Install Windows into one partition.

Every Windows install by default wants to create 3 partitions: boot, OS & recovery (WinRE). This little tutorial will get that down to one.

This actually goes all the way back to Windows 7 and has been tested all the way to Windows 11 & Server 2022.

There are some real advantages to doing this:

Windows 10 update has a bug where the recovery partition is too small. All updates will fail until the partition is manually resized. You read that right.
If you opt to resize your OS partition you no longer have to muck with moving the recovery parition. This is handy for a virtualized drives writing to a larger physical drive (then resize to fit!)

Modified Installation

Install Windows as you normally would. The screen asking you where to install Windows should show your drive 0 with unallocated space. At this point use the following steps:

Press Shift+F10 to bring up a CMD window.
Run diskpart
Use the example commands:

list disk
select disk 0
clean
create partition primary
exit (twice)

* Click on refresh and now you should see a new Primary Drive 0 Partition 1 * Follow your install normally.

Created: 2024-05-02

Modified: 2024-06-04