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December 26th, 2021 01:00

What partitions can I delete

 

 I have a Dell Vostro 3500 and I want to reinstall windows. But I saw that there is a lot of recovery partition in my drive. Can I delete them. Here is the picture of it

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4 Operator

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14K Posts

December 26th, 2021 07:00

@DungTuan  The last two partitions can be deleted if you want. They contain the factory restore image and the SupportAssist tools to restore that image and I believe allow remote diagnostics even if your Windows environment won’t boot. But they’re not mandatory if you don’t care about those items. The other partitions, including an MSR partition that also exists but that Disk Management hides, are part of a default Windows partition set, except for your Data partition that I presume you created deliberately. However, that partition ideally should be placed AFTER the 990 MB Windows Recovery Environment partition. When the WinRE partition is directly after the Windows partition, then whenever Windows needs to expand it as part of a future update, it shrinks the Windows partition to create the necessary additional space directly adjacent to the WinRE partition, which is then revised to occupy that additional space. But if it can’t do that, then Windows shrinks the Windows partition by the full amount necessary to create a completely new partition and then places a new WinRE partition there, which leaves the original WinRE partition as dead weight. I realize that creating a Data partition on an existing Windows installation is more difficult if you have to move the WinRE partition to get it into the ideal location, so maybe you’ll prefer to leave it as-is, but if you ever notice a new partition between your Windows partition and your Data partition after installing a Windows feature release, that will be why. And at that point you‘d be able to delete the original WinRE partition after your Data partition.

Note that in order to actually delete those partitions I mentioned earlier, as well as the WinRE partition, you‘d need to use the “delete partition override” command in Diskpart. I don’t think Disk Management will allow you to delete those.

1 Rookie

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December 27th, 2021 04:00

Thanks, but what is the last two partitions you were talk about

4 Operator

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14K Posts

December 27th, 2021 05:00

@DungTuan  You’re welcome, and I mean the last two partitions at the end of your disk in the screenshot you posted, the ones that are 17.32 and 1.53 GB in size.

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