I just noticed that, using Macrium Reflect, that it shows my 4th primary partition, un-labeled (it says (none), is almost full and marked in red.
My C: partition has lots of space, but for this one it's 1.36GB used out
of 1.41 GB. Of course I have no direct control over what is used, and
I don't know why the used space is growing.

Do I need to do something? Shrink the C: and give the space to this
one? Or will it grow so slowly that I won't run out of space for
years? Why the heck is it getting more full?

Windows 11, Dell Latitude 5510 with 32 gigs of ram


Offf topic, but looking for a bigger HDD to image to, I found that I
have my email all the way back to 2011 and probably to the beginning.
I'm still missing a little bit of email that hadn't gotten backed up in
2017 in the few days before my crash, but the one email I wish I have, I
want for petty reasons. This should teach me a lesson that if I want to
be petty, I should be careful to backup my files.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 4/9/2026 11:08 AM, micky wrote:

I just noticed that, using Macrium Reflect, that it shows my 4th primary partition, un-labeled (it says (none), is almost full and marked in red.
My C: partition has lots of space, but for this one it's 1.36GB used out
of 1.41 GB. Of course I have no direct control over what is used, and
I don't know why the used space is growing.

Do I need to do something? Shrink the C: and give the space to this
one? Or will it grow so slowly that I won't run out of space for
years? Why the heck is it getting more full?

Windows 11, Dell Latitude 5510 with 32 gigs of ram

You'll need to provide the partitions and the partitions order


Before doing anything, post pictures of your entire disk.
One using Disk Management
One using Powershell
One using Macrium

For Powershell, open in admin mode, then type or copy the following
command at the Powershell prompt, once done press the enter key to show
the results for each partition. Copy or take a screen shot of the results.

get-volume

Note: For Win11 using GPT partitioning:
- Macrium should show the following partitions.
ESP/EFI(System), MSR(unformatted), Windows o/s, Windows Recovery.
- Disk Management will not show the MSR
- Powershell get-volume will not show the MSR

--
...w­¤?ñ?¤

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 4/9/2026 12:43 PM, ...w­¤?ñ?¤ wrote:

On 4/9/2026 11:08 AM, micky wrote:

I just noticed that, using Macrium Reflect, that it shows my 4th primary
partition, un-labeled (it says (none), is almost full and marked in red.
My C: partition has lots of space, but for this one it's 1.36GB used out
of 1.41 GB.ÿÿ Of course I have no direct control over what is used, and
I don't know why the used space is growing.

Do I need to do something?ÿ Shrink the C: and give the space to this
one?ÿÿ Or will it grow so slowly that I won't run out of space for
years?ÿÿÿ Why the heck is it getting more full?

Windows 11, Dell Latitude 5510 with 32 gigs of ram

You'll need to provide the partitions and the partitions order

Before doing anything, post pictures of your entire disk.
One using Disk Management
One using Powershell
One using Macrium

For Powershell, open in admin mode, then type or copy the following
command at the Powershell prompt, once done press the enter key to show
the results for each partition. Copy or take a screen shot of the results.

get-volume

Note: For Win11 using GPT partitioning:
- Macrium should show the following partitions.
ÿESP/EFI(System), MSR(unformatted), Windows o/s, Windows Recovery.
- Disk Management will not show the MSR
- Powershell get-volume will not show the MSR

p.s. For analysis reasons, the 4th partition GB sizes in MB are
1.36 GB = 1392.64 MB used
1.41 GB = 1443.84 MB total size
==>> Which indicates 51.2 MB free space (~3.5% remaining)

More reason to determine the purpose of the last partition with accurate information. If that 4th partition is Windows Recovery then it has insufficient space to be updated by the monthly(2nd Tues each month) or
the Preview update(4th Tues or out-of-band) that includes a Windows
Recovery update.
- i.e. to answer your question in the message subject
=> Yes, you should care!

The most likely reason why Macrium has shown in 'Red'
*Macrium shows a recovery partition more than 90% full in Red*


--
...w­¤?ñ?¤

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Thu, 4/9/2026 2:08 PM, micky wrote:

I just noticed that, using Macrium Reflect, that it shows my 4th primary partition, un-labeled (it says (none), is almost full and marked in red.
My C: partition has lots of space, but for this one it's 1.36GB used out
of 1.41 GB. Of course I have no direct control over what is used, and
I don't know why the used space is growing.

Do I need to do something? Shrink the C: and give the space to this
one? Or will it grow so slowly that I won't run out of space for
years? Why the heck is it getting more full?

Windows 11, Dell Latitude 5510 with 32 gigs of ram

Offf topic, but looking for a bigger HDD to image to, I found that I
have my email all the way back to 2011 and probably to the beginning.
I'm still missing a little bit of email that hadn't gotten backed up in
2017 in the few days before my crash, but the one email I wish I have, I
want for petty reasons. This should teach me a lesson that if I want to
be petty, I should be careful to backup my files.

Example of review era: 17 September 2020 10th gen CPU

*******

Table 1. Storage specifications

Form factor Interface type Capacity

One 2.5 in. hard drive SATA Upto 1 TB or

One M.2 solid-state drive Upto 1 TB

*******

There is *not one* picture available, of disk management for Dell Latitude 5510.

The as-delivered format should be GPT partitioned, but
as for the partition layout, we know that modern machines
tend to not have the 15GB recovery partition, leaving
the discovery of factory restore for the customer, as a rude surprise.
Making a recovery stick (I've made a few), is also a rude surprise,
as it isn't really a recovery stick and downloading a windows 10 ISO
and making a USB stick from that, is largely the same. You won't get
the Dell software that way.

Dell seems to have a scheme where there is something similar to MediaCreationTool
(on their website) which downloads an ISO from the Dell site, and this would presumably be more feature complete. But given how many bad experiences we've had at
this point, what are the odds that entering your service tag, results
in an actual Factory Restore quality image ?

*******

You're going to have to show us a Disk Management picture if
you expect to make any forward progress. A picture of mine
isn't going to do any good, as a Dell always has some kinds of
additional partitions for no reason.

With diskpart.exe, we can list them.

