Delete Recovery Partition?

Has anyone deleted the recovery partition on a Samsung Series 9 with an SSD? I am trying to free up some space and note that the Samsung recovery partition is using 20GB or roughly 10% of the drive. I have the files backed up in a couple of other spots so they are safe that way. Any issues? I am currently running Win 8.1

 

Samsung Recovery Solution and its two partitions (SAMSUNG_REC and SAMSUNG_REC2, the last two on the SSD) are not needed for normal Windows operation, only when you want to restore to factory state or use the backup/restore features of SRS.

But don't use 3rd party imaging or partition tools to backup the Recovery partitions. Once you restore them, you will usually find that SRS no longer works, because those 3rd party tools don't know about the proprietary F4 link hidden in the partition table.

Instead, create a Bootable Factory Image Backup on a USB stick, as described in steps 1-2 of this post, which can be used to restore the SSD to factory state, including Recovery and Windows.

This assumes you have Samsung Recovery Solution 6 (your Series 9 came delivered with Win8.x). For more elaborate guidance on backing up and re-creating Recovery (including SRS5 and older) see this post.

Edit: If you mean you used Samsung Recovery Solution (either by booting F4 or the SRS Windows App) to make backups on external drives, then DON'T delete the Recovery partitions. Otherwise you won't be able to access those backups.

BTW, I deleted your post asking the same question in the NP900X4C Owners thread. That is so-called cross posting, which is against forum rules on almost every internet forum.

 

sorry about the cross post..
Not sure which version of SRS I have, how can I check? there does not seem to be an about tab....
What is the best method to delete the partitions once the usb drives are created?

 

No worries, now you know (about cross posting). And if others read this, they'll know too

If your laptop came with Win8.x, you have SRS6. If it came with Win7, you have SRS5. There are older ones (SRS4, SRS3 etc) but I think SRS5 is as far bask as the NP900X4C goes. The big jump in functionality happened with SRS6, which added that Bootable Factory Image feature. Before that, backing up SRS was pretty hard work.

Once you have your backup (and test that it can boot, but DON'T actually restore with it) I suggest you use Minitool Partition Wizard to delete the partitions (Google it). You can also use DISKPART (command prompt) if you are familiar with that.

One thing you may consider is to delete only the bigger of the two Recovery Partitions (SAMSUNG_REC2) which contains your factory image. Leaving the smaller (SAMSUNG_REC, 1GB) will allow SRS to still work and access any backups you have created. That's probably what I would do.

But don't touch any of the other partitions, including the Windows Recovery Tools partition at the beginning of the drive. This post lists the standard partitions on Win8 models.