms doesn't keep creating more.

ddelo · Nov 18, 2021

When clean installing (either W10 or W11) you have the option to create and size the partitons any way you want (always following the Microsoft guidelines, for minimum size, format and placement).
So, at the first screen (Language selection) you can press SHIFT+F10 to open Command Prompt.

Type the command: diskpart /s CreatePartitions.txt - where CreatePartitions.txt is a text file containing a partition creation script as the one shown below.

It is worth noting that the following script assumes that Windows will be installed on disk 0. Before running the script check (with diskpart) the disk on which Windows will be installed and change the script accordingly.

Code:

rem ================ Disk preparation =================
rem Select the preferred disk (assuming disk 0)
select disk 0
clean
convert gpt

rem ============= 1. EFI System partition =============
create partition efi size=200
format quick fs=fat32

rem ====== 2. Microsoft Reserved (MSR) partition ======
create partition msr size=16

rem ============== 3. Windows partition ===============
rem (a) Create Windows basic partition
create partition primary

rem (b) Leave space at the end of the disk for the
rem     Windows Recovery (WinRE) partition
shrink minimum=950

rem (c) Prepare the Windows partition and assign
rem     drive letter W. Windows Setup will change
rem     the drive letter to C, upon installation.
format quick fs=ntfs
assign letter="W"

rem ============= 4. Recovery partition ===============
create partition primary
format quick fs=ntfs label="WinRE"
set id="de94bba4-06d1-4d40-a16a-bfd50179d6ac"

rem ================== Exit script ====================
exit

You can read about diskpart scripts in diskpart scripts and examples

lafargeotte · Nov 18, 2021

ThrashZone said:
Hi,
I'm assuming the closest to C should be resized so ms doesn't keep creating more.

Yes, once I had deleted them, I merged them into the main partition.

TheMystic · Nov 18, 2021

lafargeotte said:
Hi,

Can you help please?

My main SSD which has basically only Windows 11 on it has a number of 'Recovery Partitions', see attachment..

This drive has upgraded a couple of times Windows 10, and most recently upgraded to Windows 11.

So my question, can some of those Recovery Partitions be removed, and if so, how do I know which ones to remove, and which is the current Windows 11 recovery partition?

TIA.

Even if you delete all of them, it is very easy to create a new one. Check the last section of this tutorial.

Scott · Nov 18, 2021

TheMystic said:
Even if you delete all of them, it is very easy to create a new one. Check the last section of this tutorial.

Thanks for the link to the tutorial. It says to pull the recovery files from a Windows 10 ISO. If I'm on 11, do I pull them from a Windows 11 ISO?

Berton · Nov 18, 2021

This is my Disk Management on a new Dell Vostro 14" I received a month ago from Dell, came with Win10 Pro on a 256GB NVME drive. After initial setup I updated Win10 then was offered Win11 and installed fine.

Stigg · Nov 18, 2021

This post explains it and also links to Kari's explanation.

1 GB Recovery Partition?

I upgraded to Windows 11 using the Upgrade Assistant tool on October 4 on a Dell Inspiron 3793.. Since then, I've been poking around here and there and everything seems to be working fine. I use Macrium Reflect 8 to backup my computers. One thing that caught my eye was that Macrium had marked...

www.elevenforum.com

TheMystic · Nov 19, 2021

Scott said:
Thanks for the link to the tutorial. It says to pull the recovery files from a Windows 10 ISO. If I'm on 11, do I pull them from a Windows 11 ISO?

It is best to have the latest one, even though either of them would work just fine for the most part. Recovery from a Windows 10 ISO will work fine with Windows 11 too. But getting it from latest Windows 11 ISO would be best, irrespective of which version of the OS is installed.

TheMystic · Nov 19, 2021

Berton said:
This is my Disk Management on a new Dell Vostro 14" I received a month ago from Dell, came with Win10 Pro on a 256GB NVME drive. After initial setup I updated Win10 then was offered Win11 and installed fine.
View attachment 14039

The one immediately next to the C: drive, of size 990 MB is your current Recovery partition. You can delete the last 2 Recovery partitions to reclaim wasted space. Check the last section of this tutorial.

Scott · Nov 19, 2021

TheMystic said:
It is best to have the latest one, even though either of them would work just fine for the most part. Recovery from a Windows 10 ISO will work fine with Windows 11 too. But getting it from latest Windows 11 ISO would be best, irrespective of which version of the OS is installed.

Thanks, I used my Win 11 ISO. All tidied up now.

Before

After

TheMystic · Nov 19, 2021

Scott said:
Thanks, I used my Win 11 ISO. All tidied up now.

Before
View attachment 14054

After
View attachment 14055

Happy that the linked tutorial helped you.

PerpetualCycle · Dec 11, 2021

Scott said:
Thanks for the link to the tutorial. It says to pull the recovery files from a Windows 10 ISO. If I'm on 11, do I pull them from a Windows 11 ISO?

If you delete them all you can also just perform an in-place upgrade and it will create a new one. I did this because I had restored a Windows 10 backup that did not include the recovery partition so I ended up with a Windows 10 system partition and Windows 11 recovery partition. I just completely deleted the Windows 11 recovery partition and did an in-place windows 10 installation, which created the Windows 10 recovery partition. You have to delete the existing one for it to work.

the_observer · Oct 22, 2023

My partitions look like this:

According to the thread , if i got it right cause i am a noob, the first 2 partitions named FAT32 and Other are ok to delete?
I want to mention that i use EASEus TODO Backup. From my extra small experience Backup programs do not create partitions. Right?

Thank you for your time reading this.

Regards,
Nik.