DISKPART> list partition

Partition ### Type Size Offset [I-know-what-they-are Column]
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 System 100 MB 1024 KB EFI System Partition (ESP)
Partition 2 Reserved 16 MB 101 MB <No file system>
Partition 3 Primary 118 GB 117 MB Windows C: type partition W11
Partition 4 Recovery 1024 MB 118 GB Recovery Partition (winRE emergency boot)
Partition 5 Primary 128 GB 119 GB Windows C: type partition W10
Partition 6 Recovery 1025 MB 248 GB Recovery Partition (winRE emergency boot)
Partition 7 Primary 682 GB 249 GB Data
Partition 8 Primary 2794 GB 931 GB Data

You can see, without the right-most column of information,
a person seeing just the diskpart list, would be hard pressed
to guess at the function of each.

When you see a picture of the materials in Disk Management, the
volume label text shows the name the user assigned. For some
Dell type partitions, we might not have any sort of identification
as to what they might be.

Even when a partition is marked as "Hidden", you can still un-hide
them and look inside. Occasionally, on "Recovery Partition", after
you assign a letter in diskpart.exe , you need to use cmd.exe and
the command prompt, then

dir /ah

to see any files marked hidden. That is how, on the Recovery Partition,
you eventually get to the bottom level and you get to see the size
of the WinRE.wim file down there (500MB or more).

DISKPART> select partition 4

Partition 4 is now the selected partition.

DISKPART> assign letter=K # Make the partition visible
...
DISKPART> remove letter=k # Return the partition to its hidden-lifestyle DISKPART> exit

Leaving DiskPart...

In another Administrator Terminal, we could be doing

cmd.exe # Run Command Prompt
K: # change directory to K:
dir # look for visible files and directories
dir /ah # look for hidden files
exit

And by doing that, we can gradually review what is there.
The permissions would make running SequoiaView on K: a waste
of time, as few directories would be visible after the scan
is done.

In the other Terminal, I can "remove letter=k" and then K: is
no longer visible.

That is an example of making an obnoxious partition visible, and
doing some examination yourself.

Paul



--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Thu, 9 Apr 2026 22:14:42 -0700, ...w??? <winstonmvp@gmail.com> wrote:

On 4/9/2026 12:43 PM, ...w??? wrote:

On 4/9/2026 11:08 AM, micky wrote:

I just noticed that, using Macrium Reflect, that it shows my 4th primary >>> partition, un-labeled (it says (none), is almost full and marked in red. >>> My C: partition has lots of space, but for this one it's 1.36GB used out >>> of 1.41 GB.?? Of course I have no direct control over what is used, and
I don't know why the used space is growing.

Do I need to do something?? Shrink the C: and give the space to this
one??? Or will it grow so slowly that I won't run out of space for
years???? Why the heck is it getting more full?

Windows 11, Dell Latitude 5510 with 32 gigs of ram

You'll need to provide the partitions and the partitions order


Before doing anything, post pictures of your entire disk.
One using Disk Management
One using Powershell
One using Macrium

For Powershell, open in admin mode, then type or copy the following
command at the Powershell prompt, once done press the enter key to show
the results for each partition. Copy or take a screen shot of the results. >>
get-volume

Note: For Win11 using GPT partitioning:
- Macrium should show the following partitions.
?ESP/EFI(System), MSR(unformatted), Windows o/s, Windows Recovery.
- Disk Management will not show the MSR
- Powershell get-volume will not show the MSR

p.s. For analysis reasons, the 4th partition GB sizes in MB are
1.36 GB = 1392.64 MB used
1.41 GB = 1443.84 MB total size

Which indicates 51.2 MB free space (~3.5% remaining)

Thanks for posting again.

More reason to determine the purpose of the last partition with accurate >information. If that 4th partition is Windows Recovery then it has

Yes. It's labeled (by Minitool Partition Manager) as GPT (Recovery
Partition.)

insufficient space to be updated by the monthly(2nd Tues each month) or
the Preview update(4th Tues or out-of-band) that includes a Windows
Recovery update.
- i.e. to answer your question in the message subject
=> Yes, you should care!

The most likely reason why Macrium has shown in 'Red'
*Macrium shows a recovery partition more than 90% full in Red*

So I could take, say, 0.15GB, or more, from the adjacent Data/Windows
partition and give it to this partition, right?

Adding 0.15GBwould make it 1.36 used out of 1.56GB total, or 0.20 empty

The windows partition has 620GB that are empty. Maybe I should take
more, 2GB sounds better. Then I'll be good for years.

(I know how to do this, using Minitool Part. Manager, for example.)

I think this is the first time I've actually had a recovery partition.
Prior PCs were very second-hand or had windows reinstalled by amateurs
(like me).

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Thu, 4/9/2026 2:08 PM, micky wrote:

I just noticed that, using Macrium Reflect, that it shows my 4th primary partition, un-labeled (it says (none), is almost full and marked in red.
My C: partition has lots of space, but for this one it's 1.36GB used out
of 1.41 GB. Of course I have no direct control over what is used, and
I don't know why the used space is growing.

Do I need to do something? Shrink the C: and give the space to this
one? Or will it grow so slowly that I won't run out of space for
years? Why the heck is it getting more full?

Windows 11, Dell Latitude 5510 with 32 gigs of ram

Offf topic, but looking for a bigger HDD to image to, I found that I
have my email all the way back to 2011 and probably to the beginning.
I'm still missing a little bit of email that hadn't gotten backed up in
2017 in the few days before my crash, but the one email I wish I have, I
want for petty reasons. This should teach me a lesson that if I want to
be petty, I should be careful to backup my files.

One reason a Recovery Partition can be full, is there can be
two copies of WinRE.wim present in there.

I've only seen this happen the one time.

Normally, when reagentc is disabled, the WinRE.wim is stored on the C: drive.

It can be moved back to the Recovery Partition when reagentc
is enabled again by the user.

This is not particularly important, any of this, as I don't
think I've ever had WinRE.wim fix a broken situation for me, and I've
always had to coax things along manually, myself. Part of the
problem, is when a recovery activity is ongoing, some
rotating balls are on the screen, but there is no time estimate
for when the activity will resolve to either fail/success. Usually,
it's up to the user to stick a fork in it, and look elsewhere
for a solution to whatever is wrong.

