On some computers, the WinRE and the factory installation are separately stored on two partitions, so you may see two OEM partitions on your computer. OEM recovery partitionĪpart from the recovery partition of Windows, there may be another recovery partition created by the computer manufacturer like Lenovo and Dell that has made their computer comes with an OEM recovery partition consuming about 7 to 20 GB, which contains the WinRE and their factory installation files. Otherwise, if you install Windows on a hard drive containing multiple partitions, Windows will save the WinRE in a folder named Recovery in the root directory of your system drive (C: drive) without leaving a recovery partition. With the recovery drive, you can still use Windows recovery options. If you create Windows 10 recovery disk, Windows will give you an option to remove the recovery partition. If you delete this partition, you won’t be able to use Windows Recovery options. This recovery partition is to hold the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE), which can be explored if you manually assign a drive letter to it. The recovery partition on Windows 10 consumes about 450MB, Windows 8/8.1 200MB, and Windows 7 100MB.

When installing a Windows operating system (OS) on a hard drive, and if you use Windows Setup to create new partition on an MBR disk, Windows will create a system reserved partition, and if it is a GPT disk, then Windows will create a recovery partition and an EFI system partition without drive letter. There are two kinds of recovery partitions you may see in Windows 10/8/7. Recovery partition is a small partition on your hard drive that can help you restore your Windows or troubleshoot system issues.

Multiple recovery partitions windows 10