Recovery D Drive (Partition) Reporting Low Space

[Sid2011]

My HP Envy dv7-7227cl is doing a pop up message every 5  minutes or so that the D Recovery Drive (really a factory default partition for recovery) is running short of space, which is indeed true.  Originally a factory installed Win 8 OS that was updated to Win 10 without incident a long long time ago.  It appears that a few months ago (with Win 10 Creators/Developers Upgrade maybe) Win 10 has written to D Recovery as well, and now is causing the "running out of space" pop up.  I read in a similar post that I could potentially delete the Win 10 folder from D, but I'm thinking maybe just increasing the size of the D partition (and correspondingly decreasing the C drive size) might be a smarter way to go (I have 550+ gb of free space on my C Drive).  I would appreciate thoughts on this, as well as "how to" guidance.

Perhaps overridding this, is that a Microsoft tech today told me that my laptop (described above) is too old and incompatable to upgrade to Win 10 v 1709.  (And I wondered IF I had just increased the D partition first, would the v 1709 upgrade have worked just fine?) The highest upgrade (that she now stopped windows update from trying to continue upgrading past) which I believe I am currently running, is Win 10 v 1607.  She indicated that due to a lack of compatible drivers, it would be too dangerous to "push the upgrade to Windows 10 v 1709" (which continuously failed and restored my prior version of Win 10).  That leaves me thinking that I have little to no choice but a) stay with this out of date Win 10 version as the world moves on (not a good choice, I think, - soon following will be printer incompatability, etc), or b) buy a new replacement laptop.  So if she's right, maybe I'll just have to move on, so there's no real need to spend any real time fixing the soon-to-be boat anchor.

Thoughts?

[Huffer · Accepted solution]

I would just turn off the low disk space warning like this:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/555622/how-to-remove-the-low-disk-space-warning

There is no danger from having the recovery partition filled to the brim. You can also delete it as it is now useless anyway. When you upgraded from 8 to 10 the recovery patition got corrupted and will no longer work with the F11 recovery option. If you have the HP Recovery Manager app on the laptop one of the options is to delete the recovery partition. As long as you keep a system image backup you can recover fairly easily to your Windows 10 current state (apps and data). 

New laptops are very cool but that one is still competent. I have seen no compelling reason to upgrade to 1709; if anything Windows 10 just gets more intrusive and controlling with each updated Build. Can you do the upgrade on your hardware? I hate to quibble with the all-knowing Microsoft but I see no reason why not but as I said I see no reason to do so, either. 

Post back with any more questions. 

[Sid2011]

Thanks Huffer for your expert assistance.  You confirmed my belief that the D Recovery Partition was of no value to me at this point; so rather than "turn off" the low disk space warning I did something I thought would be easier (and less dangerous) for me at my skill level.  I just accessed the D Drive through Windows Explorer and deleted the folder (that apparently was added by Windows 10) which was (helpfully) labeled as Windows 10.  When that file (and all its contents ) was deleted - viola - no more pesky low disc warning.

Again, as a result of your comments concerning Windows 10 build 1709, I decided I will just happily stay put with where the Microsoft tech left me (supposed she has made whatever modifications were necessary to prevent Win 10 from attempting further attempts in the future to update to (or past) build 1709 on this laptop.  For  me - Windows 10 was working fine before the failed attempts to upgrade to 1709;  so I will blissfully stay with my prior build that was working fine.  (It helped that she had said that my machine would, however, still continue to get on-going security updates.)  Without the confidence provided by your comments concerning both the competence of my +/- five year old laptop and the lack of any pressing reason to upgrade to 1709, I would have been left with the feeling that I needed to be seeking a new laptop fairly promptly.  Both a task, and an expense, I was not looking forward to.

So again - many thanks for your sage advice!

[countresscookie]

hi, i know this is very late. but im not sure if this solution would help me or not. since i have different upgrade of windows ajd a different laptop. but wanted to tell u the spects of my laptop and windows. because im having the same issue. my recovery disk d drive keeps fillibg up. ive checked in the symstem protection>and properties, and for the recovery D drive it says "off" for the protection. so that isnt the issue for me. ive tried clearing up disk drive space as it asked. but that only cleared up space in disk drive c not in recovery disk drive D. my laptop is an Hp Pavilion 15 notebook PC, 64-bit operating system, x64 based proccessor, the laptop was oringally windows 8, as i bought it nearly 5 yars ago. but then came the free update to upgrade to windows 10. i did that and now im windows 10(fid this upgrade over a year ago), there was no issues with the upgrade. i keep up with the updates for windows 10 and currently its Windows 10 Home. version is 1803. ive checked and i do have the HP recovery manager. Im not tech savvy but this issue is making it hard to play video games.. i dont want to change the registery. wanted to do a less dangerous route. was wandering if removing the recovery partition is a save option for me. and how will it effect my laptop afterwards. (also if i need to back up personal files and images, how do i go about doing so).