Solved After clean install, two Recovery Partitions

WildWilly · Dec 21, 2023

Once again, thanks to all who responded. I have used Macrium Reflect to do what I wanted. I created their rescue media. I booted to their rescue media. I created a backup image of my boot drive, omitting the inactive recovery partition. I blasted my boot SSD, which is to say, my boot drive. Yes, I deleted all the partitions on my boot NVMe SSD. I restored the backup image I had just taken, still booted to the Reflect rescue media. I did that by positioning the 2 unavoidable unlettered partitions at the front of the drive, positioning the active recovery partition at the back of the drive, & positioning the actual boot partition (C drive) to fill the remaining space in the middle. That is all so ridiculously easy & intuitive, dragging & dropping the parts of the backup image onto the boot drive. Clicked Go. Poof. Magic. My boot drive now has only 4 partitions: the 2 unavoidable ones, the standard W11 C drive boot partition, the only valid recovery partition. And how do I know it worked? I'm here posting this. My system is running exactly the same as it was before I did this backup/restore cycle. I have verified via diskpart & reagentc that things are the way they should be & that the recovery partition I meant to be active is indeed the active recovery partition. The whole backup/restore cycle took less than a half hour. Take it from me. It all looks scary. And then you do it. And then you wonder why you were scared in the first place.

Ghot · Dec 21, 2023

WildWilly said:
It all looks scary. And then you do it. And then you wonder why you were scared in the first place.

Well then you are hereby awarded, the coveted...

WildWilly · Dec 21, 2023

I will never receive so prestigious an award as that. I was not expecting that. Just as no one expects the Spanish Inquisition.

Ghot · Dec 21, 2023

WildWilly said:
I will never receive so prestigious an award as that. I was not expecting that. Just as no one expects the Spanish Inquisition.

Bree · Dec 21, 2023

WildWilly said:
I have used Macrium Reflect to do what I wanted .... Take it from me. It all looks scary. And then you do it. And then you wonder why you were scared in the first place.

Congratulations.

Your first time doing a Macrium Reflect restore? Yes, it's a scary leap of faith - and such a relief when it all works as it said it would.

WildWilly · Dec 21, 2023

First time on W11. I did it one time on W7 to reorganize some partitions. I had a couple of data partitions sharing the boot drive with the boot partition. I had room for the data elsewhere & I was on the verge of running out of space on the boot partition. The situation was a result of some things I had done on a previous computer. It was just not a workable layout after several years of managing to get by. That reorganization of data was actually one of the first things I ever did with Reflect earlier this year. It's not something I'll ever do without just a hint of trepidation. But I'm confident I can get it done again if need be.

WildWilly · Jan 8, 2024

This is mostly a postscript. I must once again thank @SIW2 for the pointer to Disk Genius & @Megahertz for the idea of just expanding the Recovery Partition. I was doing backups tonight so I was in Macrium Reflect. I always do my boot drive backups booted from the Reflect rescue media. I do my data partition backups booted to the W11 desktop using Reflect. But I boot the rescue media to back up the boot drive. I tried my best to enlarge the Recovery Partition using Reflect but it simply wouldn't do it. It gave me a warning that it refused to change the size because of . . . something or other. It said it could resize C: but it wouldn't do the Recovery Partition. So I told Reflect to resize C: shrinking it by 2G on the right. And once again restoring the drive from the disk image backup I had just told Reflect to take. Then I booted back to my regular W11 desktop & used Disk Genius to perform the resize that Reflect refused to do. According to Reflect, my boot drive now looks like this:

No more red bar for the Recovery Partition used space.

You'll note that the recovery partition is actually 2.77G. I assume this has something to do with aligning partitions on sector boundaries or some such silliness. It's an SSD. There are no cylinders & tracks. I imagine, on the other hand, that there is some sector or cluster size for the data. In order to align things on the right boundary, I ended up with a bit more than 2G, actually closer to 3G. No matter. What's a G or two on a 2T drive? So I should think I will never see 2 Recovery Partitions again.

zbook · Jan 8, 2024

The Windows and recovery partitions can be dynamic when the recovery partition is to the immediate right of the Windows partition.

The dynamic feature is automatic failover.

With 2 GB you've got more than enough space for future updates.

Code:

Recovery tools partition
Create a separate recovery partition to support automatic failover and to support booting Windows 
BitLocker Drive Encryption-encrypted partitions.

We recommend that you place this partition in a separate partition, immediately after the Windows partition. 
This allows Windows to modify and recreate the partition later if future updates require a larger recovery image.

The Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) tools require additional free space:

A minimum of 52 MB is required but 250 MB is recommended, to accomodate future updates, especially with custom 
partition layouts.
When calculating free space, note:

The recovery image, winre.wim, is typically between 250-300MB, depending on what drivers, languages, and 
customizations you add.
The file system itself can take up additional space. For example, NTFS may reserve 5-15MB or more on a 
750MB partition.

Code:

Recovery tools partition
This partition must be at least 300 MB.

The Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) tools require additional free space:

A minimum of 100 MB is required but 250 MB is recommended, to accommodate future updates, especially with 
custom partition layouts.
When calculating free space, note:

The recovery image, winre.wim, is typically between 500-700MB, depending on what drivers, languages, and customizations 
you add.
The file system itself can take up additional space. For example, NTFS may reserve 5-15MB or more on a 750MB partition.
This partition must use the Type ID: DE94BBA4-06D1-4D40-A16A-BFD50179D6AC.

The recovery tools should be in a separate partition than the Windows partition to support automatic failover and to support 
booting partitions encrypted with Windows BitLocker Drive Encryption.

We recommend that you place this partition immediately after the Windows partition. This allows Windows to modify 
and recreate the partition later if future updates require a larger recovery image.

BIOS/MBR-based hard drive partitions

learn.microsoft.com

UEFI/GPT-based hard drive partitions

learn.microsoft.com

Ed Tittel · Jan 8, 2024

Macrium backup image (.mrimg file) + Macrium Rescue Media = Successful restore, every time.
Glad it worked for the OP, as it's worked for me 100s of times.
All's well that ends well.
--Ed--

Wisewiz · Jan 8, 2024

Ed Tittel said:
Macrium backup image (.mrimg file) + Macrium Rescue Media = Successful restore, every time.

Truer words were never spoke. Tx for saying them, ED.

budeone · May 23, 2025

POLYSIUS said:
Maybe that there is still a folder "Windows.old" or you have to analyse C:\$WINDOWS.~BT to find out what happend. But what you tell us is not the complete truth!
If you type cmd (admin)
reagentc /info
you get the answer. I guess it is
\\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk0\partition4\Recovery\WindowsRE

That means that the other useless is on partition5
Recovery Partitions are protected and you have to assign a different ID before you delete or work with them.
You could try:
Cmd (admin)
diskpart
sel disk 0
sel par 5
delete partition override
exit

and it's gone

Thanks.. This worked now i can convert to gpt...

Megahertz · May 23, 2025

budeone

Normally windows creates a new partition because the one that was in use was small. The ideal is to have 750M to 1 G in size.
Now you probably have a unallocated space after the recovery partition so I suggest you use Disk manager or Diskpart to enlarge the new partition using the unallocated space and as a result ends with a recovery partition bigger than 1G (mine has 1.2G)

budeone · May 23, 2025

I was going along pretty good and ran into my efi was between them now.... I do have a lot of space that I would love to add to disk zero. I started reading about it and going to go at it another time when I can pay complete attention... But I an able to use windows update without converting it... That is a huge plus

Scott · Saturday at 12:50 AM

WildWilly said:
The partition numbered 2 is a ghost.

MiniTool PW will show it.

Megahertz · Saturday at 7:32 AM

budeone said:
I was going along pretty good and ran into my efi was between them now.... I do have a lot of space that I would love to add to disk zero. I started reading about it and going to go at it another time when I can pay complete attention... But I an able to use windows update without converting it... That is a huge plus

If you want some help, create your own thread as this one is marked as solved.
To convert a Legacy - MBR drive into UEFI - GPT is quite easy.

budeone · Saturday at 10:09 AM

Scott said:
MiniTool PW will show it.

View attachment 134947

Cool.. I will check it out. Probably should done this b4 changing to ifi.. But.. Oh well.

budeone · Saturday at 10:13 AM

Megahertz said:
If you want some help, create your own thread as this one is marked as solved.
To convert a Legacy - MBR drive into UEFI - GPT is quite easy.

I will but I'm finding just about anything I need in a thread here. The trick is phrasing correct to find the threads

if I can't figure it our.. I will ask.. Believe me.. I will... But I try to do what I can before bothering anyone.

WildWilly · 2025-05-29T01:47:55-0400

@Scott There is no need for any third-party tools:

In light of this I'm a bit surprised Disk Management doesn't show it. Whatever. It's a useless partition as far as I can tell. I kind of vaguely remember reading somewhere what it is. I think it's a leftover from a past era. I wouldn't be surprised if it eventually disappears. I have ignored it completely since I got W11 installed. I don't believe that has caused me any adverse effects.

Scott · 2025-05-29T03:35:44-0400

WildWilly said:
There is no need for any third-party tools:

Thanks, I know about Diskpart and have used it quite often. But for me, MTPW was much faster to use than Diskpart.
Its a very power tool and I like it so much I bought the Pro version.

Megahertz · 2025-05-29T07:54:12-0400

Scott said:
MiniTool PW will show it.

budeone said:
Cool.. I will check it out. Probably should done this b4 changing to ifi.. But.. Oh well.

Be careful. Mini tool and other good disk manager only converts the drive from MBR to GPT. It doesn't create the EFI Fat 32 partition, needed to boot.
The way to convert is to use mbr2gpt.exe or convert using the MTPW and then manually create the EFI partition and load the boot manager on it.

Convert Windows 10 from Legacy BIOS to UEFI without Data Loss

How to Convert Windows 10 from Legacy BIOS to UEFI without Data Loss

www.tenforums.com

Solved After clean install, two Recovery Partitions

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