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windows rt tip - how to recreate a recovery partition

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ADVANCED TIP FOR THE TECHNICALLY INCLINED:  Assuming you didn't jump right in like me and delete your recovery partition on a Windows RT device (haven't tested this on an OEM Windows 8 or Windows 8 Pro machine - yet here's the official guidance - technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh825221.aspx), you'll definitely want to at a minimum make the USB Recovery media. I jumped right in and started messing around with my surface and because I backed up the RecoveryImage directory, I was able to recreate my recovery partition.  Here are the steps I used and tested on my personal Surface.

So some guy on the Internet told you to delete the recovery partition to regain 3.5 gb of space on your surface - and you did it?  Hopefully you followed all my advise and backed up the files on the recovery partition (and created a USB recovery drive as well).  To recreate what I just deleted and extended, you go into Computer Management, click on Disk Management and then right click on the Windows (C:) partition and click Shrink Volume.

 

It will determine how much space is available to shrink.  You will shrink it by 3600.

type in 3600 and click Shrink

now you have successfully regained space to create a partition and place the recovery files back on the device.

 

I created a new simple Volume with the 3600 mb of space, assigned it drive R: (for recovery) and formatted it as FAT32.

You then have a drive to copy the RecoveryImage folder and files into - copy the files and then you can remove the drive letter if you wish.

In disk management, right click on the R: drive partition, change drive letter and paths, and  remove the R: (this keeps the partition, but hides it so that files aren't inadvertently deleted, etc.)

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Did you create a FAT32 partition and restore the recovery files?

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Marco - just shrink the partition and then recreate a recovery partition so you can restore the files you backed up.  I blogged about this and tested it on a Surface RT.

  • Anonymous
    January 21, 2013
    I,ve done this on my VIVOTAB RT but when I try to reset it tells me some files are missing. I can only restore from the USB stick

  • Anonymous
    March 02, 2013
    Hi Could someone share their recovery files with me, I don't have the partition or the recovery files on USB to restore.

  • Anonymous
    May 16, 2013
    I think that after playing with this some more, somehow Windows RT is simply not seeing the new recovery partition I made -AS- a recovery partition. It's as if it's being ignored. Any ideas?

  • Anonymous
    May 16, 2013
    By the way, I did not have a saved copy of the recover partition other than what was on my USB thumb drive, which is what I copied the files from.

  • Anonymous
    August 23, 2013
    I have the same problem, I installed Windows 8.1 rt preview and decided to revert to Windows 8 rt, which I did, no problem, but after following the proceadure to install the recovery partition, it does not work. It says I am missing files and tells me to inser the pendrive, I have recreated the recovery partition as per the instruction, but noticed that I havr another smaller recovery partition 500 MB. should I delete that partition as well?

  • Anonymous
    August 23, 2013
    Can anyone help me with my post above???

  • Anonymous
    August 25, 2013
    I have a Dell XPS 10 tablet with Windows 8 rt and, I  have contacted Dell technical support about recreating the recovery partition and, I was informed it can not be done, so we are just wasting our time. Even if we recreate the partition it will not be seen by Windows rt as a recovery partition, that's why it is not working..

  • Anonymous
    November 19, 2013
    The problem is I don´t have the recovery partition files, just the recovery USB that works well. I have installed windows 8,1 from the store and would like to  create a recovery for that, I believe if I do the recovery with the USB the tablet reverts to windows 8. Can you post a DIR of that recovery partition ? thank You.