One problem with a CHKDSK running where there is no progress display,
is CHKDSK can attempt to "use all system RAM" and if a partition
has enough files on it... it's quite possible CHKDSK will stop without completing its assignment. Maybe we should run this test case right now,
and see what happens.

Running CHKDSK on a partition with millions of files, resulted
in the consumption of all memory, and a freeze. It looks like
at some point after that, DWM may have exited or something related,
freeing up enough RAM for CHKDSK to continue on. I hammered ctrl-C
a few times to get CHKDSK to exit and this got me back in control
of the situation.

And that raises the question, of whether a fully automated treatment
of C: is ever going to be a good idea. If C: happened to have as many
files as were on D: , then attempts to use CHKDSK would look pretty bad.

Paul

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Fri, 4/10/2026 6:34 AM, micky wrote:

In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Thu, 9 Apr 2026 22:14:42 -0700, ...w­¤?ñ?¤ <winstonmvp@gmail.com> wrote:

On 4/9/2026 12:43 PM, ...w­¤?ñ?¤ wrote:

On 4/9/2026 11:08 AM, micky wrote:

I just noticed that, using Macrium Reflect, that it shows my 4th primary >>>> partition, un-labeled (it says (none), is almost full and marked in red. >>>> My C: partition has lots of space, but for this one it's 1.36GB used out >>>> of 1.41 GB.ÿÿ Of course I have no direct control over what is used, and >>>> I don't know why the used space is growing.

Do I need to do something?ÿ Shrink the C: and give the space to this
one?ÿÿ Or will it grow so slowly that I won't run out of space for
years?ÿÿÿ Why the heck is it getting more full?

Windows 11, Dell Latitude 5510 with 32 gigs of ram

You'll need to provide the partitions and the partitions order


Before doing anything, post pictures of your entire disk.
One using Disk Management
One using Powershell
One using Macrium

For Powershell, open in admin mode, then type or copy the following
command at the Powershell prompt, once done press the enter key to show >>> the results for each partition. Copy or take a screen shot of the results. >>>
get-volume

Note: For Win11 using GPT partitioning:
- Macrium should show the following partitions.
ÿESP/EFI(System), MSR(unformatted), Windows o/s, Windows Recovery.
- Disk Management will not show the MSR
- Powershell get-volume will not show the MSR

p.s. For analysis reasons, the 4th partition GB sizes in MB are
1.36 GB = 1392.64 MB used
1.41 GB = 1443.84 MB total size

Which indicates 51.2 MB free space (~3.5% remaining)

Thanks for posting again.

More reason to determine the purpose of the last partition with accurate
information. If that 4th partition is Windows Recovery then it has

Yes. It's labeled (by Minitool Partition Manager) as GPT (Recovery Partition.)

insufficient space to be updated by the monthly(2nd Tues each month) or
the Preview update(4th Tues or out-of-band) that includes a Windows
Recovery update.
- i.e. to answer your question in the message subject
=> Yes, you should care!

The most likely reason why Macrium has shown in 'Red'
*Macrium shows a recovery partition more than 90% full in Red*

So I could take, say, 0.15GB, or more, from the adjacent Data/Windows partition and give it to this partition, right?

Adding 0.15GBwould make it 1.36 used out of 1.56GB total, or 0.20 empty

The windows partition has 620GB that are empty. Maybe I should take
more, 2GB sounds better. Then I'll be good for years.

(I know how to do this, using Minitool Part. Manager, for example.)

I think this is the first time I've actually had a recovery partition.
Prior PCs were very second-hand or had windows reinstalled by amateurs
(like me).

There is a potential to end up with a surprise.

I do resize of Recovery Partition, with Linux GParted.

I don't have results to share, on how many "disk management"
programs (such as the now-discontinued Acronis Disk Director),
cannot "do this or that".

GParted on the other hand, is <cough> "pretty good" but especially so
if you know which inputs it will royally screw up :-) I fed it a
Macintosh disk once, it claimed to be quite quite happy
with the item, no concerns expressed, pushed the green button,
disk totally destroyed (because it wrote all over the Mac partition
table in the most peculiar way, each partition entry receiving
slightly different damage). I had a backup.

While some will recommend recreating the "Recovery Partition",
that isn't necessary. As long as you use the "right" partition
management program, having thoroughly tested the program for
rough edges.

I have some sense of what capabilities cannot possibly work. I
bought a copy of Acronis Disk Director. It claimed to be able
to change the cluster size on an NTFS partition (you know, for
when you want to change from 64K clusters back to the standard
4K clusters). I did a backup of the disk first. The process
finished. No signs of mass destruction. But then I was wandering
around System32, and I noticed a few files had "0 size".
And they were things like DLL files, which you know cannot be right.
So the result was "trashed, but a good job of hiding the trashing done".

And that's why we have to test our partition managers, for their
wide variety of bad table manners.

One of the tools, I was able to find a report in a thread, of
a FAT32 resize not working properly. Sometimes this is caused
by a latent fault in the partition (needed CHKDSK run on it),
so if a partition is dirty, that's not a particularly good
time to be resizing it.

Some of the tools need to reboot, to be messing with C: ,
but as an experienced user I am pretty sure you've seen
it all and this is not news.

Paul


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 4/10/2026 3:34 AM, micky wrote:

In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Thu, 9 Apr 2026 22:14:42 -0700, ...w­¤?ñ?¤ <winstonmvp@gmail.com> wrote:

On 4/9/2026 12:43 PM, ...w­¤?ñ?¤ wrote:

On 4/9/2026 11:08 AM, micky wrote:

I just noticed that, using Macrium Reflect, that it shows my 4th primary >>>> partition, un-labeled (it says (none), is almost full and marked in red. >>>> My C: partition has lots of space, but for this one it's 1.36GB used out >>>> of 1.41 GB.ÿÿ Of course I have no direct control over what is used, and >>>> I don't know why the used space is growing.

Do I need to do something?ÿ Shrink the C: and give the space to this
one?ÿÿ Or will it grow so slowly that I won't run out of space for
years?ÿÿÿ Why the heck is it getting more full?

