Can I delete the healthy (recovery partition)?

I know a lot more people will read these thread and become confused. The true answer for almost every normal person is NO, NO, NO.

Do not remove a partition called Recovery Partition with 10 or 11 Gig in it.

Why would you?

When you need more space you go out and buy a 1T or 2T external drive.

Recovery is there for a reason and the attitude of looking for things to screw up your machine is a bad attitude that needs to stop or eventually you will do something serious.

The geeks in here, like myself, we can do this kind of thing. Your normal and can't. When a geek does this we already know that this machine is expendable and we already have recovery backup in 2 or 3 redundancy levels. Average bl-oaks don't.

So forget it. Recovery means recovery. If you don't want to ever recover again, or you what to gamble with your life, then delete it and that will be the end of an important feature. Maybe data is not your life like it is for some of us.

DON'T LISTEN TO THOSE WHO TELL YOU FROM THEIR PERSPECTIVE TO DELETE STUFF, THEY WILL BE LAUGHING WHILE YOU SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES.

THIS IS A WARNING FOR EVERY AMATEUR OUT THERE.

FROM A SOFTWARE DEVELOPER SINCE 1981.

TRUST THE GREY BEARDS.

Nice post TopWeb.

   Information

We always assume you have made your Recovery Disks using the OEM manufacturer's Recovery Media Creator app the first day you had your new PC.
& made the Startup Repair CD.
startup repair disc-create

Did you make the OEM manufacturer's Recovery Disks?

I had the extact same issue. 500Gb drive with 12GB partition that I could not delete. Right click only had Help option. I finally downloaded a low level disk format utility (Download HDD Low Level Format Tool 4.25 Free - Utility for low-level hard disk drive formatting - Softpedia) and it cleared the entire disk giving me back 465GB of unallocated space.

All I need to do using this utility was pick the correct drive from the list and check "Perform quick wipe" and click format. 10 seconds later the drive was clear and read for use.

Looks like you might be able to do the same thing using DISKPART but I found that info after I had solved my issue.

TopWeb said:

I know a lot more people will read these thread and become confused. The true answer for almost every normal person is NO, NO, NO.

Do not remove a partition called Recovery Partition with 10 or 11 Gig in it.

Why would you?

When you need more space you go out and buy a 1T or 2T external drive.

Recovery is there for a reason and the attitude of looking for things to screw up your machine is a bad attitude that needs to stop or eventually you will do something serious.

The geeks in here, like myself, we can do this kind of thing. Your normal and can't. When a geek does this we already know that this machine is expendable and we already have recovery backup in 2 or 3 redundancy levels. Average bl-oaks don't.

So forget it. Recovery means recovery. If you don't want to ever recover again, or you what to gamble with your life, then delete it and that will be the end of an important feature. Maybe data is not your life like it is for some of us.

DON'T LISTEN TO THOSE WHO TELL YOU FROM THEIR PERSPECTIVE TO DELETE STUFF, THEY WILL BE LAUGHING WHILE YOU SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES.

THIS IS A WARNING FOR EVERY AMATEUR OUT THERE.

FROM A SOFTWARE DEVELOPER SINCE 1981.

TRUST THE GREY BEARDS.

I totally agree with you. There is no reason to worry about 12 GBs. Just add another hard drive to the system.

You can delete unwanted or dysfunctional OEM partitions using free Partition Wizard bootable CD.

If you do this you must first check the labels on the partition you're deleting to make sure it does not hold the System Active flags. If so you need to mark Win7 partition Active and run Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times until Win7 starts and it's partition holds the System Active flags. Partition - Mark as Active

Then you can delete the unwanted partitions and if desired recover the disk space into another partition using PW CD's Resize function. Sometimes Resizing on the boot sector can cause Win7 to fail to boot so check the Active flag is set and run Startup Repair until it starts again.

TopWeb said:

I know a lot more people will read these thread and become confused. The true answer for almost every normal person is NO, NO, NO.

Do not remove a partition called Recovery Partition with 10 or 11 Gig in it.

Why would you?

When you need more space you go out and buy a 1T or 2T external drive.

Recovery is there for a reason and the attitude of looking for things to screw up your machine is a bad attitude that needs to stop or eventually you will do something serious.

The geeks in here, like myself, we can do this kind of thing. Your normal and can't. When a geek does this we already know that this machine is expendable and we already have recovery backup in 2 or 3 redundancy levels. Average bl-oaks don't.

So forget it. Recovery means recovery. If you don't want to ever recover again, or you what to gamble with your life, then delete it and that will be the end of an important feature. Maybe data is not your life like it is for some of us.

DON'T LISTEN TO THOSE WHO TELL YOU FROM THEIR PERSPECTIVE TO DELETE STUFF, THEY WILL BE LAUGHING WHILE YOU SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES.

THIS IS A WARNING FOR EVERY AMATEUR OUT THERE.

FROM A SOFTWARE DEVELOPER SINCE 1981.

TRUST THE GREY BEARDS.

If it should not be deleted how can it be cleaned up at least? I did a clean install of Windows to give the laptop to my daughter, but it was also saved in the recovery drive which is now full and I can't download anything because of it. I don't have a recovery drive on any of my other laptops and I have never had an issue. Please help!

A Recovery partition won't run anyway after a Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 on a Dell or most other makes. What I recommend with Dell is to Run Built-In Diagnostics for Your Dell Computer | Dell US
to check the hardware and see that it runs. If so leave that small OEM partition at the beginning of HD only since it remains bootable after reinstall and is valuable for its many diagnostics.

Everyone needs to weigh the need for making Recovery Disks or otherwise preserving the factory preinstall, however most realize that this is the factory preinstalled Win7 which is the worst install one can have. That's why we've helped tens of thousands of average consumers get a perfect Clean Reinstall of Win7 without a single complaint.

I had the same need and I can expalin why anyone would want to delete the recover partition.

I migrated my Labtop to a SSD Dual drive with SSD120+1Tb, and the recovery partition takes up 10% of valuable SSD space. Further I still have both the old Harddisk and the backup-image - containing the original recovery partition - worst case I can go back to the original disk or I can restore the image to the new disk.

Anyway, I guees that a OEM installed systems on a new laptop with SSD would have the same issue... and thus many people would want to remove the recovery partition?

Regards Per