Microsoft appears to have fixed the Recovery Partition

Topic

New Reply

One of the main issues associated with the Recovery Partition on Windows was that it was often placed at the very beginning of the disk. The layout would start with the Recovery Partition and then the main partition with Windows itself. The problem with that layout is that Windows cannot extend the Recovery Partition easily, e.g. when it lacks the space for the required data. Windows would then create another Recovery Partition on the disk; systems would end up with multiple Recovery Partitions and seemingly little options to detect or delete old ones.

More at : https://www.ghacks.net/2020/07/13/microsoft-appears-to-have-fixed-the-recovery-partition-hell-in-windows-10/

2 users thanked author for this post.

NetDef, wavy

Reply | Quote

Replies

A little detail that I did not see on the source article (or I might have missed it.)

Placing the RP at the end of the disk, after the Windows main partition, still presents a problem.  One cannot grow that partition unless the drive was short stroked (intentionally leaving a blank non-partitioned space at the end of the drive.

What’s going to happen is this:  Windows will shrink the main partition, then expand the recovery partition backwards. (this is an oversimplification of the procedure.)

If you are out of space on the main partition, or file fragmentation is severe, I expect this operation could fail with potentially disastrous data loss implications.

We won’t know how Windows future edition will deal with this until reports roll in with issues.

Plan ahead:  short stroke the drives now by several gigabytes on new installs!

 

 

 

~ Group "Weekend" ~

Reply | Quote

On SSD’s we call this intentionally allocating extra spare area, and this can improve long term performance and the lifetime of solid state drives.

~ Group "Weekend" ~

Reply | Quote

NetDef wrote:

Placing the RP at the end of the disk, after the Windows main partition, still presents a problem. One cannot grow that partition unless the drive was short stroked (intentionally leaving a blank non-partitioned space at the end of the drive. What’s going to happen is this: Windows will shrink the main partition, then expand the recovery partition backwards. (this is an oversimplification of the procedure.)

Wow, shades of the past! I wonder if Microsoft will resurrect IBM’s old BEER PARTIES scheme (“Bios Engineering Extension Record” and “Protected Area Run Time Interface Extension Services”). Anybody remember IBM’s ThinkVantage Rapid Restore feature of the early 2000’s? I delved into the IBM scheme when I was tinkering with HPAs (“Host Protected Area”) back in those days.

IIRC, IBM hid a secondary partition table and some small service partitions at the end of the disk. What was unusual, though, was everything was as if looking in a mirror — to be read in reverse order.

If we use the current Disk Management metaphor where left/right = front/back of the disk space, this other partition table was similar to a MBR boot sector except it was at the extreme right edge and read from right to left. This was “followed” by a few small partitions to the left of the MBR and partition table. I think each of those partitions had its partition boot record on the right and the tail of the partition was on its left side. If Rapid Restore needed a larger partition to house a larger recovery image, it simply grew the “last” partition leftward, toward the user-visible area of the disk.

Normally, all of this was hidden in a HPA, but when you pressed the [Access IBM] button at boot time the BIOS unhid the HPA and proceeded to boot from the back end of the disk instead of the front.

It was a devilishly clever but wacky idea that (thankfully!) never caught on, and AFAIK IBM abandoned it after only a year or two.

1 user thanked author for this post.

satrow

Reply | Quote

[Alex5723]

NetDef

“Windows would then create another Recovery Partition on the disk”

Why did Windows create a new Recovery Partition on your system ?

(C: drive is SSD).

• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by Alex5723.

Reply | Quote

Because my example image came from a machine that was installed waaay before the change went into effect, subsequently the RP ran out of space, and Windows added a second one to make room in the free space at the end. 

~ Group "Weekend" ~

Reply | Quote

My Recovery Partition is not on the system drive.  It’s the first partition on a different physical drive altogether.  It’s 1.13GB with 588MB free space.

I don’t let Windows maintain it, I do that myself.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

1 user thanked author for this post.

NetDef

Reply | Quote