Setup Installation :: How To Resize Partitions Splitted By Recovery Partition
Oct 27, 2013
Recently I got my new laptop running under Windows 8.1 and was surprised with how the partitions were sized.
Here is the screenshot from the DiskManagement:
So I shrank the size of C: disk as you can see and got unallocated space. I want to attach that space to D: disk. I thought that is possible to extend recovery partition to unallocated space, then shrank recovery partition, and newly appeared unallocated then attach to D:/ disk. But failed with that.
I don't think that I really need those 900Mb and 350Mb recovery partitions and that they are useful, but it would be unwise to delete them while I don't know what are they for. Latter 20Gb recovery partition at the picture at least has the significant size to store something
Need to move partition over, did a minimal image restore with my new laptop. What it does is skip the recovery partition setup. So instead of 4 partitons I have 3. The problem is the first partition is now a 401 mb unallocated partition, the second is the EFI partition, and c: drive is last. When attempting to move unallocated 401 mb to the end of drive, so I can extend it, the program I use, EaseUS partiton does not "see" the first 401 mb and intead shows 0.0 unallocated space. Because of this I cannot resize/move the partition. What other method is there to remedy the situation.
I had a Windows 7 laptop until I decided to upgrade it to Windows 8. What I did was create a partition on the Windows 7 side and went through setting up the dual boot process with no problems. Now, after using Windows 8, I would like to expand the partition size on the Windows 8 side since I only created about 30GB and Windows 8 will become my primary. So, what I was wanting to know is how easy or difficult is it to resize he partition without corrupting the OS.The closest I found was from this link Dual Boot Windows 7 and Windows 8 - Delete Windows 7 which discusses how to delete the old Windows 7 partition. Would this work on reducing the Windows 7 partition as well? I am thinking it should? I have backed up both partitions using True Image and there really isn't any valuable data on the laptops, so not concerned about losing anything.
Here's my situation. My computer is running Windows 8.1 There is only 1 physical HD, but it has many partitions. Here is a picture of my current HD setup
The problem is that the WRE partition is literally sitting between my C and D drives, so when I shrink the C drive partition, I cannot extend the D drive with the unallocated space because it is not sitting right next to the D drive (I'm trying to shrink the C from 370 to ~60 GB, then extend the D from 550 to 850 GB with the C drive's unallocated space).
However, I found something called "AOMEI partition manager", which will let me shrink the C drive, extend the WRE partition with the unallocated space, and then shrink the WRE partition to get the unallocated space next to the D drive so I can extend it. So I'm basically using the WRE partition as a middleman between the C and D drives.
I'll still have the WRE partition (after extending and reshrinking it), my system partitions, recovery partition and everything like that. I just don't know if resizing the WRE partition like that will make it nonfunctional or something, even though all the data will still be on it.
FYI I have already created a full hard disk image with Acronis of the current hard drive setup before trying anything. I also have a USB drive that is bootable with a Windows 8.1 ISO that I was initially going to use to just completely format the hard drive and use Acronis as my recovery program instead of Windows recovery partitions, but I'm too worried about the EFI boot partition and all that stuff and possibly making my computer unbootable.
If you have a recovery drive - that includes the recovery partition - made on one computer, but have a toshiba laptop with a bad drive (but the recovery partition is ok), can you replace/copy the partition on the recovery drive with the recovery partition from the bad laptop HD?
My friend's laptop would not boot, and would not factory recover, reset, or refresh. I tried to clone the hard drive before I started messing with the disc. It would not clone, but I was able to copy the recovery partition to a USB drive.
He never make recovery discs, so could not re-install, but I can borrow the recovery drive that my aunt made for her laptop.
I recently decided to buy an ultrabook and I got me this one: LG Z360-7416, with a ssd and windows 8 (x64). As usual, it came with a lot of garbage installed which was using almost half of the ssd storage (128GB), so I decided to do a clean install. I got me a msdnaa copy of the windows 8.1 pro (x64). So, i used a pendrive to boot up on UEFI mode and selected custom install and when i get to the select partition, it shows everything fine, i select a partition and when a click on install, it returns an error saying it cannot install on my partition (i dont remember exactly what it says), and when i click on refresh, all my partitions vanishes, even going into the prompt and using diskpart doesnt show my partitions anymore. I tried to load some drivers, but it didnt work.
