Why is my recovery drive taking up 179GB of my 750gb hard drive?

[James1258]

I just noticed that I am only able to use ~500GB of the 750GB I have on my hard drive. On Disk Management, it says that "System Reserved" takes up 100MB, "RECOVERY" takes up 179.67GB and "C:" takes up 518.87GB.

 

[GokAy]

Post a screenshot of Disk Management as described in http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/274797-disk-management-post-screen-capture-image.html

 

[James1258]

 

[ignatzatsonic]

System Reserved is very very small, which is normal and causing you no problems.

The recovery partition is about 179 GB, of which 101 GB is unused.

Dell does funny things.

Have you deliberately enlarged the recovery partition? Or is it possible that it has always been 179 GB? You are using about 78 GB of that 179, which is more than I'd expect, but may be normal on a Dell.

Can you look inside the recovery partition? Maybe not, as I see it has no drive letter.

Are you using any sort of Dell backup software?

Do you ever deliberately use the recovery partition, perhaps storing files on it?

 

[GokAy]

You can assign a drive letter temporarily in Disk Management for the recovery partition and see what's inside. Remove the drive letter again after you are done.

Get portable version of https://antibody-software.com/web/s...using-the-most-disk-space-on-your-hard-drive/
and expand the folders inside recovery partition (if there are any), post that screenshot as well if you can't figure out

 

[James1258]

System Reserved is very very small, which is normal and causing you no problems.

The recovery partition is about 179 GB, of which 101 GB is unused.

Dell does funny things.

Have you deliberately enlarged the recovery partition? Or is it possible that it has always been 179 GB? You are using about 78 GB of that 179, which is more than I'd expect, but may be normal on a Dell.

Can you look inside the recovery partition? Maybe not, as I see it has no drive letter.

Are you using any sort of Dell backup software?

Do you ever deliberately use the recovery partition, perhaps storing files on it?

You can assign a drive letter temporarily in Disk Management for the recovery partition and see what's inside. Remove the drive letter again after you are done.

Get portable version of https://antibody-software.com/web/s...using-the-most-disk-space-on-your-hard-drive/
and expand the folders inside recovery partition (if there are any), post that screenshot as well if you can't figure out

I have never accessed the recovery partition and I do not backup anything on my computer.

Win7 - Album on Imgur

Is it safe to just delete those files or make the RECOVERY drive smaller?

 

[ignatzatsonic]

You'd be extremely foolish to delete that partition without knowing what is on it.

Which is why GoKay asked you to download, run, and post a picture of WizTree.

A picture of Windows Disk Management would help also. That pic you posted has little value.

Ideally, that partition contains stuff ONLY related to recovery. But you don't know that. As I said, Dell does funny things. Who knows what's on that partition.

If it does contain stuff ONLY related to recovery and you have NO interest in recovery, then you don't need it and could delete it. But we don't know what's on it and we don't know if you have any interest in recovery.

It could contain critical boot files. Dell does funny things. We can't tell about that because we don't have a screen shot of Windows Disk Management, which you can find by typing "Disk Management" into the start button search box.

 

[James1258]

You'd be extremely foolish to delete that partition without knowing what is on it.

Which is why GoKay asked you to download, run, and post a picture of WizTree.

A picture of Windows Disk Management would help also. That pic you posted has little value.

Ideally, that partition contains stuff ONLY related to recovery. But you don't know that. As I said, Dell does funny things. Who knows what's on that partition.

If it does contain stuff ONLY related to recovery and you have NO interest in recovery, then you don't need it and could delete it. But we don't know what's on it and we don't know if you have any interest in recovery.

It could contain critical boot files. Dell does funny things. We can't tell about that because we don't have a screen shot of Windows Disk Management, which you can find by typing "Disk Management" into the start button search box.

I have the Disk Management screen shot on my second post and already included the Gokay screenshot in the previous post. Do you need a new screenshot of my Disk Management?

 

[ignatzatsonic]

I have the Disk Management screen shot on my second post and already included the Gokay screenshot in the previous post. Do you need a new screenshot of my Disk Management?

No additional picture of Disk Management needed. I just missed it first time and instead looked at that other picture you linked to.

Your Recovery partition does not appear to contain Windows boot files, so your PC should boot fine if that partition were deleted.

But we still don't know what's on that partition, thus the request for WizTree picture.

Other manufacturer's recovery partitions are nowhere near that large, so it may contain something extry-special known to Dell only since they do funny things. So we need the WizTree picture and can only hope that it reveals something understandable.

You could also go to Dell web site and drill down into their support in a possibly hopeless attempt to find out if that many GB on a recovery partition is standard for Dell.

Yes or no: do you have any interest in recovery via that partition? If no, I'd delete it, pending the WizTree picture.

 

[James1258]

I have the Disk Management screen shot on my second post and already included the Gokay screenshot in the previous post. Do you need a new screenshot of my Disk Management?

No additional picture of Disk Management needed. I just missed it first time and instead looked at that other picture you linked to.

Your Recovery partition does not appear to contain Windows boot files, so your PC should boot fine if that partition were deleted.

But we still don't know what's on that partition, thus the request for WizTree picture.

Other manufacturer's recovery partitions are nowhere near that large, so it may contain something extry-special known to Dell only since they do funny things. So we need the WizTree picture and can only hope that it reveals something understandable.

You could also go to Dell web site and drill down into their support in a possibly hopeless attempt to find out if that many GB on a recovery partition is standard for Dell.

Yes or no: do you have any interest in recovery via that partition? If no, I'd delete it, pending the WizTree picture.

I dont know if you missed my post, but the screenshot is on my third post. I can link it again HERE (4th SS)

I would rather keep it, but I want to reduce the size of the recovery partition if possible, because I use a lot of space for recording.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Most of the space appears to be taken up by an "image" folder.

I don't see anything in that partition that would lead me to believe it serves any other purpose than recovery to a factory state.

Yes or no: do you have any interest in recovery using Dell's built in capabilities to do that?

If yes, keep that partition, as is. I wouldn't mess with it.

If no, I'd delete it, possibly after making an image of it using another app such as Macrium on the off chance that I shouldn't actually have deleted it or want to restore it for whatever reason. Such an image file would take up probably 40 GB of space.

For that matter, you can use Macrium to make an image of your Windows installation as it is now, which would probably be more useful to you in the long run than this recovery partition---unless you have an over-riding reason to want to restore to a factory state.

 

[James1258]

Most of the space appears to be taken up by an "image" folder.

I don't see anything in that partition that would lead me to believe it serves any other purpose than recovery to a factory state.

Yes or no: do you have any interest in recovery using Dell's built in capabilities to do that?

If yes, keep that partition, as is. I wouldn't mess with it.

If no, I'd delete it, possibly after making an image of it using another app such as Macrium on the off chance that I shouldn't actually have deleted it or want to restore it for whatever reason. Such an image file would take up probably 40 GB of space.

For that matter, you can use Macrium to make an image of your Windows installation as it is now, which would probably be more useful to you in the long run than this recovery partition---unless you have an over-riding reason to want to restore to a factory state.

Yes, I want to keep the dell recovery thing, but I want to know if it is safe to shrink it to ~80GB