Hi Osprey-

Delete is grayed when right-clicking in disk management. Even Easeus Partition Master won't let me delete it.

Rob

Hi Rob,

In disk management (windows key, "disk management", enter), the recovery partition should be designated as such. There is no problem deleting this partition.

Still looking for more info on this. I have assigned a drive letter to the recovery partition, so I can now open it and see all files, but this is the active system partition and cannot be deleted. If I make C (OS) the active partition and delete the recovery partition (now A) will Windows still boot?

Can you access that partition through the Windows 7 backup and restore utility?

OK Boys and Girls, here's the latest:

I set the C Windows partition to active and it would not boot.

Booted from Acronis boot disk and set C Windows as Active and boot. Still no joy.

I restored the Recovery partition from a backup, set to active and all is fine, but still looking for a way do either get the recovery partition to work as it should (not likely) or preferably delete it and set up the machine to boot from the OS. Hate having that useless 11GB partition sitting on the drive.

Here's the current description of the partitions from disk management:

RECOVERY (A:) (I added the drive letter) NTFS Healthy (System, Active, Primary)

OS (C:) NTFS Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary)

Curiously, Even though C is now a "boot" partition, it will not boot unless the Recovery partition is set to active.

Suggestions?

Rob

The best information I've found is here. According to Brian K, if you delete it, Win7 won't boot. You need to copy the booting files from the recovery
partition to the Win7 partition before you delete the recovery partition. He provides these instructions:

I'll assume the recovery partition doesn't have a drive letter.

Before commencing the Win7 procedure you should make a BootIt NG (BING) CD.

unzip the file
double click makedisk.exe, next
dot in I accept the agreement, next
no tick for Registration, next
dot in Mouse Support Enabled, next
dot in VESA Video, next
dot in Partition Work (Don't put a dot in Normal), next
don't choose any Default Device Options (if necessary, these can be chosen
in BING), next
leave Registration strings blank, next
select your CD burner drive letter (you can use a CD-RW or a CD-R disc)
Finish

In Win7, you have to unhide the Recovery Partition.

In Disk Management, right click the Recovery Partition, click Change Drive Letter and Paths..., click Add, dot in Assign the following drive letter,
click the drop down arrow and select P , click OK.

Start an Administrator mode Command Prompt. To do this, click on the Start button, then All Programs, then Accessories. Right-click on the Command
Prompt item and select Run as administrator from the pop-up menu. If a UAC prompt is displayed, click the Yes button.

Unload the BCD registry hive by running the following command:
reg unload HKLM\BCD00000000

Copy the bootmgr file from the Recovery Partition to the Windows 7 partition. Run the following command: robocopy p:\ c:\ bootmgr

Copy the Boot folder from the Recovery Partition to the Windows 7 partition. Run the following command: robocopy p:\Boot C:\Boot /s

The booting files have now been copied. If you wish to verify that they were copied correctly, run the following command: dir c:\ /ah

If the bootmgr file and the Boot folder show up in the list, the procedure was successful.

In Disk Management, right click the Recovery Partition, click Change Drive Letter and Paths..., click Remove, Yes. This hides the Recovery Partition
again. In Disk Management, right click the C: drive, click Mark Partition as Active, Yes.

Restart the computer with a BING CD in the drive.
In BING, do a BCD Edit on Win7.
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=318
In BING, delete the Recovery Partition.

click Close on Work with Partitions
click Reboot and remove the CD

Win7 should boot.

This may be a little too involved for me....may have to just accept that I have a useless (except for booting) 11GB partition.

Rob

11 Steps to Remove the Active Recovery Partition:

This forum sure has changed over the past few years. I thought that surely there would be lots of good information and experience here about the nature of the Dell recovery partition and how to remove it while still enabling Windows 7 to boot. But I had to really search for this information elsewhere and will share it here for others who may have a similar situation.

My situation, as posted above is that I cloned the original hard drive of my XPS 8100 to a larger drive and then resized and added partitions. The Recovery Partition and little Dell diagnostic partition may have been working on the newly cloned drive, but certainly weren't after resizing and adding partitions, so both those partitions were basically just sitting there taking up space, except for one important thing: The 11GB Recovery Partition is an active system partition, contains the boot files, and Win7 will not boot without it unless you make some changes. Since I have 2 1TB drives, and do my own regular scheduled backups, I wanted to get these partitions off my drive.  Here is what I did:

1.       To be safe, I made backup images of all partitions, just in case it didn't work.

2.       I downloaded and burned BootIt NG (AKA BING). Note: You cannot install BING in Win7. You just burn it to a bootable CD/DVD by clicking the makedisk.exe from the unzipped files.

3.       From Win7, open Regedit, under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, unload BCD00000000 from
the registry by highlighting it, click File/Unload Hive, Yes - or the following boot files will be in use and won't copy. (Note: If you don't have BCD00000000 under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, which was the case for me, just proceed to the next step.)

4.       In Disk Management, right click the Recovery partition, click Change Drive Letter and Paths..., click Add, dot in Assign the following drive letter, OK.

5.       In Folder and search options, View tab, put a dot in "Show hidden files, folders and drives". Also, remove the tick from "Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)". OK.

6.       In Computer, Recovery partition, open and copy the "Boot" folder and "bootmgr" and paste them into the C: drive. (Copy, do not Move these files)

7.       In Folder and search options, View tab, put a tick in "Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)". OK.

8.       In Disk Management, right click the Recovery Partition, click Change Drive Letter and Paths..., click Remove, Yes.In Disk Management, right click the C: drive, click Mark Partition as Active, Yes.

9.       Restart the computer with a BING CD in the drive. If necessary, set boot order to boot from CD drive first.) In BING (Partition Work), delete the Recovery partition (and the other little diagnostic partition, if you want to). You can also move and resize partitions to use the new space, or do this later with your own partition software.

10.   In BING, do a BCD Edit on Win7. Follow instructions at http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=318

11.   Reboot

This method worked perfectly for me, and it's not as difficult at all once you get started and follow all the instructions carefully. I hope this helps others who want to remove these partitions.

Rob

Thanks, Rob. Appreciate the extra effort to put this information into the thread.

I am trying to recover from the partition drive but can't figure out how

You need to post a new question instead of answering a 3 year old post and supply all the relevant facts--computer model, operating system, error messages, why you want to do this, etc. Read this: support.dell.com/.../document