I was only able to install windows 7(x64), where nothing of these things happens, it installs realy easy. I tried to install windows 8 from windows 7, like an upgrade, but after it restarts, it gets stuck also. My disk is formatted on GPT, as im using EUFI on my windows 7 installation.
Tried almost a hundred times using all solutions i found online, but always the same result. And to get even more weird, some rare times it gets to the installation part, where it says the progress, but stays on 0% of unpacking files...
Its seens to be missing some especific driver to windows 8 be able to work with my ssd, but i cant get it right, but if it came installed with windows 8, it must be a way to make then work together.
Unfortunately i deleted the recovery partitions, so im stuck on windows 7.
I just bought a new laptop - an ASUS N550JV - with a single 1TB hard drive. I specifically sought a 1TB hard drive because I intend to store a lot of photos on the laptop and already have over 600GB of photo data to store.
When I got the laptop the first thing I did was to go through the windows update process to get everything up to date, then I upgraded to Windows 8.1 (the laptop came with Windows 8), then I ran the windows update again until everything was up to date.
It was only then that I opened up file explorer with the intention of setting up a basic folder structure for the files I planned to transfer to the laptop. I was dissapointed, at that point, to discover that instead of a single 1TB C: drive, I saw a 370+ GB C: drive and a 530GB + D drive. I confirmed with system information that there is indead just a single drive, and that it thus came partitioned into 2 primary volumes (which, btw, still don't add up to 1TB BTW!). This setup really doesn't work for me, because the "larger" volume is still too small for all my photos, and it would be illogical and inconvenient to have to split up the photos so that some were on the C drive and some on the D drive.
Could I somehow merge the two partitions back into one primary drive, or at least re-size them so that the D drive had at least, say, 750GB, and shrink the C drive accordingly. He pointed me to the Disk Management utility and directed me to delete the (still empty) D drive, which would make that storage space unallocated, then extend the C drive to use that unalocated space. I was able to delete the D drive, and confirmed that there was now 530+ GB of unallocated space. However, when I click on the C drive the option to extend is greyed out.
I did a bit of Googling at this point and discovered that you can can only extend to contiguous unallocated space, and the unallocated space was NOT contiguous - there is a 350MB "Recovery Partition" between the C and D (or unallocated) spaces. In fact, there were multiple recovery and other partitions. (From left to right: 100MB "EFI System Partition", 900MB "Recovery Partition", 370+GB "Primary" C Drive with Boot etc, 350MB "Recovery Partition", 530+GB "Primary" D drive, and 20+GB "Recovery Partition").
Of course I would be too scared to delete the recovery partition, but there's no option to do so anyway ...
I asked the family member again and he suggested creating a USB Recovery Drive and, in the process, wipe the recovery partition. So used the windows utility to create a recovery drive, and sure enough, at the end it asked if I wanted to delete the recovery partition and I said yes. The good news is that this removed the 20GB partition, and I was able to extend the D drive to use that newly unallocated space. The bad news is that the 350MB recovery partition still lies between the C and D drives, preventing me from merging the two.
Again through Googling I found that there are tools I could use to force delete the recovery partition, but I'm afraid to do so and kill my computer or recovery options all together. I also heard that this 350MB recovery partition was created when I upgraded to 8.1, and that rolling back to my factory setting won't remove the partition?
So the question is, what can I do? Is there an easy way to "move" the recovery partition to the end of the drive without breaking any functionality that it might have? What would happen to my computer if this recovery partition were to "break" or get removed? Is it best that I just "live with it" the way it is despite the inconvenience?
Is it possible not to have the partition "recovery"?
Because if you look at the two tutorials:
- UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) - Install Windows 7 with - Windows 7 Forums
- UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) - Install Windows 8 with
In the tutorial to install Windows 7 in UEFI, there is not that damn partition recovery, while in the tutorial for Windows 8, we can see it.
When I install Windows 7 (MBR mode), I avoid this partition "recovery" by creating a partition with a name before installation. I install the OS on it and everything is fine, no partition "recovery" But here, since one must delete all partitions, If I create a GPT disk with a partitioning tool before installing, is that it might be appropriate?
