Surface: move recovery partition to usb and gain back space

By spudtrooper
in Microsoft (Windows)

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spudtrooper

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Microsoft has a handy little tool one the surface that allows you to move the recovery partition to a usb drive. During the process it will prompt if you want to delete the partition and recover the space. Worked great and took about 10 minutes!

http://www.andyrathb...oft-surface-rt/

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spudtrooper

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Freed up 4gb and i'm happy! I did a test boot off the USB drive to verify all is well and just keep the USB stick in the Surface box if I ever need it. MS should definitely post that this functionality is built into the recovery system and completely wizard driven. 4gb is a lot of space to free up and USB sticks are CHEAP.. should just throw in a USB recovery stick in lieu of recovery partition if you ask me :)

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MorganX

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Nice tip. I don't need the space, but why not?!? 4GB is 4GB. Better the USB than your surface local storage.

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~Johnny

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Nice tip. I don't need the space, but why not?!? 4GB is 4GB. Better the USB than your surface local storage.

Presumably in the worst case scenario when you're out and about or on a trip and your Surface starts failing to boot - but you can't fix it because you've wiped the recovery partition and left your recovery USB drive at home :p If you have the space to spare, leaving it on there is probably the better option. But if you need the space, it's always a nice option.

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spudtrooper

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Presumably in the worst case scenario when you're out and about or on a trip and your Surface starts failing to boot - but you can't fix it because you've wiped the recovery partition and left your recovery USB drive at home :p If you have the space to spare, leaving it on there is probably the better option. But if you need the space, it's always a nice option.

If I travel, i'll just bring the usb stick with me.. but I'm often not that far from a MS store where I would make them fix it :)

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efjay

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From the look of the contents of the stick, it appears to be a clean install, would that be safe to assume? Verses it making a backup copy of your system as it is now when you create the the recovery to USB

Makes sense because the recovery partition doesnt hold a backup of your current config and the recovery partition would wipe everything back to default if you had to use it for a restore.

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spudtrooper

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yes, recovery is full wipe when you boot off this recovery media. Most games store their saves on xbox live and most apps use skydrive profiles/saves so when you re-install its not hard to recover.

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