Surface: move recovery partition to usb and gain back space


Recommended Posts

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/

  • Like 1

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 :)

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

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.

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 :)

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.

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.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • Microsoft's fast coding model MAI-Code-1-Flash comes to Copilot Business and Enterprise by Karthik Mudaliar Microsoft’s recently announced MAI-Code-1-Flash model is now generally available to GitHub Copilot Business and Copilot Enterprise customers. With this support, organizations can have more centralized policy controls and billing while finally being able to use Microsoft’s lightweight, first-party coding model. According to GitHub’s announcement, Business and Enterprise plan administrators must enable the MAI-Code-1-Flash policy in Copilot settings before developers can access the model. Microsoft says that MAI-Code-1-Flash is for fast, iterative coding work rather than the most demanding architectural or debugging tasks. GitHub’s official model comparison page says that the model is great for "general-purpose coding and writing," while it excels at fast, accurate code completions and explanations Microsoft introduced MAI-Code-1-Flash on June 2 as part of a broader collection of internally developed MAI models. GitHub subsequently expanded support to Copilot CLI, the Copilot cloud agent, GitHub.com chat, GitHub Mobile, Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, Eclipse, and Xcode, but said support for managed Business and Enterprise customers was still on the way. In Microsoft’s own benchmark testing, MAI-Code-1-Flash scored 51.2% on SWE-Bench Pro, compared with 35.2% for Anthropic’s Claude Haiku 4.5. Microsoft also claimed that the model used up to 60% fewer tokens on SWE-Bench Verified. Do note that these are vendor-run results rather than independent measurements. The model is billed at provider list pricing under GitHub’s usage-based system. GitHub currently lists MAI-Code-1-Flash at $0.75 per million input tokens, $0.075 per million cached input tokens, and $4.50 per million output tokens. For organizations, the main incentive to use MAI-Code-1-Flash is likely to be efficiency rather than maximum capability. A smaller model that responds quickly and limits unnecessary output is quite useful for repetitive agent tasks at scale, especially after GitHub Copilot’s move toward usage-based billing. The "Flash" model is recommended for fast work and not necessarily for huge repositories with loads of context. It's better if teams compare their output with other larger models, especially if they're working on security-sensitive changes and complex, multi-file work.
    • yes AND no the "original" or plain/normal Optiplex 7010 won't be getting any more new firmware updates BUT the Optiplex SFF/SFF Plus {small form factor}, Micro/Micro Plus & Tower/Tower Plus 7010 editions DO get new updates such as this new one   and here are similar guides from the Dell web site for Dell systems: https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000390990/secure-boot-transition-faq https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000347876/microsoft-2011-secure-boot-certificate-expiration
    • AT&T has been spying on US citizens with the NSA for decades.. they just know how to keep it more under wraps.. the evil level is still there.
  • Recent Achievements

    • One Year In
      bernmeister earned a badge
      One Year In
    • Week One Done
      Scoobystu earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • Week One Done
      tuben earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • First Post
      OffsetAbs earned a badge
      First Post
    • Reacting Well
      OffsetAbs earned a badge
      Reacting Well
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      462
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      213
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      158
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      72
    5. 5
      FloatingFatMan
      71
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!