Windows 11, Dell Latitude 5510 with 32 gigs of ram

You'll need to provide the partitions and the partitions order


Before doing anything, post pictures of your entire disk.
One using Disk Management
One using Powershell
One using Macrium

For Powershell, open in admin mode, then type or copy the following
command at the Powershell prompt, once done press the enter key to show
the results for each partition. Copy or take a screen shot of the results. >>>
get-volume

Note: For Win11 using GPT partitioning:
- Macrium should show the following partitions.
ÿESP/EFI(System), MSR(unformatted), Windows o/s, Windows Recovery.
- Disk Management will not show the MSR
- Powershell get-volume will not show the MSR

p.s. For analysis reasons, the 4th partition GB sizes in MB are
1.36 GB = 1392.64 MB used
1.41 GB = 1443.84 MB total size
==>> Which indicates 51.2 MB free space (~3.5% remaining)

Thanks for posting again.

More reason to determine the purpose of the last partition with accurate
information. If that 4th partition is Windows Recovery then it has

Yes. It's labeled (by Minitool Partition Manager) as GPT (Recovery Partition.)

insufficient space to be updated by the monthly(2nd Tues each month) or
the Preview update(4th Tues or out-of-band) that includes a Windows
Recovery update.
- i.e. to answer your question in the message subject
=> Yes, you should care!

The most likely reason why Macrium has shown in 'Red'
*Macrium shows a recovery partition more than 90% full in Red*

So I could take, say, 0.15GB, or more, from the adjacent Data/Windows partition and give it to this partition, right?

Adding 0.15GBwould make it 1.36 used out of 1.56GB total, or 0.20 empty

The windows partition has 620GB that are empty. Maybe I should take
more, 2GB sounds better. Then I'll be good for years.

(I know how to do this, using Minitool Part. Manager, for example.)

I think this is the first time I've actually had a recovery partition.
Prior PCs were very second-hand or had windows reinstalled by amateurs
(like me).

Post pictures as requested.
You've had a recovery partition for as long as you've had/used Windows
11 and most likely also for Windows 10.

Those pictures are important.
1. for validation of the partition number of the Recovery partition
2. for validation of the partition number of the Windows partition
3. for the disk number (most likely '0' on a single disk device)
4. to determine the route to increase the recovery partition size to 2 GB.


--
...w­¤?ñ?¤

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 09/04/2026 19:08, micky wrote:

I just noticed that, using Macrium Reflect, that it shows my 4th primary partition, un-labeled (it says (none), is almost full and marked in red.
My C: partition has lots of space, but for this one it's 1.36GB used out
of 1.41 GB. Of course I have no direct control over what is used, and
I don't know why the used space is growing.

Do I need to do something? Shrink the C: and give the space to this
one? Or will it grow so slowly that I won't run out of space for
years? Why the heck is it getting more full?

Windows 11, Dell Latitude 5510 with 32 gigs of ram

It'll probably be your recovery partition. It has a minimal OS and some
repair tools on it, that you can boot into it if your main Windows
partition gets screwed up.

As to why it's filling more, well either Microsoft is upgrading the
minimal OS (which is called WinRE), or it could be that Macrium is
installing something there (mainly to make complete restoration of your
whole Windows partition easier) and it is also will also be upgrading
from time to time.

--
Brian Gregory (in England).

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Fri, 4/10/2026 6:51 PM, Brian Gregory wrote:

On 09/04/2026 19:08, micky wrote:

I just noticed that, using Macrium Reflect, that it shows my 4th primary
partition, un-labeled (it says (none), is almost full and marked in red.
My C: partition has lots of space, but for this one it's 1.36GB used out
of 1.41 GB.ÿÿ Of course I have no direct control over what is used, and
I don't know why the used space is growing.

Do I need to do something?ÿ Shrink the C: and give the space to this
one?ÿÿ Or will it grow so slowly that I won't run out of space for
years?ÿÿÿ Why the heck is it getting more full?

Windows 11, Dell Latitude 5510 with 32 gigs of ram

It'll probably be your recovery partition. It has a minimal OS and some repair tools on it, that you can boot into it if your main Windows partition gets screwed up.

As to why it's filling more, well either Microsoft is upgrading the minimal OS (which is called WinRE), or it could be that Macrium is installing something there (mainly to make complete restoration of your whole Windows partition easier) and it is also will also be upgrading from time to time.

There is a C:\boot\Macrium but mine is not configured to boot from there.
A .wim may be placed in there, if you select the option to have a boot
added to the Windows Boot Manager.

There is a C:\rescuepe.log with the contents of:

Macrium Reflect Boot Log
------------------------

Started 3/17/2026 1:32 AM v7.2.4524

And that would be me, booting from my Macrium USB key.

There is one of those files on my S: drive with this:

Started 5/10/2022 11:24 AM v7.2.4524

indicating that however that happened, it does not happen
all that often.

*******

diskpart.exe
list disk 0
select disk 0
list partition
select partition 4 # recovery partition
assign letter=k
... # time passes In another Terminal as admin, we use dir /ah for a look around
remove letter=k
exit

*******

K:\Recovery\WindowsRE>dir /ah
Volume in drive K has no label.
Volume Serial Number is B8AE-FFB3

Directory of K:\Recovery\WindowsRE

Sun, 04/05/2026 05:29 AM <DIR> .
Sun, 04/05/2026 05:26 AM <DIR> ..
Mon, 04/01/2024 03:22 AM 3,170,304 boot.sdi
Sun, 04/05/2026 05:29 AM 1,109 ReAgent.xml
Sat, 09/27/2025 03:55 PM 0 SrSettings.ini
Sun, 04/05/2026 05:24 AM 784,406,969 Winre.wim # Appears it has been updated recently, by automation.
# Windows will regularly try to "finish" a needed update.
4 File(s) 787,578,382 bytes
2 Dir(s) 269,705,216 bytes free

If there are *two* of those files on a Recovery Partition,
the second of the files is not next to that one. It's in a
different folder.

You can check your Recovery Partition status like this.

reagentc /info

Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) and system reset configuration Information:

Windows RE status: Enabled
Windows RE location: \\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk0\partition4\Recovery\WindowsRE <=== points to above item

If it was "Disabled", then the Winre.wim file could be missing from K:
and it could be present on C: . You'll need nfi.exe to list every
file in the C: $MFT and the name of it should be present there.

