We'd like to remind Forumites to please avoid political debate on the Forum... Read More »
We're aware that some users are experiencing technical issues which the team are working to resolve. See the Community Noticeboard for more info. Thank you for your patience.
📨 Have you signed up to the Forum's new Email Digest yet? Get a selection of trending threads sent straight to your inbox daily, weekly or monthly!
Windows 10 recovery disc space issue
Options

searchlight123
Posts: 1,152 Forumite


in Techie Stuff
hi all
i have a HP Envy AH150na laptop running windows 10 (from new) and having been upgraded to creators update.
just recently i am getting an annoyingly regular notification coming onto my screen from the lower right side of the screen, saying that my recovery disc
is almost full.
on checking this 16gb disc it is indeed almost full but i don't store anything there and i cannot open it to see whats taking up the space, i just get a HP warning that i cannot alter anything in there.
when i try to run disc cleanup on that drive it says 0 bytes can be recovered. i looked on youtube and saw how to alter the registry to just disable (not fix) this notification, but even that has not stopped it occurring. it happens almost every 5 minutes and is driving me nuts.
can anyone help put me out of this misery please?
i have a HP Envy AH150na laptop running windows 10 (from new) and having been upgraded to creators update.
just recently i am getting an annoyingly regular notification coming onto my screen from the lower right side of the screen, saying that my recovery disc

on checking this 16gb disc it is indeed almost full but i don't store anything there and i cannot open it to see whats taking up the space, i just get a HP warning that i cannot alter anything in there.
when i try to run disc cleanup on that drive it says 0 bytes can be recovered. i looked on youtube and saw how to alter the registry to just disable (not fix) this notification, but even that has not stopped it occurring. it happens almost every 5 minutes and is driving me nuts.
can anyone help put me out of this misery please?
0
Comments
-
Is that confirmed in disc management too?
Use Windows+R to open Run, type diskmgmt.msc in the empty box and tap OK.
I have an Envy too and W10 seems to bring up little quirks that are very annoying.You know what uranium is, right? It's this thing called nuclear weapons. And other things. Like lots of things are done with uranium. Including some bad things.
Donald Trump, Press Conference, February 16, 20170 -
Might want to look see if the system restore option is active on that partition (W10 usually has that turned off though ...type restor point in cortana)If it is disable it...4.8kWp 12x400W Longhi 9.6 kWh battery Giv-hy 5.0 Inverter, WSW facing Essex . Aint no sunshine ☀️ Octopus gas fixed dec 24 @ 5.74 tracker again+ Octopus Intelligent Flux leccy0
-
Is that confirmed in disc management too?
Use Windows+R to open Run, type diskmgmt.msc in the empty box and tap OK.
I have an Envy too and W10 seems to bring up little quirks that are very annoying.
thanks for reply:
in disc management it lists c: drive and 3 discs labelled 0 partition 1,4 and 5. numbers 4 and 5 are labelled recovery. partition 4 shows capacity at 831mb with 831mb free and 5 shows 15.5gb with 15.5gb free space!!
if i go into 'my pc' and right click on recovery drive d: it shows it as virtually full??
i'm at a loss!!0 -
debitcardmayhem wrote: »Might want to look see if the system restore option is active on that partition (W10 usually has that turned off though ...type restor point in cortana)If it is disable it...
it shows as system protection (i'm assuming that's the restore point) is switched off for the d: recovery drive, but thanks for suggestion.0 -
It seems odd that your recovery partition is visible and mapped to drive letter
. Normally they would be hidden and not have a drive letter.
I wonder if that's the problem - Windows can 'see' a disk when it shouldn't, so is complaining that it's nearly full.
I imagine it's pretty normal that a Recovery partition is nearly full - if the contents don't change then there's no reason for HP to allocate spare disk space there.0 -
Jivesinger wrote: »It seems odd that your recovery partition is visible and mapped to drive letter
. Normally they would be hidden and not have a drive letter.
I wonder if that's the problem - Windows can 'see' a disk when it shouldn't, so is complaining that it's nearly full.
I imagine it's pretty normal that a Recovery partition is nearly full - if the contents don't change then there's no reason for HP to allocate spare disk space there.
thanks for reply.
i am sure that when i have viewed the properties of this recovery disk in the past it was not showing as being any more than half full. certainly not brimming like it is now.0 -
It sounds like the new edition has updated the recovery partition with the latest software and it isn't quite big enough now although I would have expected 16GB to be ample. I doubt that the Windows Disk Management will enable you to resize it but something like Minitool Partition Wizard would.
If you have plenty of diskspace then enlarging that partition by 1GB would probably sort it out for quite a while. If you are short on space though then creating a USB recovery disk would enable you to just delete it entirely and bring you some bonus disk space.
Obviously create an image of the disk before you embark on this sort of thing. Macrium Reflect is free and well respected for that.0 -
kwikbreaks wrote: »It sounds like the new edition has updated the recovery partition with the latest software and it isn't quite big enough now although I would have expected 16GB to be ample. I doubt that the Windows Disk Management will enable you to resize it but something like Minitool Partition Wizard would.
If you have plenty of diskspace then enlarging that partition by 1GB would probably sort it out for quite a while. If you are short on space though then creating a USB recovery disk would enable you to just delete it entirely and bring you some bonus disk space.
Obviously create an image of the disk before you embark on this sort of thing. Macrium Reflect is free and well respected for that.
thanks kwikbreaks
tbh this probably has happened since the creators update. as i have masses of space free (1.5tb) on my c: how do i alter this partition as when i try to open the recovery drive labelled d: it will not open and i just get a HP message telling me i cannot interfere with this drive?0 -
This is interesting - my Asus X75VC laptop is running Win 10 Professional Creators edition and I have just checked my recovery partition and found that it is only 507Mb in size - yet I am still able to carry out a full recovery using it - explain that........if you can ...0
-
To resize the partition grab a copy of Macrium Reflect Free
Use it to create a boot USB so you can restore any backups you make without the PC needing to boot.
Then make an image of the entire existing c: drive to an external drive.
Download and install Minitool Partition Wizard
Use that to reduce the size of your main partition and then expand the recovery partition into the now unallocated space. With this tool you just plan the steps and then apply the changes.
If that all sounds too much of an effort just create a Microsoft recovery USB drive and delete your recovery partition.
@Twuncle
The laptop I'm using only has an un-expandable 32GB SSD and that had a recovery partition of less than 1GB. I never used it but my guess is that it contains tools to download most of the install material. I can't check that because I took the second option I mentioned above and deleted the partition. I had to do that manually as I wasn't given the option in the recovery USB creation process.0
This discussion has been closed.
Confirm your email address to Create Threads and Reply

Categories
- All Categories
- 350.8K Banking & Borrowing
- 253.1K Reduce Debt & Boost Income
- 453.5K Spending & Discounts
- 243.8K Work, Benefits & Business
- 598.7K Mortgages, Homes & Bills
- 176.8K Life & Family
- 257.1K Travel & Transport
- 1.5M Hobbies & Leisure
- 16.1K Discuss & Feedback
- 37.6K Read-Only Boards