I have a small eMMC in my notebook and need space for Linux. The recovery partition is good at taking it up.
I created a recovery drive. I copied the recovery partition to the HDD embedded into the laptop (Asus T200TA)
But the wizard didn't offer me the option to delete the recovery partition. So I tried using the diskpart method. Diskpart simply refused to delete the partition.
How can I force this crippled system to do what I want? Removing the partition with GParted bricks the whole system.
You can't. Interestingly that's because the system actually uses the recovery partition to store part of the OS as part of Wimboot - howtogeek has a great writeup on it here but essentially since emmcs have slightly slower drives, the system boots up, finds pointers to system files in the recovery console, then retrieves this off of the compressed system image. This significantly cuts down on the space needed with the cost of some CPU usage.
You can read more about on MS's blogs as well - they have a much deeper explaination of this. With windows 8, this is how you can fit an install that's typically 10gb into a 16gb disk.
You can do this by reading thispage.
Step 1: Connect a USB drive with at least 16GB of storage space (you may need a USB with more storage space if your recovery partition’s size is more than 16GB) and backup all data to a safe location. This USB drive will be erased.
Step 2: Switch to the Start screen, start typing Create a recovery drive, change the search filter to Settings (see picture), and then press enter key to launch Recovery Drive wizard. If you see the UAC prompt, simply click Yes button.
Step 3: Once the Recovery Drive wizard is launched, check Copy the recovery partition from the PC to the recovery drive option and then click Next button.
Step 4: Select the USB drive and click Next button.
Step 5: You will see “Everything on the drive will be deleted. If you have any personal files on the drive, make sure you have backed up the files” message. Since you have already moved all data from USB, click on the Create button to begin transferring recovery partition to the selected USB drive. Depending on the size of the recovery partition, Windows might take few minutes to hours to complete the job.
Step 6: Once Windows completes copying recovery partition to USB drive, you will see “You can also delete the recovery partition on your PC to free up some drive space” message along with an option named Delete the recovery partition.
Step 7: Click Delete the recovery partition to see a warning message saying that “You can free up some drive space by deleting the recovery partition but you won’t be able to refresh or reset your PC again without the recovery drive”. Since you’ve already moved the recovery partition to USB drive, you can safely delete the recovery drive.
Click Delete button to delete the recovery partition. Once the job is done, Windows will show you the amount of disk space you have gained by deleting the recovery partition. Good luck!