When Microsoft is updating Winre.wim, there is a staging directory
in the root of C: . You might expect that to be protected
with permissions as well, in which case your friend nfi.exe
(from the year 2000 or so) is the cat you want. If this has content,
you might "assume" at this point, that the process is "having trouble"
with partition 4. After an update is "successful", these can have less material in them.

C:\$WinREAgent
C:\$WinREAgent\Scratch
C:\$WinREAgent\Rollback

Depending on the reagentc failure mode, I've had K:\Recovery\WindowsRE
be empty... even when dir /ah was used. And I had to use
the PBR recipe to re-populate it. PBR stands for PushButtonReset
and that is the only procedure for re-initializing your ReagentC subsys.
You use a file off the installer DVD as a source of "meat" for that process. The Windows updating thing, will then later further revision that
(use the staging and add to it). A side effect of REagentc update,
is one registry entry has info about the release of WinRE now installed.
After the PBR, that isn't set yet. Only an update sets the registry entry. Since my date on the above file is April 5th, I would expect I have
a registry entry right now showing the revision.

*******

There are endless hours of fun involved in this topic. I don't really want to go there.

https://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/kb-articles/repairing-the-windows-recovery-environment-winre/

Paul

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Fri, 10 Apr 2026 12:31:37 -0700,
...w??? <winstonmvp@gmail.com> wrote:

On 4/10/2026 3:34 AM, micky wrote:

In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Thu, 9 Apr 2026 22:14:42 -0700, ...w???
<winstonmvp@gmail.com> wrote:

On 4/9/2026 12:43 PM, ...w??? wrote:

On 4/9/2026 11:08 AM, micky wrote:

I just noticed that, using Macrium Reflect, that it shows my 4th primary >>>>> partition, un-labeled (it says (none), is almost full and marked in red. >>>>> My C: partition has lots of space, but for this one it's 1.36GB used out >>>>> of 1.41 GB.?? Of course I have no direct control over what is used, and >>>>> I don't know why the used space is growing.

Do I need to do something?? Shrink the C: and give the space to this >>>>> one??? Or will it grow so slowly that I won't run out of space for
years???? Why the heck is it getting more full?

Windows 11, Dell Latitude 5510 with 32 gigs of ram

You'll need to provide the partitions and the partitions order


Before doing anything, post pictures of your entire disk.
One using Disk Management
One using Powershell
One using Macrium

For Powershell, open in admin mode, then type or copy the following
command at the Powershell prompt, once done press the enter key to show >>>> the results for each partition. Copy or take a screen shot of the results. >>>>
get-volume

Powershell

PS C:\Users\mmm> get-volume
Remaining Size
C Dell-2025-Laptop NTFS Fixed Healthy OK 615.69 GB 952.34 GB
D LITTLE-SD FAT32 Removable Healthy OK 28.31 GB 28.96 GB
NTFS Fixed Healthy OK 53.98 MB 1.41 GB

Macrium Reflect Free
1 NO NAME (none) Primary Fat32 (LBA) 73.7MB used out of 100MB
2 (none) Primary Unformatted 16MB used out of 16MB
(but it's not marked in red even though it's full.
3 Dell-2025-Laptop (C:) Primary NTFS 332.59 GB used out of 952.34GB
4 (none) Primary NTFS 1.36 used out of 1.41GB (and marked in red)
plus another line for a little removeable SD card

Windows Disk Managerment
(Disk 0 Parition 1) Simple Basic Healthy (EFI system partition)
100MB 100MB 100% free Macrium says 74% used!
(Disk 0 Partition 4) Simple Basic Healthy (Recovery Partition)
1.41GB used, 1.41GB Free Sapce 100% free -- That's not right. Dell-2025-Laptop (C:) Simple Basic Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump,
Basic Data Partition) 952.34 GB 617.72GB 65% Free
Little-SD, not important, right?


Do you think I have to worry about Minitool Parition Wizard damaging
anything? I've liked how it works, but I could change to another.

Note: For Win11 using GPT partitioning:
- Macrium should show the following partitions.
?ESP/EFI(System), MSR(unformatted), Windows o/s, Windows Recovery.
- Disk Management will not show the MSR
- Powershell get-volume will not show the MSR

p.s. For analysis reasons, the 4th partition GB sizes in MB are
1.36 GB = 1392.64 MB used
1.41 GB = 1443.84 MB total size
==>> Which indicates 51.2 MB free space (~3.5% remaining)

Thanks for posting again.

More reason to determine the purpose of the last partition with accurate >>> information. If that 4th partition is Windows Recovery then it has

Yes. It's labeled (by Minitool Partition Manager) as GPT (Recovery
Partition.)

insufficient space to be updated by the monthly(2nd Tues each month) or
the Preview update(4th Tues or out-of-band) that includes a Windows
Recovery update.
- i.e. to answer your question in the message subject
=> Yes, you should care!

The most likely reason why Macrium has shown in 'Red'
*Macrium shows a recovery partition more than 90% full in Red*

So I could take, say, 0.15GB, or more, from the adjacent Data/Windows
partition and give it to this partition, right?

Adding 0.15GBwould make it 1.36 used out of 1.56GB total, or 0.20 empty

The windows partition has 620GB that are empty. Maybe I should take
more, 2GB sounds better. Then I'll be good for years.

(I know how to do this, using Minitool Part. Manager, for example.)

I think this is the first time I've actually had a recovery partition.
Prior PCs were very second-hand or had windows reinstalled by amateurs
(like me).

Post pictures as requested.
You've had a recovery partition for as long as you've had/used Windows
11 and most likely also for Windows 10.

