Windows 7 recovery partition..

[zzuebe2]

Just wondering... I will be upgrading to Windows 7 from Vista and would like to know if it will automatically create it's own recovery partition and replace the one for Vista? My Compaq came pre-installed with a separate recovery partition for Vista. I was wondering, if I need to do a re-installation of Windows 7 in the future at some point, how would I go about it with just the Windows 7 upgrade disk...

 

[Orbital Shark]

Hu zzuebe2, welcome to the forums.

The recovery partition you have & the partition the Se7en sets up are sompletely different.

The Vista recovery is a complete backup of your OS so if you need to you can 'return to factory' settings. This is normally done by selecting a 3rd party 'System Restore' from the Start Menu or during the POST bootup.

The 'recovery' partition for Se7en is in case you need to run a repair install which only (mainly) replaces/reinstalls important operating/system files to the same state as when you first installed.

Installing Se7en over your vista partition will leave the second partition as a (quite frankly) useless drive and still setup a 100MB recovery partition . If you wish to still use the 3rd party 'System Restore' you will need to upgrade from Vista to Se7en do doubt about it. This will, however, completely wipe all data from the drive & set it back to how you first opened the box.

Hope that answers you question




Jeff

 

[zzuebe2]

Thanks Jeff for your timely reply...

So what I understand you to say is that when I upgrade from the upgrade box of Windows 7 that it will have it's own way of recovering.. but what if I want to do a format and re-install Windows 7 in the future because of, let's say a virus or something, would I still be able to do it just from the upgrade package that replaced Vista's recovery partition? Will I have to use the 7 disk or will I be able to do it from a recovery partition for Windows 7... Sorry for the stupid questions but I've never upgraded before... I've always just bought a new pre-built machine...

 

[Orbital Shark]

If you have the 'Upgrade' package then you can only upgrade. If you do happen to (and let's hope you don't) contract a virus then the 'Recovery Partition' will still be safe as it's read only. The 3rd Party 'System Restore' will take you back to 'Factiry Default' which will be Vista then you will have to upgrade again.

 

[zzuebe2]

THANKS Jeff...
That's exactly the answer I was looking for. You guys are GREAT. I have been looking for this bit of information for over a week now and you gave me a short and precise answer... GREAT job...

 

[Dzomlija]

THANKS Jeff...
That's exactly the answer I was looking for. You guys are GREAT. I have been looking for this bit of information for over a week now and you gave me a short and precise answer... GREAT job...

And just for safety sake, before you do upgrade to Windows 7, check to see first if your computer maker has included some sort of utility that you can use to backup the recovery partition to DVD - essentially creating a set of recovery disks for the rare instance that the recovery partition becomes corrupted for some reason...

 

[zzuebe2]

Yeah, thanks for the heads up but I have already made a set of "Recovery Disks" for Vista. I made them just a few days after purchasing my machine. HP will only let you make one (1) set so I have them stored in a safe location...

 

[philbill]

Great forum here...

Is there a way to say boot the recovery partition, and then upgrade that partion to 7? Therefore if the OS partition tanks its one less step to get back to the current OS?

 

[philbill]

Hello?

 

[Dzomlija]

Great forum here...

Is there a way to say boot the recovery partition, and then upgrade that partion to 7? Therefore if the OS partition tanks its one less step to get back to the current OS?

No. The recovery partition is usually OEM specific, and is created by the manufacturer to "reset" the system to it's factory state. There are no user-accessible tools to allow you to modify this partition.

Hello?

Bumping posts is not looked upon kindly, but I'll let it pass this time.

 

[cubanito]

exellent post, now my question is if i can replace that "recovery partition" that is with Vista to windows 7... so i don't want vista anymore i just want the window7 in that recovery partition.... thanks...

 

[gregrocker]

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.

 

[jackie]

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?

 

[gregrocker]

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.

View attachment 40635

 

[severedsolo]

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

 

[gregrocker]

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.

 

[Victek]

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?

.
After you've installed Windows 7 you can use the built in Disk Management feature to delete the OEM Vista recovery partition and then extend the primary partition into the free space (as long as the recovery partition is at the end of the drive).

 

[severedsolo]

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

 

[gblotter]

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?

After you've installed Windows 7 you can use the built in Disk Management feature to delete the OEM Vista recovery partition and then extend the primary partition into the free space (as long as the recovery partition is at the end of the drive).

Same scenario here. OEM Vista recovery partition is just taking up useless space now that I have upgraded to Windows 7. The Windows 7 Disk Management utility shows my old Vista recovery partition to be at the beginning of the drive (gotcha). Is there anything I can then do to reclaim that space short of wiping the partitions and reinstalling everything from scratch? (not an option)

Does Partition Wizard (mentioned earlier) provide me any space reclamation options here that I can't get from the Windows 7 Disk Management utility?

Or perhaps I should just accept that I can live with 14GB of lost disk space and sleep well.

Great resource here BTW.

 

[gregrocker]

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. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/93322-partition-wizard-use-bootable-cd.html

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.