About Windows Recovery Partition
If you buy a computer with Windows 10 or Windows 8 preinstalled, you will find that there is a recovery partition in Disk Management, with no drive letter and no executable functions except Help (see the image attached below).
Well, what is recovery partition? To put it simple, a recovery partition is a portion of your disk drive that is set aside by the manufacturer to hold an image of your system before it was shipped from the factory. Recovery partition contains the files of system backup image and files that guide system restoration.
In a word, recovery partition is a function of one key computer recovery when the system runs into an error.
How to Create Windows 10 Recovery Partition?
Although a recovery partition takes up a couple of GBs of disk space, you can save a lot of time finding a way to quickly restore your PC to factory conditions when your PC runs abnormally. Thanks to the huge disk space of today’s hard drives, the disk space taken by recovery partition is only a drop in the bucket.
Besides, when you have a recovery partition at hand, you don’t need to worry about where you should keep a recovery drive or recovery disc and make an effort to keep it well. Thus, Windows 10 create recovery partition is also a frequently asked issue.
However, unlike creating a normal partition, creating a recovery partition is not easy. Usually, when you buy a brand-new computer that has been pre-installed with Windows 10, you can find that recovery partition in Disk Management; but if you reinstall Windows 10, it is likely that no recovery partition can be found.
Luckily, our previous post How to Create Recovery Partition Windows 10 shows step-by-step guidance, you can follow the instruction and try creating a recovery drive by yourself.
Can I Delete Recovery Partition Windows 10?
You may ask: can I delete recovery partition Windows 10? The answer is positive: you can delete recovery partition without affecting the performance of Windows 10, provided that you have made a backup or you are not planning to do factory reset when Windows runs into an error.
However, please note that you cannot delete recovery partition in Disk Management utility, only a Help option can be found there.
Well, how to delete recovery partition Windows 10 to release available space?
Luckily, we have MiniTool Partition Wizard, which can easily and safely remove recovery partition Windows 10/8/7. Here, we recommend using MiniTool Partition Wizard Free edition which is qualified to do this job, you only need to click several buttons to finish.
Recommended: curious about some strange partitions on your drive? Read this post to make them clear.
Way 1: Delete Recovery Partition using Partition Wizard
Let’s see how MiniTool Partition Wizard works on deleting recovery partition Windows 10:
Step 1. Download MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition. Install it on computer and run it.
MiniTool Partition Wizard FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe
Step 2. Right click on the recovery partition you want to delete and select “Delete Partition”.
Step 3. The recovery partition will be displayed as unallocated space for your preview. Now click “Apply” to make the operation into effect.
Within a few seconds, you will have Windows 10 recovery partition deleted. Then you can use MiniTool Partition Wizard to add this unallocated space to any partition so as to extend partition or you may just create new partition on this location.
Way 2: Delete Recovery Partition using Diskpart
In fact, Windows also provides you a way to delete recovery partition, that is to use Diskpart.exe to delete partitions from Diskpart command prompt. Please follow these steps to remove Windows 10 recovery partition.
Let’s see how to delete recovery partition Windows 10 using Diskpart.
Step 1. Navigate to Windows 10 Start menu, type “diskpart” in the search box, and then Windows 10 will show you the best match. Right-click on “diskpart” and select “Run as administrator”, then confirm that you want to allow this app to make changes to your computer.
Step 2. At Diskpart window, type the following commands in order. Please end each command with the Enter key:
- Type “list disk” to display all your disks. Please pay attention to the disk number that contains the recovery partition.
- Type “select disk n” where “n” should be replaced with the correct disk number.
- Type “list partition” to list all the partitions on the selected disk. By viewing the partition label and other partition information, you will know which one is the recovery partition to be deleted.
- Type “select partition n” where “n” should be replaced with the partition number of the recovery partition.
- Type “delete partition” to delete the recovery partition.
- Type “exit” to quit.
Kindly reminder:
Sometimes, you may fail to delete recovery partition and an error message which reads “cannot delete a protected partition without the force protected parameter set” appears:
This error message is likely to appear on GPT disk. If the recovery partition you intend to delete is marked as protected partition by Windows, then deletion is prevented. At this time, you can type “gpt attributes=0x8000000000000000” and then repeat “delete partition” to solve this issue.
If you are familiar with Diskpart, you can continue creating a new partition on the released unallocated space before you exit. Or you can use this unallocated space to enlarge partition. But probably you will encounter “Virtual Disk Service error” during the process. Here I suggest using MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition to save time, which can break some limitations in Diskpart.
So the bottom line here is: both MiniTool Partition Wizard and Diskpart are useful to delete recovery partition Windows 10. But in my opinion, the former one is easier to operate, and the latter is likely to lead to errors.
Although Diskpart is able to delete recovery partition, without a clear interface to display the details, there are chances that you may delete a wrong partition and the operations are irreversible. For those who are unfamiliar with Diskpart, obviously this is not a good choice.