Those pictures are important.
1. for validation of the partition number of the Recovery partition
2. for validation of the partition number of the Windows partition
3. for the disk number (most likely '0' on a single disk device)
4. to determine the route to increase the recovery partition size to 2 GB.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Sun, 4/12/2026 2:42 PM, micky wrote:

Powershell

PS C:\Users\mmm> get-volume
Remaining Size
C Dell-2025-Laptop NTFS Fixed Healthy OK 615.69 GB 952.34 GB
D LITTLE-SD FAT32 Removable Healthy OK 28.31 GB 28.96 GB
NTFS Fixed Healthy OK 53.98 MB 1.41 GB

Macrium Reflect Free
1 NO NAME (none) Primary Fat32 (LBA) 73.7MB used out of 100MB
2 (none) Primary Unformatted 16MB used out of 16MB
(but it's not marked in red even though it's full.
3 Dell-2025-Laptop (C:) Primary NTFS 332.59 GB used out of 952.34GB
4 (none) Primary NTFS 1.36 used out of 1.41GB (and marked in red)
plus another line for a little removeable SD card

Windows Disk Managerment
(Disk 0 Parition 1) Simple Basic Healthy (EFI system partition)
100MB 100MB 100% free Macrium says 74% used!
(Disk 0 Partition 4) Simple Basic Healthy (Recovery Partition)
1.41GB used, 1.41GB Free Sapce 100% free -- That's not right. Dell-2025-Laptop (C:) Simple Basic Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Basic Data Partition) 952.34 GB 617.72GB 65% Free
Little-SD, not important, right?

Do you think I have to worry about Minitool Parition Wizard damaging anything? I've liked how it works, but I could change to another.

This video shows Partition Wizard doing a Move/Resize (slide to the right).
In this looping video, they "recommend doing a backup first".

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5Mg0J5AEUAo

I recommend backups, any time you are using software you do not
trust (certain operations of Paragon Partition Manager 14 Free make me nervous).
Paragon sometimes "backs out" of operations that should have worked,
other times, it takes its sweet time to mark an operation as "complete".
Just the graphical presentation is intended to shake your confidence
in their product. Only a user, who has used the Move/Resize a number
of times, begins to make notes at this level, about how the product
works or kinda-works.

Some Partition Managers can (for no reason), renumber the partitions (Grrr...), and this can lead to a failure for things which happened to use
the partition number and not some other kind of information (GUID/BLKID)
for tracking.

As long as you are "skilled at fixing everything" in Windows,
what do you have to worry about, he said ?

Partition Managers require as much "calibration" as the
backup utilities like Macrium do. While other people can tell
you a thing is "<cough> safe", for some things, I recommend
a backup method that works, if you haven't calibrated
a backup method you (now) trust. For example, it would
not be unusual, for a Macrium restore to not boot, and
that happens when you do "drag and drop" partition positioning
and avoid "whole disk recovery" which works. The Macrium
Rescue CD "Boot Repair", will cause "at least" one of the
Windows OSes on a disk drive to boot. And then using
bootbcd, you can add back the other partitions.

bcdboot H:\Windows # Add Windows 10 back into the boot menu,
# after a Macrium "Boot Repair" only recovers C: .
# Windows 10 is on my H: partition.

When you "assign" a letter to the ESP (EFI System Partition
otherwise known as "system" in Disk Management), you can
do this from a Win11 installer DVD and its Command Prompt

bcdboot C:\Windows /s K: # Paul used "diskpart.exe" to assign K: to the GPT ESP partition.
# You would use this, if the BCD (a registry-type file) was trashed
# and you are building one from scratch. Normally the software
# knows where "system" is, but when there is no BCD, it might not know.

I'm just as clumsy at this stuff as anyone else. The
difference is, I spend *hours* on the issue, until
I fix it. And that's how you learn stuff, the hard way.

I happen to use Linux GParted for my Recovery Partition
resize and move (after Paragon was pissing me off). I try
not to do resize and move in one shot, preferring to do
some of these things as separate operations.

There can be efficiency issues with some of the partition managers
(for example, some will use a "dd" approach for moving stuff, others
can work at the file level to achieve a result).

A general philosophy though, is the designers usually try to use
the "least dangerous" method, if they're unsure about
something, or have had bad results reported from the
field repeatedly on a topic. The Gparted person was
so nervous (about getting out past the tips of his skis),
he actually rewrote the application from scratch once,
to "purge" all the risky stuff :-) It takes class to do that.

The thing is, *you* care about the results, so *you*
will take the precautions needed :-) Out here, all
we can be is "too bad so sad" when something bad happens.
Now you know why I make backups (one of the drives
here has *nine* safety backups, from a busy period
of time where I was doing "that nervous stuff").
Other times, I've got none of those. I did a safety backup
before my 25H2 Upgrade recently, and restored three times
until I was happy with the activities going on. If I detect
an install attempt is "messing around", in goes the
restore to pave over it and we try again.

Paul

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Sun, 12 Apr 2026 16:44:03 -0400, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

On Sun, 4/12/2026 2:42 PM, micky wrote:

Powershell

PS C:\Users\mmm> get-volume
Remaining Size
C Dell-2025-Laptop NTFS Fixed Healthy OK 615.69 GB 952.34 GB
D LITTLE-SD FAT32 Removable Healthy OK 28.31 GB 28.96 GB
NTFS Fixed Healthy OK 53.98 MB 1.41 GB

Macrium Reflect Free
1 NO NAME (none) Primary Fat32 (LBA) 73.7MB used out of 100MB
2 (none) Primary Unformatted 16MB used out of 16MB
(but it's not marked in red even though it's full.
3 Dell-2025-Laptop (C:) Primary NTFS 332.59 GB used out of 952.34GB
4 (none) Primary NTFS 1.36 used out of 1.41GB (and marked in red)
plus another line for a little removeable SD card

Windows Disk Managerment
(Disk 0 Parition 1) Simple Basic Healthy (EFI system partition)
100MB 100MB 100% free Macrium says 74% used!
(Disk 0 Partition 4) Simple Basic Healthy (Recovery Partition)
1.41GB used, 1.41GB Free Sapce 100% free -- That's not right.
Dell-2025-Laptop (C:) Simple Basic Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump,
Basic Data Partition) 952.34 GB 617.72GB 65% Free
Little-SD, not important, right?


Do you think I have to worry about Minitool Parition Wizard damaging
anything? I've liked how it works, but I could change to another.

This video shows Partition Wizard doing a Move/Resize (slide to the right). >In this looping video, they "recommend doing a backup first".

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5Mg0J5AEUAo

I recommend backups, any time you are using software you do not
trust

You're talking about an image of the Data partition, right? Not a clone
of it.

But what can I do about the Recovery partition? Or maybe it's imaged
also at the same time when I use Macrium Reflect Free? I have all 4 partitions checked, so I guess that is backed up every time I run
Macrium, right?
.

