Is this very large recovery partition necessary?

Question

I've seen some other questions asking if they can delete their recovery partition. Most of these have been <1GB in size. Mine however, is 16GB and I'm not sure why. I've installed Ubuntu a few times in the past, so is it possible that it is a leftover partition since then and would it be fine to delete?

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Also, what is up with the 195GB of free space? If I right click on the C: partition the option to extend is grayed out. I'm trying to clean up my partitions and give Ubuntu another go.

Answer 1

It looks to me like the contents of your recovery partition are already gone - it says 100% free.

You don't need a recovery partition if you have got disks with that information on it (Windows should prompt you to do this, or at least allow you to do it). the only thing I'm aware of is that newer versions of some OS's require a very specific version of the OS to run because they complete the install and get the key from the system - you are S.O.L unless you have the setup disks or recovery for that variant - although you should be able to get that from the PC distributor - not all systems are affected by this though. (My new Dells and Toshibas are though)

You can delete the partition, but it may not help you much. You might find that its better to change the partition type or recreate it - as its at the beginning of the disk, moving it may prove "interesting" and could brick your computer, but YMMV.

It looks like you have 195 gigs of unallocated space at the end of your disk. You could use this to expand the existing Windows disk (as its immediately after it), or could use it for another OS in a new partition. Personally, I'd try and install Linux on the 16 Gig partition, then partition the free 195 gigs (in Windows or after the Linux install is done) to be shared storage for both OS's - probably using FAT32, but maybe NTFS if I wanted to store large files on it.

Answer 2

Recovery partition is not necessary for booting Windows, nor is it required for Windows to run. But if it is indeed a Recovery partition that Windows created (somehow I doubt it), you might want to keep it for repair purpose. Deleting it wouldn't cause problem from my experience. But you do need System Reserve.

You can extend Gateway by deleting the free space (yes you can) and then do extension (if the base partition is NTFS).

Answer 3

Deleting the recovery partition may free up space, but it will make doing a factory reset an absolute pain. I know this from experience.

Answer 4

I don't know about all these other people, but my personal experience is that windows REQUIRES the recovery partition to be there or it will not boot and requires a reinstall. Pain in the butt, but once I deleted it with gparted Windows would no longer boot. It also would not let me recover from disk because the recovery partition was gone.

Answer 5

When updating Windows 10, the recovery partition is being used. Mine was 450 MB in size, but the update stopped at 86% because there was no room anymore. I am resizing it now to 20 GB.