Windows Recovery Partition

[P19]

i was wondering whether IFW or IFL would have added any information to the Windows Recovery Partition made at the beginning of the drive. I have noticed that mine is now up to 2.86 GB, but I am not sure when it grew to that size. I have 64-bit Windows 10 Pro installed on this machine. Is this normal? Thanks.

[TeraByte Support(PP)]

If you update the WinRE (Recovery) partition for TBWinRE it will add 100MB or so -- no big files.

A partition with 2.86GB of data would more likely have system recovery files on it and not just WinRE. Could also have OEM recovery files on it. Did the partition exist prior to Windows 10 being installed?

[P19]

Hi, Paul.

I am not entirely sure when this partition became so large. I upgraded the machine from Windows 7 to Windows 10, skipping the interim editions, and it may have occured during this upgrade.

> "If you update the WinRE (Recovery) partition for TBWinRE"

How can I check whether this occured? What would be the purpose in doing so? I would like to see what is on this partition if possible. Thanks.

[TeraByte Support(PP)]

If you didn't update WinRE with TBWinRE then it wouldn't be done (it doesn't happen automatically). The purpose is to have IFW and the other installed TeraByte programs available in WinRE. You can create offline backups, do restores, run scripts, etc. by simply booting to WinRE.
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/howto/ ... torial.htm

If you want to browse the contents of the partition you can use TBIView to browse a backup image of it. Otherwise, you may need to use DISKPART to assign a drive letter for access (some partition types are blocked in Disk Management).

[Brian K]

Another tool you can use to explore that partition in Terabyte Explorer. Mount the drive and use Ctrl+<O> to get Options, Select View hidden files and View system files.

[P19]

When I view the contents of the partitionfrom TBIView, which is labeled as Windows RE, I see at the root level three folders and four files:

\Boot
\Recovery
\System Volume Information
bootmgr
BOOTNXT
BOOTSECT.BAK
WinREPartition.ini

What I am not understanding is how would one even make use of these files? How would I make the system do something with them so that I can see whether they even function correctly. I am especially puzzled as to their purpose when all the documentation I have found about Windows 10 stated that this version of Windows no longer uses or creates a recovery partition. So what are these for? They appear to be important, but that may just be my delusion because I do not understand their fucntionality.

More importantly, since I have regular full system backups done with IFL to a large attached USB disk, why should I want to bother with this other stuff? Thanks.

[TeraByte Support(PP)]

It could be an OEM Recovery partition. What's in the \Recovery folder? Nothing you list here would take up 2.86GB.

You probably don't need to bother with it. The exception would be if Windows 10 is now using it for its WinRE partition. If it is and you're going to delete it I would recommend moving WinRE off it first.

What other partitions are on the drive?

[mysery126]

If that recovery partition is at the end of your hard drive, it cannot grow its size. A partition with 2.86GB of data would more likely have OEM recovery files on it, which allows you to recover to factory default, but if you upgrade your to the next version of windows, it will not work any more. if so, you can delete the recovery partition and reclaim the storage space. you can also assign a drive letter to it, so you can see it for yourself what's inside in file explorer. more information about recovery partition: http://www.disk-partition.com/windows-1 ... -4348.html

[P19]

Inside \Recovery folder are three more folders:

\Logs
\system32
\WindowsRE

Inside of \WindowsRE are three files, indicating the following "date modified":

boot.sdi (10/30/2015)
ReAgent.xml (11/19/2015)
Winre.wim (11/19/2015)

I can affirm that it was on 11/19/2015 that I upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10, but I cannot recall anything particulary special about 10/30/2015. Additionally, some of these other folders and files have recently dated activity. The \Logs folder has a file named "Reload.xml", which is dated 11/26/2015. I should mention that I migrated the contents of this drive from an HDD to SSD on this same date, that is, 11/26/2015. So, apparently, something is still modifying these files. However, looking at the size of them, I too do not see anything to account for the size of this partition currently.

What can I do to methodically monitor what accesses them and when, if possible? It might be helpful to know this much. This OS is 64-bit Windows 10 Pro. It is a 1 TB SSD drive divided into three primary patitions and one extended partition. The first partition is this one in question; the second is Windows and its applications; the third is virtual machines; the fourth I still use for Linux file system. I do not believe that there is any OEM stuff on this machine, none whatsoever. I have since upgraded the system and modified the disk too much for that. Thanks.

[TeraByte Support(PP)]

The 10/30/2015 is just the date of the file. It would appear that Windows 10 is using the partition for WinRE. Can you post or attach the BCD output? From an administrator Command Prompt, run "bcdedit /enum all". I don't think there's much point to monitoring access to the files -- as the WinRE partition, that's how it would be being used.

Are you trying to reclaim the space of the partition? It's fine to leave it how it is if it doesn't matter. Otherwise, you could resize it smaller (450-500MB, normally) to reclaim most of the space. Or it could be removed entirely (after moving WinRE so it doesn't get lost). Either way, you would have to resize the Windows partition to use the space -- not sure if it's worth the trouble...

If you have an older backup image of the partition you could check if it was the same size (maybe the contents would show something big then?). I doubt the Windows 10 upgrade made any changes to the partition's size.