Windows 8 Confused about Windows 8.1 Recovery Partition!!

frozenreads2 · Feb 26, 2014

Hi,

Just switched out from Windows 7 to Windows 8.1 Pro 64bit Full Edition and I have to say I am a little confused about Windows 8.1 Recovery. So upon a clean install, three visible partitions are created, Recovery (300mb), EFI (100mb), and the regular Windows partition. (I understand there is a 4th only visible with Diskpart and that is fine) OK so far....now I notice that the Recovery Partition is visible in Disk Optimize and like the other partitions is all stored on my SSD boot up drive. The Recovery Partition is showing Needs Optimization, but when I click on it to be optimized, it runs quickly (if at all) and tells me it still needs optimizing. I also notice that when I create a recovery disk, I am unable to click on "Copy the recovery partition from the PC to the recovery drive". I assumed it would recognize the 300mb Windows created Recovery Partition and copy this over???? If not, then what is it there for? Now I tried to research these various issues and information is sparse, other than people with the same, similar issue, although mostly its people upgrading from 8.0 rather than installing a clean full copy of 8.1. From what I can tell, from the little info I can pull from the web, people have a similar Recovery partition created when upgrading from 8.0 to 8.1 and that they also are unable to select the "Copy the recovery partition...." tick box and some people report the same optimize disk issue. Am I right in assuming that the "copy recovery partition...." section is perhaps for OEM's additional recovery partitions and that the 300mb Windows 8.1 created one is not used by the recovery copy option??? What is going on, Im confused! I have reinstalled Windows 8.1 several times from a freshly formatted drive and getting the same formatting, so I guess whatever it is its part of a standard Windows 8.1 install and nothing Im doing wrong????? Can anyone shed any light?

Saltgrass · Feb 26, 2014

The Recovery partition you are looking at contains the Windows Recovery Tools image, which is what you boot to when you enter the Recovery Environment. The partition contains about 220 MB of files and is not used except to recovery operations. There is no need to optimize it.

You do not have an OEM type Recovery partition which would normally contain the OEM OS image used to recover the system and restore it back to factory conditions. Therefore the checkbox is not active.

Since you have the Windows 8.1 install files, you are not in the same situation as the 8 to 8.1 upgrades which do not have access to such files. Because Microsoft made 8.1 a different OS version, like Vista and Windows 7, not having those files causes them problems with Refreshing and Resetting an 8.1 system.

I do like to make a System Image of my installs after I get everything set up and activated. I then put that image some place safe and make regular image backups just in case of need to completely reload the install.

badrobot · Feb 26, 2014

If you are using SSD, you don't really have to worry to much about optimization. It does very little effect as compared to optimizing HDD. I never worried about it a lot but it's good to do it once in a while. But not everyday or not even every week. Only when there is noticeable system slow down. And never play around with partitions which are automatically created upon install. They are there for technical reasons especially when problems arise. The 300MB Recovery Partition you have does not contain any image of the system, it's only for booting up to Recovery/Restore/Reset Environment and you will have to use your DVD installer when needed to proceed with the operation.

Mitchell_A · Apr 1, 2014

Im unable to optimize the recovery partition on my Surface rt either, but as Saltgrass mentioned, it's only accessed during recovery operations and SSD'S are fast faster than HDD'S so you should rarely, if ever actually need to optimize.

Sent from my iPad using WindowsForum

aboofhead1 · Jun 1, 2014

Mitchell_A said:
Im unable to optimize the recovery partition on my Surface rt either, but as Saltgrass mentioned, it's only accessed during recovery operations and SSD'S are fast faster than HDD'S so you should rarely, if ever actually need to optimize.

Sent from my iPad using WindowsForum

frozenreads2 said:
Hi,

Just switched out from Windows 7 to Windows 8.1 Pro 64bit Full Edition and I have to say I am a little confused about Windows 8.1 Recovery. So upon a clean install, three visible partitions are created, Recovery (300mb), EFI (100mb), and the regular Windows partition. (I understand there is a 4th only visible with Diskpart and that is fine) OK so far....now I notice that the Recovery Partition is visible in Disk Optimize and like the other partitions is all stored on my SSD boot up drive. The Recovery Partition is showing Needs Optimization, but when I click on it to be optimized, it runs quickly (if at all) and tells me it still needs optimizing. I also notice that when I create a recovery disk, I am unable to click on "Copy the recovery partition from the PC to the recovery drive". I assumed it would recognize the 300mb Windows created Recovery Partition and copy this over???? If not, then what is it there for? Now I tried to research these various issues and information is sparse, other than people with the same, similar issue, although mostly its people upgrading from 8.0 rather than installing a clean full copy of 8.1. From what I can tell, from the little info I can pull from the web, people have a similar Recovery partition created when upgrading from 8.0 to 8.1 and that they also are unable to select the "Copy the recovery partition...." tick box and some people report the same optimize disk issue. Am I right in assuming that the "copy recovery partition...." section is perhaps for OEM's additional recovery partitions and that the 300mb Windows 8.1 created one is not used by the recovery copy option??? What is going on, Im confused! I have reinstalled Windows 8.1 several times from a freshly formatted drive and getting the same formatting, so I guess whatever it is its part of a standard Windows 8.1 install and nothing Im doing wrong????? Can anyone shed any light?

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Windows 8 will not have a recovery partition so you will have to create this yourself. There are commands to check if a recovery partition is set on your pc.
If you installed from a win 8 disk then it is possible to copy the install.wim file from the disk / dvd to your c: drive then after installing all required software you can create a custom recovery image to use when things go wrong.

If you go to the command prompt as admin and type REAGENTC.EXE /Info this will tell you if you have an active recovery partition.
If not then you will have to follow this guide have A READ HERE

lamkvfner · May 18, 2015

If the computer just fails to boot, and if you do not have a system backup image, then there’s a high possibility that you may lose your data. AOMEI OneKey Recovery is a free software to create a factory restore partition and one key backup system for desktops and laptops. The working principal of AOMEI OneKey Recovery is similar with Lenovo OneKey Recovery. But it is more convenient and easy for people, especially for common user to operate.

Windows 8 Confused about Windows 8.1 Recovery Partition!!

frozenreads2

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Saltgrass

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badrobot

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Mitchell_A

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aboofhead1

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lamkvfner

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