8.1 Recovery image...

[GreyFox7]

Aside:
There is an interesting new scenario however which the documented procedures don't cover. New Surface 3's are available with W10 installed. Windows 10 isn't designed to use a recovery Partition and all Recovery functions can be carried out without one... BUT there is a difference between the Stock Windows bootable USB/iso and the theoretical Recovery image with drivers included. Unless they intend to pull everything from Windows Update during setup. Certainly folks have done "Clean Installs" on Surfaces and didn't have any issues.

Ah, it's magic, you don't need to know the details or pay any attention to the man behind the curtain.

 

[geckoboy86]

A confusing name... if you look into the zip file dates are all 3/19/2015 or 5/22/2015. which is about right for a Surface 3 Win 8.1 Recovery image and would be scary early for anything Win10.

The files in mine are dated 7/15

 

[GreyFox7]

The files in mine are dated 7/15

Did your Surface 3 come with Windows 10 installed? you do have to register a serial number so... it's possible there is a W10 image if that's the case... I'm assuming you didn't have a choice of images is just gives you that right?

Im redownloading and getting Surface3_BMR_10_4.50.0.zip

 

[geckoboy86]

Yes, mine was Win10 preinstalled...

 

[GreyFox7]

Yes, mine was Win10 preinstalled...

Would you be so kind as to upload a screen shot of Disk Management display of the partitions on your S3?

 

[leeshor]

Beginning to make more sense now.

 

[geckoboy86]

 

[GreyFox7]

That's what I expected, there's no 5+GB Recovery partition to hold that downloaded image. The 410MB partition just has some tools in it.

On a Win 8.1 System there's another 5.27 GB Recovery Partition.

 

[geckoboy86]

The OS must keep a record of what factory as I went into the "create a recovery drive" from the control panel and was still able to make recovery drive thats over 6GB in size.

 

[GreyFox7]

The OS must keep a record of what factory as I went into the "create a recovery drive" from the control panel and was still able to make recovery drive thats over 6GB in size.

Windows 10 has a different mechanism for Recovery but I believe the hidden folder C:\$Windows.~BT is the location of the Recovery sources.

 

[Gus]

So now that I have two recovery partitions, How do I get rid of the 5 gig partition.

 

[GreyFox7]

So now that I have two recovery partitions, How do I get rid of the 5 gig partition.

Assuming you actually want to absorb that space into your C: drive ... only with a third party partition manager.

If you upgraded this is what you have (ignoring the hidden reserved partition which doesn't affect this anyway)
1. small Recovery Partition - This is the Win 8.1 recovery tools
2. EFI system Partition - boot
3. Windows C:
4. small Recovery Partition - Windows 10 recovery tools.
5. 5+GB Recovery Partition - Full recovery image.

Without third party partition manager you wont be able to add the 5GB space to C: because it's not contiguous due to partition 4.

With a partition manager you could delete partition 5 then move partition 4 to the end then add the free space to C:.

Otherwise you could blow it away and create a new 5 Gb partition with a drive letter to make it accessible or just assign a drive letter and format it. either way it's usable as a separate chunk of disk.