(certain operations of Paragon Partition Manager 14 Free make me nervous). >Paragon sometimes "backs out" of operations that should have worked,
other times, it takes its sweet time to mark an operation as "complete".
Just the graphical presentation is intended to shake your confidence
in their product. Only a user, who has used the Move/Resize a number
of times, begins to make notes at this level, about how the product
works or kinda-works.

Some Partition Managers can (for no reason), renumber the partitions (Grrr...),
and this can lead to a failure for things which happened to use
the partition number and not some other kind of information (GUID/BLKID)
for tracking.

As long as you are "skilled at fixing everything" in Windows,
what do you have to worry about, he said ?

My aunt said I could fix anything. She was an adult, so she knows.

Partition Managers require as much "calibration" as the
backup utilities like Macrium do. While other people can tell
you a thing is "<cough> safe", for some things, I recommend
a backup method that works, if you haven't calibrated
a backup method you (now) trust. For example, it would
not be unusual, for a Macrium restore to not boot, and
that happens when you do "drag and drop" partition positioning
and avoid "whole disk recovery" which works. The Macrium
Rescue CD "Boot Repair", will cause "at least" one of the
Windows OSes on a disk drive to boot. And then using
bootbcd, you can add back the other partitions.

bcdboot H:\Windows # Add Windows 10 back into the boot menu,
# after a Macrium "Boot Repair" only recovers C: .
# Windows 10 is on my H: partition.

When you "assign" a letter to the ESP (EFI System Partition
otherwise known as "system" in Disk Management), you can
do this from a Win11 installer DVD and its Command Prompt

bcdboot C:\Windows /s K: # Paul used "diskpart.exe" to assign K: to the GPT ESP partition.
# You would use this, if the BCD (a registry-type file) was trashed
# and you are building one from scratch. Normally the software
# knows where "system" is, but when there is no BCD, it might not know.

I'm just as clumsy at this stuff as anyone else. The
difference is, I spend *hours* on the issue, until
I fix it. And that's how you learn stuff, the hard way.

I happen to use Linux GParted for my Recovery Partition
resize and move (after Paragon was pissing me off). I try
not to do resize and move in one shot, preferring to do
some of these things as separate operations.

There can be efficiency issues with some of the partition managers
(for example, some will use a "dd" approach for moving stuff, others
can work at the file level to achieve a result).

A general philosophy though, is the designers usually try to use
the "least dangerous" method, if they're unsure about
something, or have had bad results reported from the
field repeatedly on a topic. The Gparted person was
so nervous (about getting out past the tips of his skis),
he actually rewrote the application from scratch once,
to "purge" all the risky stuff :-) It takes class to do that.

The thing is, *you* care about the results, so *you*
will take the precautions needed :-) Out here, all
we can be is "too bad so sad" when something bad happens.
Now you know why I make backups (one of the drives
here has *nine* safety backups, from a busy period
of time where I was doing "that nervous stuff").
Other times, I've got none of those. I did a safety backup
before my 25H2 Upgrade recently, and restored three times
until I was happy with the activities going on. If I detect
an install attempt is "messing around", in goes the
restore to pave over it and we try again.

Paul

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Sun, 4/12/2026 10:13 PM, micky wrote:

In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Sun, 12 Apr 2026 16:44:03 -0400, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

I recommend backups, any time you are using software you do not
trust

You're talking about an image of the Data partition, right? Not a clone
of it.

But what can I do about the Recovery partition? Or maybe it's imaged
also at the same time when I use Macrium Reflect Free? I have all 4 partitions checked, so I guess that is backed up every time I run
Macrium, right?

Sure, by doing your whole-disk backup, you are covered.
It's then just a question of which one or one(s) to restore,
depending on what "accident" you've had.

The worst case for a Partition Manager, is total disk destruction.
I've had that happen once, but it was a Macintosh disk and
GParted was obviously using some wrong-recipe when it
trashed the partition table. And I had a backup.
There weren't a lot of utilities I could use to do that
one, so that was my one choice.

I don't expect any bad thing to happen while you
are resizing things there. You have probably done
enough tinkering with that Partition Manager to know
whether it is good stuff or an abject failure. One thing
I object to, is any tool that "makes up" a status, and
that includes a diet of rotating balls when WinRE is
running and trying to tip your PC upright. That's a time
when some plain old text messages should be delivered
such as "I'm using CHKDSK now", "I'm rebuilding your BCD",
which builds the confidence of a customer that you know
what you're doing. I *hate* rotating balls, where something
is "stuck" and the disk drive light has stopped flashing :-)

Some of my installations here, have 1.6GB Recovery Partitions,
which may be enough for two 750MB WinRE.wim and that may be
sufficient (for a while) to have a WinRE update successfully
finish. There really should not be two of those onboard
at the same time, but the "hint" I see on yours is that
a new one is being poured in while at least one old one
is still on the partition.

You could use diskpart.exe to assign the letter K: to the
Recovery Partition, then you could use dir /ah in
a command prompt window, to list the contents and spot the
bloat. Resizing the thing, as you plan on doing, eliminated
the need to be looking around. At least, at first.

Does anyone care whether their WinRE.wim works ?
I would care, if it had a good track record.
It would be interesting, to see what the Microsoft
field statistics are, for successful repair via the Recovery Partition.

Paul


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 4/12/2026 11:42 AM, micky wrote:

Powershell

PS C:\Users\mmm> get-volume
Remaining Size
C Dell-2025-Laptop NTFS Fixed Healthy OK 615.69 GB 952.34 GB
D LITTLE-SD FAT32 Removable Healthy OK 28.31 GB 28.96 GB
NTFS Fixed Healthy OK 53.98 MB 1.41 GB

Macrium Reflect Free
1 NO NAME (none) Primary Fat32 (LBA) 73.7MB used out of 100MB
2 (none) Primary Unformatted 16MB used out of 16MB
(but it's not marked in red even though it's full.

Normal = its not formatted, i.e. ignore that its not red.

