System Reserved and (C:) Drives are Green (Simple Volume)

I am not understanding all of this. Can someone narrow it down so that I can understand better?

Jesse Williams said:

I am not understanding all of this. Can someone narrow it down so that I can understand better?

I'm not sure what you are not understanding.

The factory recovery partition's purpose is to bail you out of a bad jam, pretty much as a last resort. It has no other purpose. No other purpose. If it works as advertised, it would return your machine to the state it was in when purchased, with all the good stuff and bad stuff that may have been on it when new---including bloatware.

If you get your PC in good shape, you can then make an "image" of the Windows partition using an application such as Macrium. The purpose of that image would be to do the same thing as the factory recovery partition---bail you out of a bad jam.

But the image method would be superior because the "image" you made would NOT include bloatware, unwanted applications, or anything else you don't want that was on the machine when new. Therefore when that image is restored, you would NOT be going back to bloatware and unwanted applications. You'd instead be going back to the state the machine was in as of the moment you made the image. After you cleaned it up. After you got rid of bloatware. After you got all your favorite applications installed and configured exactly the way you want them.

The factory recovery partition CAN'T do that. It restores you to the new state ONLY.

What about that don't you understand?

There is some chance that your recovery partition contains some necessary Windows files, rather than just the recovery capability. If that is so, I'd think we could figure out a way around that. Acer does some goofy stuff with partitions, so who knows what else may possibly have been put on that recovery partition.

Okay. Well, I am ordering some repair disks starting next month.

Jesse Williams said:

Okay. Well, I am ordering some repair disks starting next month.

Nothing wrong with having them if you should ever care to restore to factory state. They do the same thing as the factory recovery partition.

But I don't know why you would ever want to use them, given the alternatives.

Maybe if you were going to sell the machine?

Not repair disks, but recovery disks.