Deleting recovery partitions: When there are multiple recovery partitions what are the methods to determine the partitions that can be deleted?

Question

_{Monday, August 13, 2018 7:39 PM}

Each time there is a Windows upgrade there may be a new recovery partition added to the drives.

Using reagent /info enabled can be seen but it does not identify the recovery that is in use and/or the recovery that are unneeded and can be deleted.

Diskpart, bcdedit /enum all, disk management, mini tool partition wizard can all give information about the recovery partition.

How does an end user determine which recovery partition to keep and which to delete?

All replies (3)

_{Tuesday, August 14, 2018 2:32 AM}

  The only reliable method I know of is to delete all partitions and do a clean install. The install will only create the partitions it needs.

Bill

_{Tuesday, August 14, 2018 3:39 AM}

When a new recovery partition is created can the end user assume that the Windows upgrade found fault with the existing recovery partitions and created a new one?

Using the Minitool partition wizard the contents of each recovery partition can be seen.  These files have dates.

1) So will the older recovery partitions be irrelevant and the newest recovery partition relevant?

2) If all recovery partitions were deleted on an UEFI/GPT drive could the recovery partition be recreated using command line?

3) Can each recovery partition be copied and saved to another drive?

4) Then can all recovery partitions be deleted and one of them restored?

So there are three options I wondering if they can be performed:

a) deleting all except the newest recovery partition

b) copying all the recovery partitions, deleting all, and restoring one of them using third party software such as aoemi, acronis, macrium, paragon, easeus?

c) deleting all without copying and then recreating the recovery partition using command line (for example command line can be used to create an EFI partition) (if this is possible what is the command?)

_{Wednesday, August 15, 2018 7:48 AM}

Hi,

At first, the reason for creating a new recovery partition after the upgrade is that the capacity of the old recovery partition is too small to allow a new recovery partition to change.

I suggest that you keepthe recovery partition which is on the right side of C drive and next to it in the Disk Management, because each time you upgrade, a new recovery partition will be created next to C drive. You can delete the remaining recovery partitions which are unneeded.

You can delete recovery partitions by following steps:

Step1: Start the command prompt with the administrator privileges and run the “diskpart” command.

Step2: Type list disk.

Step3: A list of disks will be displayed. Note the number of the disk which has the partition you wish to remove. (If in doubt open disk management and look there, see steps above).

Step4: Type **select disk n **(Replace n with the disk number with the partition you wish to remove).

Step5: Type list partition.

Step6: A list of partitions will be displayed and hopefully you should see one called Recovery and it is the same size as the one you wish to remove.

Step7: Type **select partition n **(Replace n with the partition you wish to delete).

Step8: Type delete partition override. 

Step9: The recovery partition will now be deleted.

Hope these could be helpful.

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