Does it matter about the 100 MB partition

People forget a very reliable and easy to use method to remove the new Windows 7 System Reserved partition is outlined in Option Two of this tutorial at the link below.


Partition Wizard : Use the Bootable CD

Personally, I don't understand the point of getting rid of the Sys Reserved partition.

On a Single boot OS, even with a seperate Data partition, the 100MB doesn't eat into your drive, and you are well within the maximum limit of 4 Primary's.

On a Multi boot OS, arguably this is where the sys reserved partition comes into it's own. It remembers your Boot configuration, even between installs, and even if using Grub as your boot manager, it negates the need to run update-grub every time you reinstall, as grub just reads it from the BCD.

Add into this that many OEM's (stupidly IMO) are linking their recovery partitions to the Repair Console, and if you lose the BCD you lose the recov partition, it seems to me that it is in your interests to keep it.

In short, I don't think there are any advantages of getting rid of it at all, but that's just my tuppence worth.

When I wipe my SSD to reinstall Windows 7 I intentially create the SysResv at 200MB while still in diskpart and before I start the install, I think it's a very useful tool to have if needed.

My Paragon has no issues with the SysResv, as a matter-of-fact, I just finished restoring a previous image and Windows booted good without an issue when the restore operation finished.

I would prefer that all create the SysResv for use but I feel it's not really my purpose here to manipulate others to do the way I suggest, that's why I offer all the choices in the copy/paste replies I post about the wipe issue and let them choose what's best for them.

SIW2 said:

Severed,

BTW - oem's are doing it like that because MS asked them to. They help them to make their own custom winre.wim's

You are quite right, the f key winre relies on bcd - if that's not working/accessible it is useless - there is no substitute for external bootable recovery media.

The 100mb partition is not a requirement for having winre.wim on the boot menu, or accessible from a key. They are independent.

Thanks for the extra info,

Am I right in thinking though, that if the BCD were stored on C, and you then overwrote C, say on a clean install, that this would negate the recovery partition and the keypress? Or would the OEM installer be intelligent enough to put the custom WinRE back in to the BCD?

Oh I completely agree, external media is always the way to go. The first thing I did when the girlfriend got her laptop was do her a "clean" copy of my Ultimate ISO, and removed the ei.cfg so she could install Home Premium with it (ie without bloatware), there really is no substitute for external media, although recovery partitions do make the process a little faster and more convenient.

The problems of course, arise when OEM's follow the bad practice of simply using the external media created with their programs, to point to the recovery partition. I wonder whether having the recov partition negated by the BCD would not cause issues there.

In fact, I'm not even sure whether OEM's still do that, although I know it was common practice with Vista.