After knowing how to delete recovery partition using two methods, you might be interested in whether it is possible to restore deleted Windows recovery partition. See the following part to get specific tutorial.
Restore Windows Recovery Partition
Sometimes, you may regret of deleting recovery partition, for you may need it to restore Windows to factory settings someday. Is it possible to restore recovery partition Windows 10? Yes, and MiniTool Partition Wizard is always the best solution.
MiniTool Partition Wizard provides a powerful feature called “Partition Recovery” to guide users through the process of recovering lost partitions due to wrong deletion or wrong diskpart clean. Let’s see how to retrieve Windows 10 recovery partition in detail:
MiniTool Partition Wizard FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe
Step 1. Run Partition Wizard Free Edition to the main interface. Then right click on the disk that used to contain the recovery partition and choose “Partition Recovery Wizard” from the option box.
Step 2. If you are using the Free Edition, you will see notice saying Free Edition is only capable of scanning for lost partitions. To recover, you need to upgrade software to Pro Edition. If you are already running the Pro Edition, the red notice will not show up. Now to continue, click “Next“.
Step 3. Now choose a disk you want to recover partitions from.
Step 4. Then set a scanning range to search for the deleted recovery partition. It is recommended to choose Full Disk or Unallocated Space here for they are easy for users to carry out. Then click “Next” to go on.
Step 5. In the next page choose a scanning method. Do you want a Quick Scan or would you prefer a Full Scan? I suggest using Quick Scan which saves a lot time first to take your chance. Click “Next” and continue.
Step 6. Here comes to the scanning result page. Now you need to tick ALL partitions you need to do the recovery. Look! The recovery partition is successfully found by Partition Wizard. So here I just tick this partition along with the rest important ones. Then click “Finish” to go back to the main interface.
Step 7. Finally, hit the “Apply” button to start the recovery process (only the paid editions allow you to do so).
MiniTool Partition Wizard FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe
Related Article: HP Recovery Drive Full Windows 10/8/7? Here’re Full Solutions!?
Back up Recovery Partition Windows 10
Some users are quite indecisive on whether they need to delete the recovery partition or not. If they keep the recovery partition there, it seems that they will never have the chance to make use of it, and the disk space it occupies is wasted; if they just choose to delete it, they feel someday they need this partition to do Windows reset. In such case, it is wise to back up the recovery partition to another location before deleting recovery partition.
Well, how to back up recovery partition Windows 10?
MiniTool Partition Wizard offers an easy way to do partition backup. As long as you employ the “Copy Partition” feature, you can finish backing up recovery partition Windows 10 easily and quickly.
Step 1. On the main interface of MiniTool Partition Wizard, select the recovery partition to choose “Copy” from the Partition group.
Step 2. In the pop-up mini window, select unallocated space on another disk to hold the copy of the recovery partition. Then click “Next” to continue.
Step 3. Here you can edit the size of the new partition which will hold the copy of the recovery partition. Then click “Finish” to go back to the main interface.
Step 4. Finally, click “Apply” to start the backup process.
Related Article: How to Clone Recovery Partition to External HDD?
Reading here, you can see MiniTool Partition Wizard is really of great help to deal with issues related to recovery partition. In fact, there are more features MiniTool Partition Wizard can offer, such as merge recovery Partition Windows 10 (paid edition), move recovery partition Windows 10, explore the content of recovery partition, and so on. Now grasp this freeware to help manage you recovery partition Windows 10.
Restore Windows from Recovery Partition
If your computer isn’t running the way it should and keeps sending out error messages, or you just want to make a reset to its default state, then Windows 10 recovery partition plays an rather important role. How to factory reset a Windows 10 laptop? Well, the process of restoring windows 10 from recovery partition is rather easy. Just follow these steps:
Step 1. Navigate to Windows 10 Start menu to choose “Settings”. Then in the pop-up new window, input “reset” to select “Reset this PC”.
Step 2. Under UPDATE & SECURITY -> Recovery, click “Get Started”.
Step 3. Here you can choose how to carry out the recovery: to keep your files or to remove everything. Depending on your own needs, you should make your own decision. Then the reset process begins.
This is the end of how to restore Windows 10 from recovery partition. Rather easy right? But for Windows 8 and Windows 7, things are more complicated. You can refer to How to Factory Reset a Laptop – Windows 7 & 8 to get the detailed steps.
Summary
In this post, I mainly talk about what is recovery partition, how to create recovery partition, can a recovery partition be removed and how to delete it, how to back up recovery partition, etc. Hope these information are helpful. In addition, I strongly recommend using MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition to help you since it is free, reliable and easy to use.
If you have any question towards using this freeware, you can email us via [email protected] or leave us comment below. Thanks in advance!
About The Author
Position: Columnist
Rodin is an enthusiastic IT writer focusing on Windows trends, disk partition management and data recovery. She loves to write and share her idea about the useful tips and tricks on personal computers' maintenance. If you are looking for methods to improve your computer performance, manage hard drives and recover data from different devices, Rodin can provide reliable solutions for data management.