That's how I installed Win7 on my main computer and Ghost works fine. Using a mouse is much easier than using a keyboard in BING but the keyboard was used as a demo. It's directed at BING users so some of the concepts will appear strange. Here is an interesting video on installing Win7 to its own primary partition. I didn't make it clear in my first post that if you create a primary partition (to be used for the Win7 install) prior to booting from the Win7 DVD, you don't get a SRP. Win7 boots and I can guarantee that using F8 still works. I removed the SRP using the second method from Message #3. I needed to jog my memory too about the F8 option. I knew you were going to ask so I just installed Win7 to unallocated space so that I'd have a SRP. If one did those then the RE would not be directly available as I understand it although would be if you use the Recovery via the installation media disk. There was talk of deleting the SRP and of moving the boot files.
![volume in drive c is system reserved volume in drive c is system reserved](https://i.imgur.com/otp5Bki.png)
#Volume in drive c is system reserved windows#
#Volume in drive c is system reserved windows 7#
It's possible the RE might be slightly less vulnerable to corruption or viruses if it's on a different partition-especially when that partition has its drive letter removed (as is the case during a normal Windows 7 bootup). The RE files are put on the System partition, so if you do not have a separate System Reserved partition you can still press F8 and boot into the RE, be the RE files will end up coming from the same partition as Windows. So for 99% of us, BitLocker isn't an option-and thus isn't a legitimate excuse to saddle us with a System Reserved partition.Īs for the Recovery Environment argument, note that you'll still have a RE with or without a System Reserved partition. The rub is that BitLocker is only available in the Ultimate and Enterprise versions of Windows 7. In a BitLocker'd system you would begin booting from the unencrypted System partition, it would load the encryption driver, and you'd then have access to the encrypted Boot partition. IOW, you can't encrypt the entire hard disk. In order to encrypt the Windows partition with BitLocker, you understandably have to have unencrypted access to some place from which you can load the BitLocker driver/program. (That's where you get to if you press F8 at boot time and choose "Repair my computer".) "To the best of my knowledge, the System Reserved partition has only two purposes: to allow BitLocker to be used on the Windows partition, and to provide a "safer place" for the Recovery Environment files.
![volume in drive c is system reserved volume in drive c is system reserved](https://www.techrepublic.com/a/hub/i/2010/03/26/87291271-c3b4-11e2-bc00-02911874f8c8/mar-2010-wstips-3-5-tip3-figc.jpg)
Two folders, Boot and System Volume Information. Nonetheless, there are files in the partition.Īt least we are all aligned in that OP can well afford to just let the partition be.My 100 MB partition contained 28 MB of data. I guess it only qualifies as speculation (unless we hear more from DrSysop) that the partition in question contains the WinRE. I fall too easily into the trap of loose semantics on these. I checked myself by looking at the section prior to the one linked by Bree, i.e., Therein they label the partition OP speaks of as System. Just leave it alone and things will be fine.Yes, I see what you mean, cereberus - I misspoke in labeling that partition Recovery. The partition is only briefly accessed during bootup and not used during normal operation. It really does not matter if the system reserved partition is fragmented as it is static and impact on booting will be negligible. This has nothing to so with the MSR partition or Recovery partition. OP IS DEFINITELY talking about the System Reserved Partition as OP clearly has a legacy bios installation.