Is it OK to delete the "Recovery" partition?

As the subject said, Dell created a "Recovery" partition for backup purposes, including creating the Recovery Media.

I have created Recovery Media DVD and uses Acronis True Image to backup the OS, so I would like to reclaim the "Recovery" partition (10 GB).

Is it safe to do so?

If yes, I am planning to use Acronis Disk Director to merge the "Recovery" partition (after deleting it) with the main partition ("C:" drive).

 

You can but I always leave it as the recovery partition is never that big and it's much faster to reimage from the recovery partition rather than using the discs (which wipes out everything, reinstalls the recovery partition, and THEN reimages the unit).

 

Thanks for the info! I uses Acronis True Image to backup my systems, so I actually don't need to use Dell Recovery partition.

With Acronis, I created 2 images:
- Original image: straight from box
- Base image: cleaned up bloatware, configured base settings like themes, etc

BTW, there are 3 partitions out of the box:
A). OEM Partition
B). RECOVERY (System, Active, Primary Partition)
C). C: drive (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump)

A couple of questions:
- What's the OEM partition? Can I recover this also?
- For some reason, I cannot delete the RECOVERY partition. Is there a special method I need to do to delete this and (later on) combine it with my C: drive?

 

You didn't mention what OS, but I'll assume it's Win7.

Note your second partition is the Active partition. That means Windows is booting through the second partition. If you delete it, Windows won't boot anymore.

(Aside: note Microsoft has perversely redefined the terms "System" and "Boot". They call the partition you start booting from the "System" partition, and the partition with the Windows operating system the "Boot" partition.)

There are ways to shift the boot files from partition 2 to partition 3 and switch the Active partition. You'll need to research that and take care of it before deleting partition 2.

And, BTW, you'll have to repair Win7 again if you delete the first partition. That one is your Dell Utility partition. It's only around 100MB, so deleting it is a lot more trouble than it's worth. I seriously doubt you really need to recoup that tiny space, so I recommend leaving it unless you really, really need to reuse its slot in the partition table--which is unlikely, since you're talking about merging partitions instead of adding partitions.

 

I deleted the Recovery partition on my XPS 15, as it ate up almost 20 GB of drive space. Recovery partition is useful only to return the drive to its factory state, which isn't all that useful as a backup once you've installed applications and data. As you say, Acronis True Image will be more useful. Just in case someone might ever want the Recovery partition and drive restored to factory state, I first made the Dell Recovery disks and a bootable Dell Recovery USB flash drive.

I fixed the BCD file, copied boot files from Recovery partition to the OS partition, set the OS partition as Active (so it would boot), and created some new partitions.

Now I have the drive partitioned the way I want, and without wasting almost 3% of drive space on an unneeded partition.