Does anyone know what partitions are required on the Surface Pro? On my SP - besides the "C" drive Windows 8.1 partition, the built-in Disk Management shows a 600 MB Recovery Partition, a 200 MB EFI System Partition, a 350 MB Recovery Partition, and a 7.81 GB Recovery Partition. I know the 7.81 GB partition can be deleted (after copying to a USB stick). I believe the 200 MB partition is required but what about the 600 and 350 MB partitions?
System Partitions
- Thread starter Bzee
- Start date
I deleted every partition on it and then installed a clean Windows 8.1 from my MSDN subscription. The install recreated a 300MB recovery and a 100MB EFI System Partition only. I've had no problems. Does that help? I probably lost the ability to perform a recovery or clean wipe.. but that is okay for me.
Bzee- Did you use a partition utility to look at the partitions, or Windows Disk Management? Here's what my never restored, never refreshed Disk Management reports:
Recovery partition - 340MB
EFI - 200MB
C: - 232.16GB
Recovery partition - 5.66GB
What exactly is the other (340MB) recovery partition? Firmware perhaps?
Recovery partition - 340MB
EFI - 200MB
C: - 232.16GB
Recovery partition - 5.66GB
What exactly is the other (340MB) recovery partition? Firmware perhaps?
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A bit OT, but supposedly MSFT was going to release to the public a Win8.1 iso Did that ever happen? If so where can I find it? The best thing I ever did with my SP1 was to flatten it completely (delete all partitions) and install Win8.0 from an iso. If I can find a Win8.1 iso I might do the same on my SP2
FWIW I reinstalled Win8.1 from an ISO so not a refresh or reset. Ran install from the desktop and done this way there was no option to delete portions. Did install and ended with the exact same as my post above. Later I used the same ISO but this time I booted into it and this time I was given the option of deleting portions -all SIX of them! I deleted them all, created a new one. During that process the installer informed me that it may have to make others, which it did without my intervention. Here's the end result - just three partitions which I find interesting:
Recovery - 300MB
EFI - 100MBu
The rest is C:
Sorta interesting that Disk Management cloaked 2 of the six. More interesting is that the EFI is half its original size. And everything works fine BTW
Recovery - 300MB
EFI - 100MBu
The rest is C:
Sorta interesting that Disk Management cloaked 2 of the six. More interesting is that the EFI is half its original size. And everything works fine BTW
guymalloc
Member
I replaced a mechanical hard drive with a ssd in my win 7 netbook a couple years ago. the ssd manufacturer recommended leaving a small amount of the drive unallocated to allow for internal repair and activity. Maybe the 128 mb space on the surface ssd is for that purpose. It doesn't show up in disk management, as was mentioned, but is visible with minitool partition wizard.....
