Windows 7: Do I need the HP Recovery Partition on my hard drive?

Hi,

I just cloned my hard drive to an SSD.

Nearly 14 GB of that SSD is partition RECOVERY - pretty sure this is a hold over from what HP installed.

I backup to an external USB hard drive.

Do I need the HP recovery partition?

Wondering if that's part of their bloatwear.

Recovery Partition is there to help you to restore your computer to factory settings i.e. completely reinstall Windows and HP's collection of third party applications on your machine. In other words the PC is after factory recovery as it was when first time booted, a "virgin" .

It includes some bloatware, yes, but HP today is not so bad as it was regarding bloatware. Today the HP's include mostly only a trial version of an antivirus application, MsOffice trial or ad-financed MsOffice Starter and HP's useless media apps, network assistant, update assistant and so on. These elements are easy to remove after first boot or factory recovery.

Your HP has / had a tool in Start Menu to burn a set of recovery DVD's (= copy recovery partition to DVD's), after which it is safe to delete this partition. Depending on the model, a normal HP Recovery DVD set needs 3 or 4 single layer DVD's.

I am a long term "HP Fan Boy" , always burning the recovery disks. It is of course up to you to decide; if you are sure you never need to restore your computer to its original state, you can freely remove the partition.

Kari

I created a recovery disk and will use the Windows backup to my USB external hard drive tonight....then it's probably safe to get rid of the HP recovery partition - Drive D.

What would be better? Keep Drive D and put the User folders in it, leaving Drive C for systems stuff? Or just get rid of Drive D and let Drive C take that space?

Functionally, it wouldn't matter.

Most people use a single C. Many PC "enthusiast" types, including many forum members, use a separate D partition for ALL data.

I use a separate D, but really it's mostly a matter of habit and tradition. What matters most is that you keep proper backups, regardless. And you can do that with either method.

If you are going to use 2 partitions, you should give some thought about the right size for each.

You created a recovery disk, one single disk? Please notice that the system repair disk (sometimes called recovery disk) created with Windows 7 native Backup & Restore application is not the same thing than HP's set of recovery disks.

You can not restore your system to original factory state using system repair disk. It is only meant to be used in, as the name says, system repair. Windows can not be reinstalled with system repair disk.

A system recovery disk is a single DVD, whereas HP's factory recovery set is at least 2, most often 3 or 4 DVD's.

Kari

If this is a newer HP there is a minimal Recovery on the menu when you boot into Recovery which is almost as good as a clean reinstall. The Recovery partition will also now survive clean Reinstall to C. So it may be worth keeping it if you rely on it, or think you might want to restore to factory condition in the future to sell your computer or ship it in under warranty as is sometimes required.

However if you're not a fan of the bloatware and are clean reinstalling to get rid of it, then after making your Recovery Disks and perhaps backing up an image of Recov, I'd delete it and all other partitions during clean reinstall.

Follow these steps to get a perfect clean reinstall of factory OEM: Reinstalling Windows 7

I never would keep my only backup or recovery option on my main drive. Anytime I deal with an HP, I burn the recovery discs, and remove the partition.

To clarify - I made a single recovery disk.

Have not gotten rid of the Recovery partition.

You don't need to waste valuable SSD space on a recovery partition. Use a bootable partition imaging tool to capture the partition into a file and store it on a HDD. If you ever need to use the recovery partition, deimage the partition onto your SSD and boot from it.