Windows 10 added a recovery partition on my primary

[RVN]

I "upgraded" to Windows 10 last September and held off doing a clean install as everything was running smoothly for 7 months ...up until now. I've got images of Windows 7 that I could always go back to if necessary.

I use a 2 TB Western Digital Black label hard drive partitioned with 100 GB primary for OS and programs and 830 GB for data.

Today, I got an "error occurred" screen upon wake up that said it was collecting data and would automatically restart when it was done. It went to 100% collected and did not restart. When I forced a restart it booted up with no indication that it had been shut down improperly nor any mention of errors. Now, in disk management it shows that it took space from my 100 GB primary partition and added a 450 MB partition named "recovery" that I can't delete or inspect.

Anybody experience this? Yet?

A month ago my Mother's Win 8 desktop force installed Windows 10. I witnessed it when she was tricked into clicking "OK to continue". She's 87 years old and was comfortable with Win 8 for email, photos and social media and this threw her for a loop. We reverted back to Win 8 to placate her. I'm growing increasingly frustrated with Microsoft.

 

[TheELF]

It's a uefi/boot partition that is common place since win7,it's supposed to be safer then having those files on your OS partition.

 

[paperwastage]

It's a uefi/boot partition that is common place since win7,it's supposed to be safer then having those files on your OS partition.

no, it's different

450MB recovery partition
100MB /EFI


when I did a clean install, this partition was automatically created

people say you can delete it and reclaim space, but I'd leave it be...


it took forever to get efi/boot managers to play nicely across multiple drives (when installing linux, windows, in different orders)

 

[Magic Carpet]

It's recommended to leave those partitions intact, unless you know what you are doing.

EDIT: You can't do quite the same thing to an EFI installation though. By default, it creates four, by the way.

 

[TheELF]

no, it's different

450MB recovery partition
100MB /EFI

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn898510(v=vs.85).aspx
The minimum size of this partition is 100 MB but it can be bigger.

 

[Ketchup]

Google is your friend. This is normal.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...a/9831ed4c-3331-4f10-9da3-34e6881a2f6f?auth=1

This recovery partition first of all is standard in windows. It aids with recovery should your processor ever crash and it will, here.

 

[Crunos]

If you fresh install Windows 10 on a GPT disk (UEFI boot mode enabled), it does create an EFI, MRS (won't show in Disk Management), Recovery, and C: drive. If you install Windows 10 on an MBR disk, it only needs System Reserved partition and C: drive. When you upgrade Windows 8.1 to 10, Windows 10 will create a recovery partition if your system reserved partition (MBR disk) or Recovery Partition doesn't have enough disk space. As you know, Windows can only shrink a partition from the right side, so the 450 MB recovery partition is new created, which should not be deleted if you want to use recovery options. This 450MB recovery partition allows you to use recovery options. if you create windows 10 recovery disk, then it will give you an option to remove the recovery partition.

 

[JackMDS]

It better to leave it alone.

That said if the 450MB does not let to sleep well at night.

Install the Freeware version of this and Delete the Partition.

https://www.partitionwizard.com/download.html

After Deleting use the Resize capacity of the Ap.p to use join the space into the main partition.

 

[RVN]

Harumph!

I don't understand what prompted it to create this recovery partition 7 months after an upgrade install. It seems dangerous and invasive to just create it without prompting and shrinking the primary. This is one more thing to piss me off about Windows 10.

I am very precise at setting the exact sizes for my partitions i.e. 102,400 MB = 100.0 GB. It sucks that MS can arbitrarily change this after my exact size schemes. If I re-image to Windows 7 I will feel compelled to move 831 GB so I can delete all the partitions and re-format ...I thought I was finished having to deal with this crap. Ditto, for doing a clean install of Windows 10. I've avoided partition re-sizing programs since the first programs (Partition Magic) came out because of courruption and possible data loss, back when hard drives were as small as 2-10 gigabytes and it was relatively fast and easy to move data around.


Thanks for the answers and help. Anandtech is my friend.

 

[TheELF]

The OS encountered a boot problem and tried to fix it by following MS guidelines.
If you had followed MS guidelines when meticulously sizing your partitions you would not have this problem because you would have made this partition yourself in the first place.

 

[RVN]

The OS encountered a boot problem and tried to fix it by following MS guidelines.
If you had followed MS guidelines when meticulously sizing your partitions you would not have this problem because you would have made this partition yourself in the first place.

Thanks. I sized them prior to installing Windows 7 and wasn't aware of guidelines.

 

[escrow4]

Why partition in the first place? There is zero reason to. Especially as 7 onwards has libraries. An update probably broke something across both partitions and gave Windows a heart attack.

 

[RVN]

Why partition in the first place? There is zero reason to. Especially as 7 onwards has libraries. An update probably broke something across both partitions and gave Windows a heart attack.

Technically every hard drive is already partitioned; however
There are valid reasons to partition:

Make doing drive maintenance faster.
Split up system and data files.
Backing up files & software.
Windows needs hard-drive space for virtual memory.
Back-up what's on the first drive.
Rescue and recover a dead partition.
Multiple operating systems.

I like your premise that an automatic update might have screwed it up and the heart attack metaphor. Thanks.