Recreating the Recovery partition on D drive

[morris81]

I have a HP Pavilion g7 that originally had Windows 7.  I recently upgraded it to Windows 10. However, the Recovery partition (D:) still has the Windows 7.  Question: Can I simple delete the Windows 7 file and recreate the Recovery partition with Windows 10 or is it more involved.

[lasvegaswireman]

When requesting assistance, please provide the complete model name and product number (p/n) of the HP computer in question. HP/Compaq makes thousands of models of computers. Without this information it may be difficult or impossible to assist you in resolving your issue.

The above requested information can be found on the bottom of your computer, inside the battery compartment or on the startup BIOS screen. Please see How Do I Find My Model Number or Product Number? for more assistance locating this information. DO NOT include your serial number.

The "HP Recovery partition" contains the files needed to return your computer to a factory like state. There is no way to replace/recreate a Windows 10 Recovery partition that is anything like the factory recovery partition. I would suggest creating a "Windows System Image backup" of your current Windows 10 installation on an external drive. This will allow you to return the computer to the state it was at the time you created the backup.

Please see http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/4241/how-to-create-a-system-image-in-windows-7/ for more information on creating this backup image.

If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

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[WAWood · Accepted solution]

morris81

Essentially, the answer is NO.

Why?

Because an HP-installed Recovery Partition contains a custom compressed Windows OEM image from HP, and the firmware on that same PC is written to be able to boot into that partition (using F11) to do that recovery.

Your own partition would NOT contain that file because there is no way to obtain it from HP.

Even then, the F11 process would not work, even if you did create your own partition.

However ... if you want the means of doing a full system recovery, then consider using a third-party product known as Macrium Reflect to image off the installation.

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)
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 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 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.

Good Luck
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[morris81]

Thank you very much for the guidance.  You completely answered my questions  and made it easy to understand.

Got to run now a thunderstorm approaches and I need to sign off. Thanks again, MorrisP.