Help me delete or move Recovery partition...

My new Mx14 R2 with 64gb SSD has a whopping 20gb of space reserved on the SSD for the "Recovery partition". I am unable to write to that space or delete the partitioin. Windows doesn't even assign it a drive number.

I've made my respawn DVDs and now I just want to get rid of that partition or migrate it to my 500gb HD. Windows Disk Manager won't let me touch it. Ideally i'd like just delete it and make my OS partition bigger....OR maybe image my OS Partition and then overwrite it onto the SSD making the whole thing just my OS Partition.

Can anyone help me out?

 

google delete partitions and you'll have your answer in detail.

Edit: Just read your other thread. guess it didnt work.

 

I found this after a little Googling. Sounds like it might work.
Re: Recovery Partition: Is this Dell or Windows 7? - Disk Drives (HDD, CD/DVD, Blu-ray) Forum - Disk Drives - Dell Community

 

macnbc, ok, great find. I've read it over a couple of times and may give it a try. You would think there would be an easier way.

 

Go to disk management, right click on it, delete it, and then it will be unallocated space. Then increase the size of your data partition. Done

 

niko2021- I wish it was that easy. The problem is that it doesn't work. Disk manager won't let you delete it. Even if you did, part of the boot process is stored on the recovery partition so then windows would not boot.

 

macnbc - thanks, it worked!!!

For all those that want to do this, it was pretty easy and didn't take long. I now have a single OS partition with 59.6 gb available!

First off, make sure you use Alien Respawn to make restore DVD or USB drive of your fresh out of box system state before you proceed!!!!

-You will need a blank DVD or USB drive to install the Boot manager program to.
-To enter the BIOS use F2 or just use F12 to change the boot order on a one time basis.

At the end, I downloaded the free version of Easus Partition Master which let me resize the OS partition to the whole SSD.

The next thing I'm going to do is make an image of the new SSD!!!

I followed this post Re: Recovery Partition: Is this Dell or Windows 7? - Disk Drives (HDD, CD/DVD, Blu-ray) Forum - Disk Drives - Dell Community
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted by otisalex2 replied on 23 Nov 2010 9:55 AM


11 Steps to Remove the Active Recovery Partition:


This forum sure has changed over the past few years. I thought that surely there would be lots of good information and experience here about the nature of the Dell recovery partition and how to remove it while still enabling Windows 7 to boot. But I had to really search for this information elsewhere and will share it here for others who may have a similar situation.

My situation, as posted above is that I cloned the original hard drive of my XPS 8100 to a larger drive and then resized and added partitions. The Recovery Partition and little Dell diagnostic partition may have been working on the newly cloned drive, but certainly weren't after resizing and adding partitions, so both those partitions were basically just sitting there taking up space, except for one important thing: The 11GB Recovery Partition is an active system partition, contains the boot files, and Win7 will not boot without it unless you make some changes. Since I have 2 1TB drives, and do my own regular scheduled backups, I wanted to get these partitions off my drive. Here is what I did:

1. To be safe, I made backup images of all partitions, just in case it didn't work.

2. I downloaded and burned BootIt NG (AKA BING). Note: You cannot install BING in Win7. You just burn it to a bootable CD/DVD by clicking the makedisk.exe from the unzipped files.

3. From Win7, open Regedit, under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, unload BCD00000000 from
the registry by highlighting it, click File/Unload Hive, Yes - or the following boot files will be in use and won't copy. (Note: If you don't have BCD00000000 under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, which was the case for me, just proceed to the next step.)

4. In Disk Management, right click the Recovery partition, click Change Drive Letter and Paths..., click Add, dot in Assign the following drive letter, OK.

5. In Folder and search options, View tab, put a dot in "Show hidden files, folders and drives". Also, remove the tick from "Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)". OK.

6. In Computer, Recovery partition, open and copy the "Boot" folder and "bootmgr" and paste them into the C: drive. (Copy, do not Move these files)

7. In Folder and search options, View tab, put a tick in "Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)". OK.

8. In Disk Management, right click the Recovery Partition, click Change Drive Letter and Paths..., click Remove, Yes.In Disk Management, right click the C: drive, click Mark Partition as Active, Yes.

9. Restart the computer with a BING CD in the drive. If necessary, set boot order to boot from CD drive first.) In BING (Partition Work), delete the Recovery partition (and the other little diagnostic partition, if you want to). You can also move and resize partitions to use the new space, or do this later with your own partition software.

10. In BING, do a BCD Edit on Win7. Follow instructions at TeraByte Unlimited Knowledge Base

11. Reboot

This method worked perfectly for me, and it's not as difficult at all once you get started and follow all the instructions carefully. I hope this helps others who want to remove these partitions.

Rob
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Great to hear it Shredman! I'm planning on doing the same when I get mine. Out of curiosity, how big was the backup from Respawn? Could it fit on an 8GB flash drive, or would you need something even bigger?

 

I did a full format and I must say its night and day. They did something other then junk software to slow it down. I made a backup on another hard drive then did a clean install.

 

I put the respawn on 2 DVDs. It was about 6.9 gb. I think an 8gb would fit fine.

I'm really happy with the results!! Thanks again for the research and finding that post.

 

I'd be curious to see the difference between our two systems. Right now I have nothing to compare with, but it seems really fast. Maybe if Windows 8 ends up being worth and install, I'll eventually get a bigger SSD and do a clean install.

So far, I'm really happy with the process I followed and the end results. I'm glad your clean install was good and your system is fast!!

 

I understand the majority of the instructions except for these bit s
"4. In Disk Management, right click the Recovery partition, click Change Drive Letter and Paths..., click Add, ??dot in Assign the following drive letter??, OK."

"10. In BING, do a BCD Edit on Win7. Follow instructions at TeraByte Unlimited Knowledge Base"
I have no idea what that does

Also is it necessary to do this if I reinstall windows? because i can just delete the partition from the windows install wizard

Not sure if i will get rid of it anyway - might just resize it. I travel a lot and should my laptop throw a hissy fit while im away without the respawn CDs i want to be able to get it restored. Besides the extra 7gb becomes rather unimportant once i get my 256gb SATA III SSD

 

10. In BING, do a BCD Edit on Win7. Follow instructions at TeraByte Unlimited Knowledge Base

But the instructions are for Installed version of BOOTIT and not CD version it seems. I am sorry but i want to make sure i understand before i take a plunge.

Also I am wondering whether BOOTIT NG modifies any bootloader code so that boot is now dependent on BOOTIT NG?

Pl s guide

 

You could have also done it on the Windows Install Manager inside the Windows Disc by deleting the partition . I'm glad that you found the solution.

Now it would be good to reinstall Respawn and creating a new partition on the HDD or something.