Best way to restore an image of a recovery partition with Macrium

My laptop has a recovery partition for restoring the system to its factory state and I've been wondering if I could make an image of it with Macrium then reformat the partition to free up some HD space. If I did, and at a later time I wanted to restore the laptop to its factory state could I just restore the Macrium image to the C:\ partition or would that totally mess everything up? Anyone have any personal experience here?

 

I personally will keep both, unless you have the Windows installation disc. Software can fail no matter how good it is. So plan B is required IMO.

 

Factory images normally just don´t work that way. If you want to delete the recovery partition, first create a boot disk or USB key following the procedures specified by the OEM.

Also, note that in certain cases, the "recovery" partition is also the boot partition. If you delete it, Windows won´t boot.

 

allizomeniz,

Can you post a screenshot of Disk Management? That will help decide if it is safe to delete the Recovery partition.

 

Hey guys, appreciate the feedback.

I attached a picture of my Disk Management. I outlined in red the one I think is the recovery partition. In Macrium it says its name is "HDDRECOVERY." The one on the left Macrium calls "Toshiba System Volume." The E:\ drive is a permanent flash drive I've got attached.

As of right now I've got plenty of HDD space, I'm just thinking theoretically in case I decided to do it in the future.

 

allizomeniz,

Your OS partition is System, Boot. So it is self contained. You can delete the Recovery partition if you like. You can also delete the EISA partition if you like.