I recently picked up an Asus laptop, a SDD to replace the the laptop's HDD, and a HDD caddy to hold the HDD in place of the CD/DVD drive. After a fresh Win 8.1 install on the SDD, I made system images of both the SDD and the HDD with the Win 8 OEM install (both stored on external drive). I also created a USB recovery drive and then formatted the HDD.
Fast forward a few weeks... It's last Friday. I'm about to leave for a business trip. I boot up my laptop and a screen comes up telling me to "reboot and select proper boot device". I pull the SDD out, hook it up to my desktop, and see that the drive shows up, but it's blank. A little googling turned up a few reviews from other people with the same issue. On rare occasion, it will wipe itself. Using the USB recovery drive and the Win 8.1 system image, I got things up and running again.
Now for my question, instead of constantly carrying around the 2 USB drives holding the recovery and system image, can I create a recovery partition on my HDD that I can boot too if my SDD wipes again? (Could I copy or clone my Recovery USB to a partition on my HDD?) Then I could just keep the SSD system image on the HDD in case I need to restore it, right?
Disk 0: SDD disk that wiped itself Disk 1: HDD that I'd like to have a recovery partition and system image on
I also have: Win 8 OEM system imageWin 8.1 system imageRecovery USB drive (8.1)Win 8.1 USB Install drive
My son's laptop (Windows 8) failed, and despite F9 options to reset or refresh, and CHKDSK was unable to recover the system due to bad disk sectors. I bought a new disk , but as I had made no recovery media, and the OEM doesn't supply any, I have no way of reinstalling Windows 8.
However I did mange to install Ubuntu Linux on the new disk and the Laptop is now working fine. Out of curiosity I connected the old bad disk via a USB enclosure, and lo and behold Disk utility was able to read the OEM Recovery and Restore partitions. I have made several copies of these on a Win 7 laptop, USB and LInux partitions, and all look good (as far as i can tell).
My issue is that as the OEM recovery partitions seem fine, I reckon they should be installable onto the new disk, but I am at a loss as to how I can use this data to reinstall Win 8 onto my laptop. Most of the advice I can see assumes a working copy of WIn 8 or having a retail Win 8 ISO, which of course I do not have. Remember , unlike Win 7, WIn 8 has no product key identifiable as it is contained in the BIOS somewhere, but I reckon it should recognise the OEM's recovery partition if I only could manage to load it.
I now have a sketchy knowledge of lots of new terms (mounting , partitioning, MBRs, boot sequences etc ) so exactly what to do. [ The tutorial on this form requires a retail win 8 ISO]. I did find a Linux method involcing DD, DDRESCUE , PARTPROBE etc ) which I have tried but all to no avail - I am sure I was close though! ]
I have some problems with my laptop ASUS K55VD. I had windows 8, but with the store of windows I have updated to windows 8.1.
I have tried to use the recovery partition, but every time I try appears a message. Failed to reset your computer. A partition of unity necessary is missing. For that reason I have looking for some information, and with CMD commands like "diskpart". I have noticed that I have 8 volumen.
And in Computer Management appears this.
Then googling recommend to use EaseUS Partition, and some many things change. In the beginning, I had the same 3 partions in red and I don't know what happened.
But in diskpart change too, and I only have 4 volume, and it have dissapeared the recovery partition, and I don't know why?
Before to use EaseUS partition I have created a USB booteable with 9.79gb, and I had this:
But, in this days I have tried to create the USB booteable again, but I can't. And everytime I have tried to run the usb, appears to select the language, the keyboard, and then appears the same windows with troubleshoting and turn off (it returns at the previous windows in blue)
After a upgrade from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1, I seem to have lost my ability to use the recovery partition. Every time I go and use it I get an error message Unable to reset your PC. A required drive partition is missing.
I have contacted ASUS for recovery DVD's however I was told to go to a authorized repairer to have it fixed for a fee. My last laptop was able to burn recovery DVD's but not this one.
I understand that Windows 8.1 creates a new recovery partition for itself however I did read on this forum it is possible to get it back to default settings.
Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) and system reset configuration Information:
Windows RE status: Enabled Windows RE location: ?GLOBALROOTdeviceharddisk0partition2RecoveryWindowsRE Boot Configuration Data (BCD) identifier: ba08d678-3e5b-11e2-b26a-a34ba04e3737 Recovery image location: ?GLOBALROOTdeviceharddisk0partition5RecoveryImage Recovery image index: 2 Custom image location: Custom image index: 0
I installed Ubuntu 14.04 a few weeks ago and I was happy about it, but I need to sell this PC and I need to install Windows in it. The problem here is that I erased the recovery partition by accident and I can't install Windows with a CD because my computer doesn't have a disk case, the model of my PC is Lenovo Yoga 11s.
I tried to make a booteable Windows 7 USB with Unetbootin, but the BIOS doesn't let me boot from the USB slot. My BIOS configuration was in Legacy Support and my USB was the priority to boot. My USB was formatted in NTFS. When I open the boot menu it take me to the Grub of Ubuntu.
I don't know what else to do... I just need to install Windows, it doesn't matter if is 7 or 8.
When I installed my copy of windows 8 using a dvd, It installed a recovery partition during the installation. This partition allowed me to do things such as create a recovery drive, and use startup repair, all without needing to insert an installation disk. For some reason, this recovery partition is no longer working. I can't create a recovery drive without being told to insert installation media, and there are no troubleshooting settings when I launch "advanced startup". I noticed this after I deleted all of the bcd bootloader entries in easybcd, and tried to create a recovery drive. I don't know if deleting those entries could have affected windows but I think it might have something to do with it.
The recovery partition is still there, and the files in it are still there.
After upgrading to 8.1 i see two recovery partitions: Difference between each, or how to find out if i need both.
Secondly,i have a recovery USB flash drive which has boot efi and sources, but the latter is empty. Should i redo that to copy one of the two recovery partitions? (it's 3.7 GB).
Note: i also have 4 DVDs of media recovery, and a single system image on an external hard drive. Not sure how these are related to use of the USB drive,Where is the best description of a recovery process to follow in case of losing a C:drive?
I purchased a Lenovo laptop with Windows 8 Pro preinstalled. It came with 500 GB HDD. I changed the DVD Rom with SSD/HDD tray to use for additional drive. I put an SSD in there and installed Windows 8 on it using a USB Recovery Drive, which I don't have anymore. So my current setup looks like this:
After upgrading to Windows 8.1, the license of some software I'm using got messed up and I couldn't manage fixing it, so the only option I've got left is to reinstall/reset Windows. But since the Recovery partition is on another drive, when I go about creating a Recovery Drive, the option "Copy the recovery partition from the PC to the recovery drive" is greyed out. I've got stuff on my HDD, which I can't currently backup so I don't wan't to format that drive. I'm perfectly fine with formatting the SSD, that's what I want.
How can I reinstall/reset my Windows? The only option I see is to install Windows on the Hard Drive (by doing a backup and formatting it first), and then create a usb recovery drive and reinstall again on the SSD, but that's a lot of hassle and I'd need to find an external hard drive for the backup.
I intentionally left the Hard Drive in the original bay (as Disk 0) because of the better protection against falling compared to the added bay in place of the DVD drive.
I built up a new PC featuring a brand new SSD (i.e fully unallocated). Then, I made a clean install of Windows 8.1 pro (64bits) using an ISO DVD. Using Windows disk management tool after the install, I can see that only two partitions have been created: one System partition in NTFS (350MB) and the remaining of the SSD is the C: partition while I was expecting a third one : a recovery partition. Of course, I do not remember a prompt during the install to ask whether I want a recovery parttion or not.
Is it normal ? Is a recovery partition useful knowing I have the install DVD ? If the recovery partition has some advantages, is there a way to create it after the install is completed ?
Alright, so my ASUS laptop has been getting a little slow lately, so I decided to reinstall. Now I know my PC has an ASUS recovery partition, which reinstall the pc with all the tools, drivers etc, since I've used it before. But now when I restart the computer and press F9 and reset, it doesn't work. This is what I do:
This is where it was supposed to give me the option to restore whole drive or just install windows to the primary partition. But now it asks for a CD, which I don't have. This PC never used to have a recovery CD, just a recovery partition.
