Safe way to nuke the Dell Recovery partition

I'm sure this has been addressed here before but I couldn't find the answer for xps 15, as the issue seems to be specific for each individual model. Anyway, I cloned my L502x HDD to an SSD and ended up with the Dell Recovery partition as well as the main OS partition and a small nameless partition in front of all. I don't care for the nameless partition as it’s only 20-30 MB, but the Recovery partition is occupying almost 9 GB of my precious SSD space even after resizing it to the minimum allowable. Is there a safe way to remove that partition and add it to my main OS partition without losing data? I know how to change partitions using low-level programs but I think I heard somewhere that part of Windows file are also there on that partition so you can't easy get rid of it without messing up with Windows... Any advice (other than formatting/reinstalling!) is appreciated!
(PS: I have the OS and recovery DVDs plus the original HDD with the recovery partition, so I won't be needing that partition on my SSD for sure.)

 

Go into the disk management utility, delete the partition, extend the primary partition. That's all it should require.

 

The 100MB partition is requried for Windows 7, it puts it there on insall, that is where some boot system files hang out. But you can delete the Dell Recovery partition fine.

Right-click on "Computer", select "Manage". Go to "Disk Management" on the left side. Right-click on the one labeled as the Dell Recovery Partition on the bottom and select "delete volume". Then you can try extending the primary into that if you want.

Whatever you do, don't touch the "System Reserve" partition that is up to 100MB. Probably 32MB if you did a clone.

 

My understanding is that it's not needed unless you use Bitlocker. At any rate, I have always eliminated it during a clean install on my personal machines. There's a procedure you can follow when setting up the partitions during install that results in a single partition on the drive. I can post my notes on that if you like.

At work, where I maintain a number of machines, I use Diskpart to clean the drive and create a single paritition before installing a disk image.

 

Thanks for the advice guys. I tried the Windows Disk Management but it says "Windows cannot delete the active system partition on this disk". Btw, it shows the Recovery partition as "System, Active, Primary Partition". Same results with Easeus Partition Master. I can use a low-level/bootable program to get rid of it, but all this talk of "system partition" makes me a bit nervous. Are you sure nothing related to Windows function/booting is stored there? Has anyone tried this within windows or at least with the Windows installation spared?

 

^^
Use Gparted and nuke it. Always make sure you have backups as messing with your partitions may result in data loss.

 

Well it shouldn't be a system partition, likely that is owing to the cloning procedure. Normally Windows lets you delete system partitions if they aren't for the active OS, but obviously it thinks it is part. Find something else and nuke it.

 

Ok, here is an update:

I was reluctant to use GParted since the last time I used it (to fix the alignment of my SSD), it took a few hours for it to resize/move the partitions. As I was looking for my GParted CD, a very simple solution just came to my mind to reclaim the space wasted by the Recovery partition:

In the Disk Management, I assigned a drive letter to the Recovery partition and open it in My Computer, which showed as empty. Then in the control panel's Folder Options, I enabled the option to show the hidden files and also unchecked the "Hide protected operating system..." option, and this time, it shows all the contents of the Recovery drive. There were a number of hidden files/folders that looked very similar to Windows boot/system files and I didn’t mess around with them, but there was also a Dell folder with a 8.7GB file which appeared to be recovery image file. I deleted it right away and then back to the Disk Management, I shrunk the Recovery partition to the minimum possible (~300MB as opposed to the 9GB in the past) and increased the main OS partition over the released disk space and applied all changes... The whole thing took under 5 minutes and I managed to reclaim almost all of the space wasted in the Recovery partition without losing data or windows startup or my SSD alignment. So simple I wonder why I hadn’t thought of it earlier!

 

^^Glad you got it worked out & nice way to get it done fast!

 

Well that works too! Nicely done!