Windows 7 - Old Vista Recovery Partition

I recently upgraded to Windows 7 via a clean install. I was just wondering if the old Vista recovery partition is still used or needed. It never seemed to deviate from using 6.33GB which has made me wonder if it is still used. Is it safe to delete the contents and use it for documents etc..?

Thanks in advance, Phil.

The only thing it could do for you is to restore you to Vista.

If you don't ever want to do that, then the partition has no purpose.

I don't know offhand how easy it will be to delete, but you can try from Windows 7 Disk Management. If the recovery partition shows up on the far left, you will be left with 6 gigs of unallocated space if you delete the partition.

You can then recover that 6 gigs and add it back to your other partitions with third party software.

If the recovery partition is not on the far left in Disk Managment, you should be able to add the unallocated space back to an existing partition without using third party software--probably directly from Disk Management.

Thanks ignatzatsonic,

It's good to know! It appears that I can delete it but I may have another use for it. It also appears that I have 2 more partitions... a 2GB one and a 86MB one, both 100% free. The smaller is an OEM partition yet it is empty. How odd. I don't think i want to mess with the other 2 just in case..?

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On attempting to delete the partition it says it's currently in use...

Post a screen cap of what you see in Disk Management. A lot of people here have a lot of experience in getting rid of unneeded partitions--with or without third party software.

We need to see what you see to judge whether to keep certain partitions, how easily they can be removed, and whether or not the space can then be easily assigned to other partitions.

Screen Grab...

I deleted the 2GB partition!

The OEM partition leave alone. The 1.7GB unallocated you can add to C - but that does not buy you much. The D partition is only for Vista. I assume you burnt your installation DVDs from there when Vista was installed. If not, you may want to keep it if you ever want to reinstall Vista. If that is none of your concern, you can delete it in Disk Management and define a new D for e.g. a seperate data partition (which is always a good practice).

OK.

You should be able to add that 1.7 gig on the far right to C with the mouse. Highlight C, right click it, and choose "extend volume".

The other 2 partitions are more problematic because even if you deleted them, the space could not then be added to C via Disk Management because they are to the left of C. If they were to the right of C, like the 1.7 gig, you could add them.

So you have 2 issues remaining:

Do you want to delete the two partitions to the left?

Assuming yes, you may have to use (free) 3rd party software to do that.

You almost certainly will have to use 3rd party software to add the new space to C.

I am not the local expert on these third party programs, but others here are quite familiar with them. I would guess they will reply within the next day or two--maybe in the next few hours. If not, bump your post back to the top in a day or two.

In the meantime, confirm that you can add that 1.7 unallocated on the right back to C.

The little partition on the left is curious because it is empty.

I suggest you read this regarding the small OEM partition: How to Avoid 200MB Hidden System Partition From Been Created During Windows 7 Installation My Digital Life

The OEM partition is empty, besides I have the original Vista OEM disks so i don't need the OEM drive or the recovery drive...

Call me odd but I deliberately left that 1.7GB out when I deleted the 2GB partition, I like having my primary hard drive as a nice round number


@ignatzatsonic: I may just format the recovery drive and use it for backing up documents etc. I have plenty of space so far so I have no need to merge them yet. An d I was also puzzled by the empty OEM drive.

Thanks Guys!


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I was thinking that this partition was to do with my original vista instillation as DELL computers have a OEM drive for restores. And I believe the 2GB partition was for the DELL Media Direct (crap) thing...

If I remember right, Dell puts some BIOS diagnostic programs into this small partition. That allows you to make diagnostic checks of your RAM, Disk, etc. from the BIOS. I think those are handy to have. Check in your BIOS whether you have those programs indeed.