Low disk space on D: Recovery drive

[Coweta]

I have an HP 15-bs131 laptop and recently had the HD replaced with a 500 GB SSD. While the C: drive has 283 GB free space, the 😧 Recovery drive has only 2.92 MB free space. Should I be concerned about this?

[WAWood]

@Coweta 

If the SSD is a lot smaller than the original HDD, most likely, the Recovery partition will not work anymore because it has to be the same size as the original and in exactly the same location on the drive.

You usually don't get these error messages unless you are writing to the Recovery drive, and if you do that, you will corrupt it and it will not work anymore.

[Coweta]

I have received no error, but noted this.  The SSD is half the size of the original HD.  They cloned the HD to the SSD.  Should I be concerned / do I need to do something?

Thank you.

[WAWood]

@Coweta 

Technically speaking, you can not actually CLONE a larger drive to a smaller drive -- the partitions have to be shrunk to fit.

And they probably shrunk the Recovery partition, if it is still there, and that is why you are getting the error message.

At this point, it will likely NOT work anymore anyway, so your best bet is to read the info below about using a third-party product to create an Image Backup to use to restore the PC instead of the Recovery partition:

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I personally prefer to use third-party Backup solutions as they tend to be both more flexible and more reliable than any built-in solutions.

Macrium Reflect (MR) provides a FREE version that can be used to image and restore partitions or entire drives.

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 or USB stick
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 60% 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 24GB to store the image file.

I use this all the time and it typically takes less than 15 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 WinRE, 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 or USB stick in only a few minutes.

[Coweta]

As I said, I have had no error messages, thus far.  I was simply concerned when I saw the situation with space on the 😧 drive.  Prior to having the HD replaced with the SSD, I made a System Image and a Recovery Dive using the Windows 10 tools.  I have File History running on a regular schedule.  I intend to make a new system image every 1-2 months.

When you say, "it will likely NOT work anymore ", what do you mean? 

Does the system image I made with the Windows tool include both the Windows and OEM recovery info?  If so, do I need to do anything else?

Once again, thank you for your advice.