Then, I read somewhere I could do the same from inside Windows 8, so I tried that as well by going to the charms bar, then Settings and then "Change PC settings". Then I selected "Update and recovery" from the left, and then went to Recovery, where I pressed the button to remove everything and reinstall windows. This is what I got:
So, I tried to see if EaseUs Partition manager showed the recovery partition. I started ASUS and these are the partitions it found:
I saw it found both a "Recovery" partition and a "Restore" partition. Now I assume the Recovery partition is the one Windows 8 boots into, and the Restore partition is the one created by ASUS. So, these are the contents of the Recovery partition:
And these are the contents of the Restore partition:
As you can see outlined in red, it does contain an install.wim file, so I know the recovery data is there. However the Windows 8 recovery environment just isn't able to find it.
How to make a clean install on my Samsung Series 5 550P5C, but I hear from here to there that when I do it I will delete my Recovery Partition (which I would like to have on the disc in some radical case). However I saw a thread when someone performed a clean install and didn't lost the recovery partition. Additionally I think it should not be able to remove it installing Windows on C partition, as this is another partition on the disc - than Recovery part.
I need to delete a recovery partition off my second hard drive. I've seen this link: Delete and Remove to Unlock EISA Hidden Recovery or Diagnostic Partition in Vista - My Digital Life but it's for Vista and the final command "delete partition override" doesn't work in diskpart. It comes up saying "The specified command or parameters are not supported on this system"
Yes, I really do want to delete the recovery partition because it's on my secondary HDD, I still have the recovery partition on my C: so I'm really not losing anything ....
Some time ago Installed Windows 7 on one of my Windows 8 computers. But during the install i had to delete all partitions and that was the recovery partition that had he recovery software on it. Well now I want to go back to Windows 8 and I don't really want to send my PC to Samsung for re imaging. But I have the image i made with the software before I installed Windows 8. All I need is to get the recover partition back with the software on it. I have 2 other Samsung computers that have the same software on it but I need to find a way to make a image of the recover partition so i can use my backup image for the computer.
I have an Asus S200E and I had been messing with linux and trying to install it alongside windows 8.1 with no joy.After a while I gave up but i've had a few issues with my laptop and wanted to either refresh or reset it.
When I try to refresh I get a message saying that the drive is locked and when I try to reset I am told the recovery partition is missing. I guess I must have done something when attempting to install linux that has caused this problem however when I open up the partition manager the recovery partitions are all still there.
I lost my restore link to the recovery partition after i installed another version of windows.
This is a ASUS x550L with a pre-installed Windows 8 inside. What i need to do is set my recovery partition as active, boot from there, use that to reformat/re-install windows on drive C. I just dont know how to do it.
I was playing around with my OS dual booting them from Windows 8, W7 and XP but I accidentally erased my recovery partition. The bios i have is different from anything I've seen before. To boot from a cd/dvd i had to enable launch csm and secure boot control. Its the asus Q500a laptop. I just wanna know if i can download the recovery partition from somewhere and put it in my hdd.
I have Dell XPS 8300 and made a set of dvds when I got the machine. I don't remember if I made them before or after a Dell tech deleted my recovery partition.I have since made a Win 8 dvd from the downloaded iso file and using the library, moved to Win 8.1.
I am asking if there is a way I can restore or obtain the recovery partition.I have the original Win 7 cd, the 2 dvds I made when I got the pc and the Win 8 dvd I created.If the recovery partition is not in the Win 7 dvds(as I said above) is there any way to get that partition back?
When I moved from Win 7 to 8 with the disc I did not see any opportunity to create this recovery disc. I thought if I selected 'custom' after 0 unallocated space, then 'drive options adv', 'new' and 'apply' it would be automatically created.I never saw anything like that so just 'next it' to Win 8.
P.S. I have a Dell Laptop which is similar to the desktop and it has the recovery partition.
I had a computer with windows 7 home premium x64. A while ago I decided that I wanted to up grade to windows 8 and so I partitioned my os drive and installed (OEM) windows 8 Pro on the new partition. During the set up I was able to set up a duel boot system with windows 8 and windows 7. When I look at the drive structure I noticed that there isn't a system recovery partition for windows 7 or windows 8.
