How can I delete the Recovery Partition of my Sony Vaio Z11?

Hi everyone.

I have the 128Gb configuration, so 10gb space is quite a big deal for me.
I want to remove the recovery partition as I already have two sets of recovery DVDs burned for precaution. The problem is that I can't merge the unallocated space that remains from the deleted recovery partition with my Windows 7 partition because there appears to be a 100mb of "System Reserved" partition right in the middle of Recovery Partition and Windows 7 partition. Is it safe to purge this System Reserved partition and merge it with the rest of the drive, or would that mess with my system boot?

I have always used Paragon Partition Manager to manage my partitions. Does anyone have a better partition manager suggestion to do the job?

Thanks

 

Ya, you can use Paragon Partition Manager to delete the recovery partition. Then move/resize the system partition to where the recovery partition was. Then expand your windows 7 partition.

 

before removing partition I suggest testing recovery from burned DVDs. Mine didn't work, - got stuck on a second DVD (Single layer)
i've ended up losing my recovery data.

you can also remove recovery partition during clean install.

 

Start > Control Panel > Admin Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management.

Find your recovery partition > Right click on it and delete it. Then highlight your main partition, right click on it and select extend, and basically just click next through that, because it will automatically fill in the numbers to extend it over all remaining free space.

Just be careful when using Disk Management. I, nor NBR Forums, are responsible for any data loss resulting from accidental deletion or errors in judgement

 

On the VPCZ117GG in the Disk Management of Windows the Recovery partition is visible but right clicking on it only offers a Help menu
it cannot have properties viewed or edited
Any other thoughts?

 

If your restore disks are verified to be ok, you should be able to use diskpart from the command prompt using the repair win 7 boot option, and delete the recovery volume on the disk
Pay attention to the volume sizes and Labels, the drive letters may not match the ones you expect. my c drive is actually the d drive until the system boots up and reassigns the letters. the initial drive letter of my 100MB partition is actually the C drive, because the bios must look to the C drive first.
Do not remove the 100M system reserved volume, this is used to boot the system

that should free up the space and then you can exit boot normally and extend your C drive or create an additional drive with this unallocated space

if you are not familiar with using diskpart there are plenty of on line resources to investigate it. You can also at the command prompt enter diskpart (which has its own shell prompt) and then just ? and return to see your options

to see your disk at the diskpart prompt select disk 0, and then detail disk, and it will show you what is on your system

if you make a mistake you can blow your disk away and will have to re-install

use extreme caution at the command prompt. If you are not completely comfortable, back up your stuff first to be safe

 

I used Paragon Partition Manager's boot-up CD to do the job. I deleted both the 100mb partition and the recovery partition. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to merge the recovery partition with drive C because the 100mb startup partition is located right in between the other two partitions. So I removed them all and merged everything into one partition. Windows did not boot-up like I expected, because the BOOTMBR was missing. I then used the recovery DVDs of my laptop to fix the MBR using Windows 7's recovery console. And voila ! 128gigs of SSD at my service

 

Are you sure, you were able to regain the whole 128 GB space of the SSD? On mine, the total usable size is 119.25 GB after deleting the recovery partition and the 100 MB small partition.