Windows 7 recovery partition..

Some recov partitions can be booted by marking them active and rebooting.

Since OP has already made his recov disks, just boot into the Win7 DVD and use Custom>Advanced tools to delete all, create New partition(s) as you wish, then format and install.

The Win7 DVD will scan the HD's and see the Vista to allow you to enter your Upgrade key.

When finished, create a primary partition using DIsk Management to save a Win7 Backup image, with a copy stored externally in case of HD failure. Then if you ever need to recover, you can boot into the Win7 DVD Repair console and select Recover Using An Image which will autodetect the Backup Image in its primary HD partition and/or External drive root and reimage your HDD flawlessly in 15 minutes.

I don't want to be able to recover Vista at all, now that I have Windows 7. Can I reclaim the 14 Gb from the recovery partition in any way? Is there a modern equivalent to Partition Magic?

Yes, the one which works the best for the 80+ dual boot extractions we have done here since Win7 release, is free Partition Wizard bootable CD. Download file below and burn to CD using ImgBurn at 4x speed with Verify - it never fails.

Unless the partition says EISA (which requires special diskpart commands via Google to delete) just boot from the PW CD, right click on the recov partition and delete. Then you can collect that space by right clicking on the desired adjacent partition to Resize/Move and slide the left border over to collect all of the deleted Recov partition's unallocated space.

If the deleted recov or resized adjacent partition are system partitions then you will need to boot into the Win7 DVD Repair console and run Startup Repair 3 times to repair or rebuild the MBR.

If you would like to post a screenshot of your full Disk Management map, using the Snipping Tool in the Start Menu, attaching file using paper clip in reply box, we can advise you more specifically.

Attachment 40635

well if anyone is interested this is how you reclaim your recovery partition and make it into a Win7 one....

first to delete the partition:
1. open an elevated command prompt
2. type DISKPART, followed by list disk make a note of the hard drive number... (usually 0)
3. type select disk x (x being HD number)
4. type list partition, make a note of the number of the OEM partition (in my case it was very obvious because it was labelled as OEM and type select partition x (again x being your OEM partition number)
5. type delete partition /override this will delete your OEM partition and make it into "unallocated space"
a quirk i found here was that i couldnt reintegrate the free space into disk C:\ without deleting C:\ as it was the first partition but thats not an issue, because we're going to use it to create our win 7 recovery partition

to create the windows 7 partition:
1. first download easyBCD from here: Download EasyBCD 1.7.2 - NeoSmart Technologies and install it
2. open disk management, (type "partition" into the start menu its the first option that comes up)
3. you will see your original partition is marked "unallocated space" right click it then click "new simple volume"
4. click ok through the next few screens, i recommend assigning it letter Z:\ so you dont get confused and accidentally delete it or whatever
5. place your Windows 7 DVD in your drive and go to Computer, right click and then click Open
6. Copy the entire contents of the DVD to your Z:\ Partition
7. open Easy BCD and click "add/remove entries" click the tab that looks like a yellow box, (on the right hand side) when it asks for a path browse to "Z:\sources\boot.wim" and click ok, then click "add new entry"
8. EasyBCD will ask for your "Windows Vista disk" just click ok (as your disk should still be in the drive)
9. thats it your done, when you reboot you will have 2 options, Windows 7, and Rammdiskoptions, Ramdisk options is your recovery partition and will act as if youd put the disk in.

just one more thing to note, IF you do a recovery from the partition (or the disk) it will overide the bootloader entry, and you will need to remake it using EasyBCD (the files will still be there you just need to go from step 7)
hope it helps

Another recovery partition option is to create a Primary partition on your HD and save a Win7 Backup image there, with a copy saved externally in case of HD failure.

To reimage, boot from the Win7 DVD Repair console, Repair CD, or the Repair tools available at boot tapping F8 if you have the 100mb boot/repair partition installed sometimes with Win7. You can even use severdsolo's recov partition above to access the installer's Repair console.

Select "Recover Using an Image" it will autodetect the primary partition where your backup image is stored, or the image stored in the root of external, and cue it up to reimage your HD flawlessly in 15-20 minutes.

You never need to reinstall again.

gregrocker said:

Another recovery partition option is to create a Primary partition on your HD and save a Win7 Backup image there, with a copy saved externally in case of HD failure.

To reimage, boot from the Win7 DVD Repair console, Repair CD, or the Repair tools available at boot tapping F8 if you have the 100mb boot/repair partition installed sometimes with Win7. You can even use severdsolo's recov partition above to access the installer's Repair console.

Select "Recover Using an Image" it will autodetect the primary partition where your backup image is stored, or the image stored in the root of external, and cue it up to reimage your HD flawlessly in 15-20 minutes.

You never need to reinstall again.

to date Win7 repair options have not managed to save me once.... but thats because i have GRUB installed and the repair option doesnt seem to be able to overwrite GRUB to get the Windows Bootloader back, basically the reason i made the recovery partition is because it takes 20 minutes to install from the HDD compared to nearly an hour (or more) by DVD

Partition Wizard CD will work fine to delete the unwanted Recov partition and Resize Win7 or any other partition into it. Just make sure it is your Win7 or it's 100mb SysReserved boot partition which is marked System Active first. Partition Wizard : Use the Bootable CD

If you'd like specific steps to do this, post back a screenshot of your full Disk Mgmt drive map with listings, using SNipping Tool in Start Menu.