I would like to generate a system recovery partition for windows 8 and remove windows 7 but I am not sure how to go about doing this.
My Dell XPS One 2710 was delivered with Windows 8 with wrong language. Dell therefore sent me a Windows 8 MUI Recovery Media-DVD, and told me to follow the instructions on this link: [URL] .....
At the first installation attempt I got to a point where a pop up asked for drivers. I didn't know which drivers, and I thought everything was included on the DVD (but even the DVD-ROM wasn't recognized, only "Boot (X:)"). I read a tip in the Dell forum to change the boot setup to legacy. So I did and I got a few steps further to the point where you shall choose the partition(s) under the custom menu. But no partitions were found. Perhaps the reason was the 32 GB mSATA with Intel rapid storage technology.
So I did exactly the following:
1. I downloaded the newest version of the IRST-driver and extracted the files to a USB device. 2. I booted from the recovery DVD (UEFI, safety mode: ON). 3. When it asked for the driver I installed the IRST-driver from the USB device (AHCI, 64 bit, located in the driver-folder - the only words I recognized from the forums... 0:). 4. A total of six partitions were shown: Partition 1 ("ESP", System), partition 2 ("DIAGS", OEM (reserved)), partition 3 (MSR (reserved)), partition 4 ("WINRETOOLS", recovery), partition 5 ("OS", primary), and partition 6 ("PBR Image", recovery). 5. I followed the instructions in the link (above) and deleted all of the partitions. 6. I installed Windows 8 on the new partition, without further complications. 7. I ran Windows Update. 8. I installed the Dell drivers for this service tag, in the order specified by Dell, starting with chipset, card reader, IRST, audio, video, network and everything else, and with a reboot between every single driver installation. The system, including the IRST, seems to work fine so far (no exclamation marks in the Device Manager). 9. I replaced some of the software, including Dell Backup and Recovery.
I started Dell Backup and Recovery and the program initially told me that it couldn't find a recovery partition, and therefore couldn't backup the system. Other programs in the Control Panel, like File History and Storage Spaces, can't find available drives.
The Disk Management tells me the following about my 1 TB HDD:
So finally to my questions: Should I have kept one or more of the recovery partitions during the Windows 8 installation? Could this affect Windows' System Restore (I guess not since Windows creates its own recovery partitions)?
And finally: Is Dell Backup and Recovery any useful? I already have the recovery DVD in case I need a factory reset. For backup purposes I will use a cloud service, and maybe a NAS in the future. Do I even need a recovery partition?
I have a 200 gig partition on 1 drive that I have dedicated for games. But now it is filled, and even after shrinking my C drive to make space, I find that I still cannot extend my games partition. I've done a little reading and it appears that the issue is due to the free space not being directly beside the Games partition. I'm not sure, exactly, all I know is, I want to install more games and this technicality is preventing it.
Another thing that makes the situation more complex is that I have 2 other partitions on my drive that belong to Linux Mint. One is the main Mint partition, the other is a swap partition (similar to the page/swap file in Windows). I'm hesitant to try to mess around with moving those partitions since I'm not very experienced with Linux and if it doesnt boot I know I'll just reinstall it instead of trying to fix it. But I would like to avoid that in the first place.
I have tried with Disk Management, EaseUS, Paragon, Partition Wizard and GParted in Linux but they all wont let me make the games partition bigger, only smaller.
What I would like to do is to find a way to add free space to the Games partition, but without deleting other partitions or having to reinstall Linux. And more importantly, figuring out how to handle this kind of thing now so that I wont have issues extending partitions in the future. I also just figured I would say that I've converted the Games partition from primary to logical, due to the limitation of 4 primary partitions on a drive (maybe I'm wrong , but that's what I've heard). I say this because I recently had 4 primaries before trying to install Mint and Ubuntu, and neither of them would let me install. But as soon as I reduced to 3 primaries the issue went away and I was allowed to proceed. I figured that out after a bit of reading.
It is possible to move partitions on a disk so that they will be adjacent (either to the left or right) to another partition that needs to be extended?
I'm also posting a screenshot to make it easier for people to understand. The 36 gig partition is Linux's main partition, and the 15 gig partition to the right of it is Linux's swap partition. The pic also shows that both of those lie between the C drive and my games.
