I bought a new confuser and it has UEFI and GPT. Which of these partitions should I image to reinstall Windows 8.1 if needed? EFI partition; OEM partition; 5 Recovery partitions; C:OS partition. Thanks in advance. nozzle
@nozzle If you want to create a recovery disk, you will have to do that from inside Windows 8.1. There is an option there to create a recovery disk for clean install of Windows 8.1. I do not know where as I do not use windows 8/8.1. Perhaps somebody here who is experienced in Windows 8.1 can guide you further. Looking at you screenshot, I do not know what is going on with your system. Your oem partition, EFI system partition and the 5 recovery partitions are all blank. There is nothing on them. You should use a partition manager and merge these with your OS C: partition. You are losing about 10 GB of combined hard disk space right now.
Raza0007, Naughty, naughty. That would hose the computer. You can't take any notice of "100% Free". They contain data.
nozzle, A weird system but accept it. The safest thing is to do an Entire Drive backup. Tick the drive box in IFD and all partitions will be selected. I prefer IFL over IFD as it is faster. When you do the Entire Drive backup you will find an extra partition. The MSR. It doesn't show in Disk Management. You only need to do one Entire Drive backup. Keep it. Subsequent image backups only need to be of the OS C: drive. Full or changes only.
Brian, are you sure? If there was some data on these partitions, they would not be 100% free. It looks almost like somebody was trying to create a recovery partition on his computer and either they did not get confirmation or something that the partition was created, so they redid the step multiple times and ended up with 5 recovery partitions. @nozzle, was the system bought from a shop (i.e. partitioned by an expert) or did you just buy a new PC from a home user?
Raza0007, That confused me when I started using GPT disks. Disk Management reports 100% Free partitions but if you look at the partitions with TeraByte Explorer or TBOSDT, they contain many files. When you install (UEFI mode) Win8 to a blank HD you get 4 partitions... Recovery 300 MiB EFI 99 MiB MSR 128 MiB OS your choice of MiB MSR doesn't show in Disk Management. OEM computers often contain extra Recovery partitions. When you upgrade from Win8 to Win8.1 you create an extra Recovery partition. Edit.... with Win 10 these are different Recovery 450 MiB MSR 16 MiB
Well, I will take your word for it as I do not have a lot of experience with GPT disks. In regular mbr disks however, the disk management utility actually calculates the free and used space till 2 decimal points. So if the partitions had even 0.5 mb data on them it would have been something like: capacity 100 mb, free space 99.50 mb, % free space 99%. Also a partition manager when merging these partitions with the C partition will ensure that the system remains bootable. At least that is what Paragon HDM did for me. I had an MSR and a Dell OEM partition before my C partition. I just deleted and merged them with my C and Paragon HDM did the rest and my system booted fine.
seems like an arrogant, self-important M$, happy to pollute your HDD. does Linux do anything like this? what if you had 5 different OS'es all doing this nonsense? not necessarily in my experience. often i had to use things like Rescatux or install another linux where grub takes over to regain ability to boot. maybe newer versions are accounting for this though?
This looks like a messed up OS drive. For me, the first thing i do after I purchase a new computer is to delete all partitions on the drive, clean the disk, then start from a fresh install of OS. I don't understand why the OEM vendor would put so many Recovery partitions on the single drive with only one OS on it. A total waste of space. BTW, welcome back, Brian! It's nice to see you around again.
I can understand the Win8 to Win8.1 situation. The Win8.1 Winre.wim is larger than its Win8 counterpart and won't fit in the partition. Usually the OS partition is resized smaller so the new partition can be created.
OK. We are talking apples and oranges. By the way, you didn't have an MSR (Microsoft Reserved System). They are present on GPT drives. Damn acronyms. You are probably referring to a SRP.
I've been fishing. We caught lots of Cobia from underneath Manta Rays. Other fish etc, etc. Been home for a week.
It was 3-4 years ago, so I do not remember what the partitions were labeled. But there were two and both were primary. I left them there for 2-3 years after I bought the laptop, as they did not bother me, but then I ran into the 4 primary partition limit and I needed at least 3 useable primary partitions on the HDD, so those two had to go. Good for you. I have not been on a real vacation for a long long while.
In Disk Management my Win 8.1 Recovery and EFI System Partitions are 100% Free. TBOSDT shows... Recovery 300 MiB Total Size... 63 MiB Free EFI system partition 99 MiB Total Size... 70 MiB Free
Well, like I said before I do not have a lot of experience with GPT disks or UEFI systems, so I will take your word for it. But have a look at the screenshot in post#3, there are two recovery partitions in between C:\ and D:\. I have never seen or experienced a Windows installation that will do something like that. Not to mention a half a gig unallocated space between 3rd and 4th reserved partitions. Seems like the system was partitioned by a monkey. (Not trying to be rude to anyone here).
I don't know why there are so many Recovery partitions. But we are only talking about a little over 2 GB out of 1000 GB. The final Recovery partition contains the backup image. nozzle, Open TBOSDT (as an Admin) and type... list hd 0 /f /u How much free space do you have in each Recovery partition?