3 Dell-2025-Laptop (C:) Primary NTFS 332.59 GB used out of 952.34GB
4 (none) Primary NTFS 1.36 used out of 1.41GB (and marked in red)

Yes, as reported earlier.

plus another line for a little removeable SD card

Not pertinent to your issue

Windows Disk Managerment
(Disk 0 Parition 1) Simple Basic Healthy (EFI system partition)
100MB 100MB 100% free Macrium says 74% used!

Normal, as expected

(Disk 0 Partition 4) Simple Basic Healthy (Recovery Partition)
1.41GB used, 1.41GB Free Sapce 100% free -- That's not right.

It's right. Disk Management doesn't calc free space for this(Windows
Recovery) partition

Dell-2025-Laptop (C:) Simple Basic Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Basic Data Partition) 952.34 GB 617.72GB 65% Free

Good, consistent with get-volume and Macrium

Little-SD, not important, right?

Yes, not important to your issue

Do you think I have to worry about Minitool Parition Wizard damaging anything? I've liked how it works, but I could change to another.

With your above info, you should see that your:
Disk number is Disk 0
Windows is partition #3 on Disk 0
Windows Recovery is partition #4 on Disk 0
- exactly where it should be, to the right and adjacent to Windows partition

One could use Minitool Partition Wizard but I don't recommend it for
Windows Recovery. I prefer to use the method MSFT prescribes for
enlarging the Windows Recovery partition using DiskPart in Powershell or Command.com admin mode.

Better is an increase in size of Windows Recovery partition to 2 GB
(2048 MB) is better
=> an increase of 904 MB
1143.8 + 905 = 2047.8 MB = ~ 2 GB

Note: See below(end of this message) for how to do in DiskPart.
Prior to doing anything.
Disable all Restore Points
Open Windows Update and toggle off Advanced/Recieve updates for other Microsoft products.
Run DiskCleanup in admin mode, select all options, OK to run(wait for it
to finish, do not interrupt), when done.
Shutdown and Power on the device and boot back into Windows 25H2

p.s. For analysis reasons, the 4th partition GB sizes in MB are
1.36 GB = 1392.64 MB used
1.41 GB = 1443.84 MB total size
==>> Which indicates 51.2 MB free space (~3.5% remaining)

So I could take, say, 0.15GB, or more, from the adjacent Data/Windows
partition and give it to this partition, right?

The windows partition has 620GB that are empty. Maybe I should take
more, 2GB sounds better. Then I'll be good for years.

Open Powershell or Command.com in an admin mode and enter each line at
the prompt, press return after each entry, repeat until done with all lines.

reagentc /info
reagentc /disable

diskpart
list disk
sel disk 0
list part
sel part 3
shrink desired=904 minimum=904
sel part 4
delete partition override
create partition primary
format quick fs=ntfs label=?Windows RE?
set id=de94bba4-06d1-4d40-a16a-bfd50179d6ac
gpt attributes=0x8000000000000001
list vol
exit
reagentc /enable
reagentc /info


--
...w­¤?ñ?¤

ps..if you need an explanation of what the above does, read on.


Verifies that the recovery partition is on system disk 1(or 0) and
partition 4
Disables the recovery partition and moves winre.wim to the C:\Windows\System32\Recovery folder
Accesses Diskpart allowing commands to be entered(manually one at a time
or manually via copy/paste)
Selects Disk 1(or 0) - the disk with Windows and the Active recovery
partition
List Disk partitions and shows all partitions and their #'s on Disk
- the Windows partition should be partition #3, Active Windows
Recovery #4
Selects the Windows partition(#3)
Shrinks the C partition by 904 MB for enlarging the Recovery from 1143.8
MB to 2048 MB(2 GB)
- C: will reduce by 904 MB, used space does not change but just
reduces the free space
Selects the Recovery partition #4
Deletes the recovery partition on the disk to unallocated space
Creates a new blank 2 GB primary partition
- b/c C was shrunk by 904, now 2 GB is available for creation
Formats the blank 2 GB partition and gives it a label WinRE(won't be
seen in File Explorer or DiskManagement, just like before, but can be
seen in a Powershell or Command admin mode and also in Diskpart(this is normal).
Sets the required ID to make the partition a valid Windows recovery
partition
Sets the attribute to make it a required partition and prevents
assigning a drive letter(Windows Recovery should not/does not have/need
a drive letter)
Diskpart command list vol will show all partitions and their sizes -
this also tells us the new total size of the recovery partition
Exits Diskpart back to command admin mode
Enables the Recovery partition
Verifies the status of being enabled and shows the Windows Recovery disk
#and partition #


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:58:30 -0400, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

Does anyone care whether their WinRE.wim works ?
I would care, if it had a good track record.
It would be interesting, to see what the Microsoft
field statistics are, for successful repair via the Recovery Partition.

IIUC the recovery partition will put the box back to the way it was when
it was sold. But if you have an image, you can put it back to the way
it was when you last imaged it. Isn't that a lot better? So yeah,
the recovery partition seems only of value to those who have no images.
??

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 4/14/2026 8:17 AM, micky wrote:

In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:58:30 -0400, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

Does anyone care whether their WinRE.wim works ?
I would care, if it had a good track record.
It would be interesting, to see what the Microsoft
field statistics are, for successful repair via the Recovery Partition.

IIUC the recovery partition will put the box back to the way it was when
it was sold. But if you have an image, you can put it back to the way
it was when you last imaged it. Isn't that a lot better? So yeah,
the recovery partition seems only of value to those who have no images.
??

One could always restore a disk image, including restoring an undersized Windows Recovery partition..
...but, since Windows Recovery files and partition updates are
included(have been since June 2023) in the monthly Windows update that
monthly update(Windows and the Recovery update) due to insufficient
space existing in the Windows Recovery Partition.

The solution to prevent both from failing
=> Enlarge the size of the Recovery partition to have a minimum of 250
MB free space(in your case, increasing it by 904 MB from 1.41 to 2 GB
will provide 958 GB of free space )is the right path to take and
providing more than sufficient free space for the foreseeable future.

You've two routes, already suggested to accomplish/fix the Recovery free
space problem - 3rd party(e.g. MiniTool Partition Wizard or
Diskpart(the latter, step by step instructions provided in an earlier post/reply).

Once done, then image your device for all partitions present on your
Disk 0(System/EFI, MSR, Windows, Windows Recovery).

--
...w­¤?ñ?¤

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)