HP Recovery Partition: What Is It and How to Use It?

The HP recovery partition helps HP laptop users fix a corrupted Windows operating system using a special recovery partition on a system hard disk to restore the HP device to factory settings and give it a fresh start.

Thanks to that, you can avoid reinstalling new Windows and losing your data due to system corruption and file loss. Today, we’ll delve deeper into everything you should know about an HP laptop recovery partition and how to use it to perform system recovery on your computer, including how to remove it.

What Is the HP Recovery Partition?

HP Recovery Partition is a small-sized system partition, ranging from 5GB to 10 GB. It contains an image copy of all factory-installed software apps on your HP computer including the operating system and supplemental products. The system hard drive uses HP Recovery Partition to return your operating system’s version to its default state by resetting it to factory settings.

In most computers from this manufacturer, you can access it via Disk Management (it will be marked as OEM Partition). Since this partition plays a critical role in the health of your computer, it alone has no drive letter to protect it from being deleted or changed. However, you’ll typically find it in a D drive in Windows File Explorer.

When your operating system crashes or gets corrupted due to data corruption or virus/malware infection, you can restore your system to default settings from the HP recovery partition, including built-in apps, drivers, and your OS.

There are two types of recovery partitions:

• Windows recovery partition – created by installing Windows on GPT disk, this recovery partition contains the bare operating system files and settings;
• HP/Dell/Lenovo recovery partition – created by a computer manufacturer (in this particular case, HP), this recovery partition contains a copy (system image) of the operating system and all software installed by default.

The difference between these two recovery partitions is quite distinct. The first one is used to recover the Windows OS, while the other helps you restore your HP device to factory default settings, including your system, software, and some built-in apps.

How to Use HP Recovery Partition

You can use this partition to restore your Windows system to its original state via the HP Recovery Environment. In addition to system recovery, this Windows utility allows you to restore your OS and select software, backup your files, run computer checkups, and more.

Here’s how to use it to restore your laptop to default settings:

1. Type HP Recovery Manager in the Start screen and hit Enter;
2. Select HP Recovery Manager and click HP Recovery Environment;

   

3. Click OK and allow your computer to restart;

   

4. In the Recovery Manager window, select System Recovery and follow on-screen instructions to restore your computer to its default factory settings.

   

How to Remove HP Recovery Partition

If your hard disk is running out of free space, you can free up disk space by removing the recovery partition. This action will remove the factory-installed software backup image of your system to free space on your hard disk.

Remove HP Recovery Partition With HP Recovery Manager

Follow the steps below to remove the partition from your device:

1. Type HP Recovery Manager in the Start screen and hit Enter;
2. Select HP Recovery Manager > Remove recovery partition;

   

3. Follow the on-screen instructions to delete the recovery partition.

Delete HP Laptop Recovery Partition Via Command Prompt

You can also remove the HP Recovery Partition via the Command Prompt. Here are the steps:

1. Type cmd in the search box and select Run as administrator;
2. In the Command Prompt window, type diskpart and hit Enter;
3. Type the following commands and hit Enter after each:
   • list disk;
   • select disk number (replace number with the number of the disk that contains the recovery drive);
   • list partition;
   • select partition m (replace m with the volume number of your HP Recovery Partition);
   • delete partition override;
   • exit diskpart;
   • exit.

   

Restart your HP computer to apply the changes.

How to Recover Deleted HP Recovery Partition

If you’ve accidentally deleted or formatted this partition, take a deep breath and relax. Your data isn’t permanently lost. You can recover it without rebuilding its partition table or reformatting the hard drive.

You can use a reliable partition recovery software tool like Wondershare Recoverit to recover it. Since it is hidden by default on your device, it will probably not be overwritten with new data.

In such situations, you can rely on this app to retrieve a lost or deleted recovery partition in a few simple steps. Download and install the app on your Hewlett-Packard computer, then follow the steps below to get this partition back.

1. Launch the app on your computer and navigate to the main File Recover menu;
2. Select Hard Drives and Locations and click the drive containing the partition;

   

3. Click Start to scan the selected drive for recoverable partition data;

   

4. Once the app completes the scanning process, preview the recoverable partition data before recovery;

   

5. If everything is in order, click Recover > Save to recover the deleted HP recovery partition files.

   

Conclusion

This guide showed you everything you should know about the HP recovery partition and its applications on your computer. It’s essential to your device, though its absence won’t disrupt your system’s functioning in any way.

If your system crashes and becomes corrupted, you can use this partition to restore your computer to its original factory condition. However, if the partition gets damaged, lost, or deleted, you can recover it using a reliable partition recovery tool like Wondershare Recoverit.