Windows 10 upgrade makes huge recovery partition

Hi,

My Dell venue pro 11 tablet comes with a 32gb inbuilt space with windows 8.1. Then I got the free windows 10 upgrade which went smoothly.

But now the problem is after the upgrade there was very little space left in my Cdrive. The recovery partition takes up 6.5gb of space. I thought of deleting it using a 3rd party software, but thought would take your opinions before doing something stupid.



I need to free up that space, currently i have 11 gb free space, adding this would give me 17 gb.

I never keep recovery partitions. Once I am sure that there is no manufacturer's software I can't live without, I use a Windows install disk or flash drive to wipe the disk, do a clean install, then delete the recovery partition and expand the system partition into the empty space.

That 6.5 GB recovery partition is likely your Dell factory restore partition. Assuming you have an independent reliable disk imaging method to be able to restore that disk, I don't think the Dell factory restore partition is worth that much, especially taking up so much of your limited 32GB.

What is the EFI partition, do i need it. Should i do a clean install or follow this method below.

How to delete recovery partition in windows.

What is the EFI partition, do i need it. Should i do a clean install or follow this method below.

How to delete recovery partition in windows.

I prefer to use MiniTool Partition Wizard Free. It's a much easier, graphical interface. The method in the youtube video ends early and does not increase your system partition size, which is the main reason you would delete the recovery partition.
Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Free

Step 1: delete the recovery partition
Step 2: expand the C: drive system partition to fill the empty space
Step 3: click apply and let it do it's thing, about 5 minutes.

Whether or not you can delete the EFI partition depends upon your bios and what it needs to boot. Your EFI partition currently contains your boot files. Some bios (especially older ones) allow the boot files to be on the same partition as the Operating System. I know my bios is that way, so I delete the EFI partition and then use a Macrium Reflect Free rescue disk to recreate the boot files on my system partition. But unless you know what you are doing, just leave the EFI partition there.

What is the EFI partition, do i need it.

Windows does not start, if you delete the EFI System partition.

The EFI System partition is required to boot the computer, when you are using the GPTpartition style. The UEFI firmware scan your computer's hard disks for existence of the EFI System partition, then run efiootootx64.efi file in the EFI System partition. This partion has to be formatted with FAT32 file system.

- For Advanced Format Generation One (4-KB-per-sector) drives, the minimum size of this partition is 260 MB.
- For earlier 512-byte-per-sector drives, the minimum size of this partition is 100 MB.

Whether or not you can delete the EFI partition depends upon your bios and what it needs to boot. Your EFI partition currently contains your boot files. Some bios (especially older ones) allow the boot files to be on the same partition as the Operating System. I know my bios is that way, so I delete the EFI partition and then use a Macrium Reflect Free rescue disk to recreate the boot files on my system partition. But unless you know what you are doing, just leave the EFI partition there.

The EFI Systempartition is not the same thing as the System Reservedpartition (see screenshots below).





The System Reservedpartition (see screenshot above) is not the same thing as the Microsoft Reservedpartition (see screenshot below).



Here is more info: UEFI Boot Mode(installing using the GPTpartition style) and Legacy BIOS Boot Mode(installing using the MBRpartition style). -> link

I prefer to use MiniTool Partition Wizard Free. It's a much easier, graphical interface. The method in the youtube video ends early and does not increase your system partition size, which is the main reason you would delete the recovery partition.
Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Free

Step 1: delete the recovery partition
Step 2: expand the C: drive system partition to fill the empty space
Step 3: click apply and let it do it's thing, about 5 minutes.

Thanks, I used to tool to delete the partition, but couldn't resize my system drive from that software, so i did it through windows disk management. The software although gave wrong figures for my C, with unused space showing 0 when it was 11gb. The file system was categorized as other for C, while the recovery partition was NTFS.

The recovery was an image folder of factory settings.
@genet was right about the partition type being GPT, thanks for the info.

Thanks guys i gained precious 6.4 gb space back.