recovery partitions

[olliebollie]

Hello,

On my HP ENVY desktop-750-014nb I have a data drive E: and 2 (two) recovery partitions named drive D:.  They have both the same volume, but one of them is mentioned as NTFS formatted, the other one is not.  What is the purpose of 2 recovery partitions.  They both take a lot of harddisk space.  Could I delete one of them?

Thank you very much for your suggestions.

Andy

[WAWood · Accepted solution]

olliebollie

I prefer to use third-party recovery solutions for  the following:

1) More flexibility and reliabilty -- can make recovery media as often as you like, not restricted to one attempt, which if it fails, then you are stuck.

2) More media options -- can create media in DVD, USB stick, or external drive format

3) Mounting option -- can "mount" the save images as virtual "drives" and extract individual files and folders

4) WinPE boot option -- can install a special boot option that allows you to boot to recovery information and do a repair or  restore from there -- when Windows will not boot

What I recommend is the following:
1) Download and install Macrium Reflect (MR) from here: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
2) Run MR and choose the option: "Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows" to write a full backup to an external drive, USB stick, or DVDs
3) Use the option to create a boot USB stick or CD

My experience is that MR, when using the High Compression option, typically can compress the saved image file to about 50% of the USED space in the OS partition. This means if you have an 80GB OS partition, and 40GB is used, MR only needs about 20GB to store the image file.

I use this all the time and it typically takes less than 10 minutes to do the image backup and about the same time or less to do a restore. Plus, MR has the option to Add a Recovery Boot Menu entry. This allows you then to boot into WinPE, and you can then use that to do a restore -- when you can't boot into Windows!

NOW, you have the means to restore a full working system from the external drive, USB or DVDs stick in only a few minutes.

Also ... when you're doing doing this, you can remove the Recovery partition(s) and reuse the space.

Good Luck