Surely, any user of Windows operating systems knows that in the event of unforeseen critical failures, their performance can be restored. The Windows recovery section is responsible for this, which stores the files necessary to perform such a procedure. However, they take up a lot of space on the hard drive (sometimes up to 15 GB, as in Windows 8). This is especially felt on hard drives with small volumes. And many rightly begin to ask themselves the question of freeing up the place that the notorious recovery section occupies.
How to remove it and whether it can be done at all, we will consider further. But I want to immediately warn all users that during this procedure you will have to sweat, as they say, and you should perform such actions only at your own peril and risk.
What is a recovery partition and is it needed?
The partition itself, as already understood, represents the reserved space on the hard drive, moreover, in the system partition where the installed OS is located.
As a rule, depending on the modification of the system, its size can vary, but usually it is about 300-500 MB. Here the Recovery folder is located, in which there is a WindowsRE directory with the Winre.wim image embedded in it. It also seems logical that all this is hidden from the user's eyes, so that he accidentally (or intentionally) does not delete the necessary recovery tools.
But this is not the only thing. There are two more hidden partitions on the disk, the existence of which the user is not even aware of. This is an EFI system partition with a capacity of about 100 MB and a 128 MB MSR partition responsible for GPT markup. Thus, for example, the question of how to remove the recovery partition in Windows 10 comes down to removing not one but three entire partitions from the system drive in order to attach them to the available space.
I must say that not all users are aware that the system recovery tools can be found on installation media, and on special disks to roll back and fix system errors. Therefore, in some cases, you can not only hide the recovery partition, but also delete it, as they say, without a twinge of conscience. Several methods can be proposed for this.
Reinstalling Windows 10: Will the recovery partition be deleted?
First, a few words about reinstalling the system. Some users naively believe that reinstalling Windows 10 or any other modification with full formatting of the system drive will also destroy the above sections.
Nothing like this! Yes, at the stage of choosing a drive for installing the OS, absolutely all partitions will be displayed, and formatting will really combine them into one. But after all, in a “clean” system, which the user receives immediately after installation, automatic system recovery is activated by default, so the OS itself, whether you like it or not, again reserves a place on the hard drive, where it writes the necessary information immediately.
Recovery partition: how to delete through the command line?
So, let's start with the most complex, but absolutely effective method, involving the use of the command console (cmd), which must be run with administrator privileges.
But before that, you need to perform a few simple steps. First, create a recovery disk. If the "Restore" menu is used in the "Control Panel", you will need a USB flash drive, if the backup and restore section is used, optical media is used. A flash drive with a capacity of 64 GB or more is convenient in that you can perform a full backup of data from the recovery partition itself (but more on that later).
Further, the solution to the problem of how to remove the recovery partition from the hard drive is to select the line of special boot options (for Windows 10) in the update and security menu, which is located in the settings section, or install removable media as the first boot device in the BIOS.
After the restart, at the beginning of the installation of the operating system, the Shift + F10 combination calls up the command line, in which the following commands are sequentially written:
- diskpart
- lis dis (list of all sections);
- sel dis 0 (select drive with installed OS);
- lis par (view sections);
- sel par 1 (select the first section);
- del par override (delete the first section);
- sel par 2 (selection of the second section);
- del par override (deletion of the second section);
- sel par 3 (choice of the third section);
- del par override (delete the third section);
- create par efi size = 100 (create an encrypted EFI partition with a size of 100 MB);
- fs = fat32 (formatting in FAT32) ;
- create par msr size = 128 (create an MSR partition with a size of 128 MB);
- lis vol (view sections);
- exit (exit from diskpart);
- bcdboot C: \ Windows (install boot partition);
- exit (full exit from the console).
Disk Management with AOMEI
The reboot field should, for ease of further operations, use the AOMEI application, select the drive to which you want to attach the place, and then use the resize / move line in the menu on the left side.
Next, the partition move is selected, and the slider is dragged to the limit (in order to completely allocate all the space for drive C. Be sure to note that after such actions the zeros should appear on the line “Unallocated space in front”).
Click "OK" and "Apply." In the pending operations window that appears, the transition button is pressed, after which you must agree with the instructions in the message. After that, a black window of the mode of freeing up space will appear. At the end of the process, the recovery partition will be deleted, and the free space will join the system partition.
Methodology for Windows 8 and higher
Now about how to delete the recovery partition in versions of Windows 8 and above (in the seventh modification and below, this solution does not work).
Remember, it was a question of creating a bootable flash drive at the first stage? So, if you check the box next to the backup line, the entire section, user files and programs can be transferred to this media. True, this may require even a few hours and a flash drive larger than 64 GB in volume.
But at the end of the process, the system itself will offer to delete the desired recovery partition. We agree and immediately see how much space is freed up.
Conclusion
It remains to be said that it is advisable to delete the desired partition only in those cases if it is planned to restore in any situation exclusively from removable media, which must be created in advance. If for some reason it is not at hand, a system rollback even to the factory state without reinstallation will be absolutely impossible.