How Does Windows Mount Recovery Partition – 2 Ways Included

What Is Recovery Partition?

The recovery partition is a special partition on the system hard disk used to restore the system to factory settings in case of system problems. To protect the recovery partition from being changed or deleted, the recovery partition usually has no disc letter and only a Help option is provided in Disk Management.

There are two types of recovery partitions:

💿 One type is created by installing Windows on a GPT disk, which holds the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE). Typically, the Windows recovery partition takes up only a few hundred MB of disk space, as it contains only the bare operating system.
🖥️ Another type of partition is created by Dell, HP, Lenovo and other computer manufacturers before delivery. It allows restoring the computer to factory default settings, including the operating system, drivers and some built-in applications. The vendor's recovery partition takes up more space than the Windows recovery partition and is usually labeled as the OEM partition.

2 Ways to Mount Recovery Partition in Windows 10

In most cases, to prevent inadvertent deletion and formation, the recovery partition is hidden by default and is not visible in Windows Explorer (File Explorer). Next I describe two ways to mount the recovery partition in Windows and choose the one that better suits your needs.

🧱 Note: Before you start, open Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) on your computer and take a close look at your hard disks. Note the disk number and the recovery partition.

#1. Unhide Recovery Partition with DiskPart Command

1. Type cmd into Windows search box and right-click on the Command Prompt to Run as administrator.
2. Type the following commands in turn and press Enter after each command to run them.

• Diskpart
• list disk (list all your hard disks in the computer).
• select disk n (where n is the number of the hard disk that the recovery partition on it).
• list partition (show all the partitions on the selected MBR/GPT hard disk).
• select partition m (where m is the number of the Dell/Asus/HP recovery partition).
• assign (the system will assign a drive letter automatically).

After completing these commands, you can see the recovery partition in Windows Explorer. If you want to hide it, it is basically the same steps as for unhiding it. The only difference is the last step: type remove letter=e, e being the disk letter of the recovery partition.

#2. Mount Windows Recovery Partition with Third-party Software

You can also use a third-party software to mount the recovery partition. The Explore Image feature of AOMEI Backupper allows you to mount a system backup image, a partition backup image or a disk image as a virtual drive. You can view its contents in Windows Explorer and third-party file managers in read-only mode. Let's see in detail how to extract files from Windows image backups. Just download it to have a try!

🚩 Create Windows Recovery Partition Image Backup

1. Install and launch AOMEI Backupper. To mount recovery partition in Windows 10, here you need to create system image backup first. Select Partition Backup under Backup tab.

2. Click Add Partition or Volume to select the Windows recovery partition as source drive that needs to be backed up and then set a destination path to store the image file.

3. Click Start Backup to backup recovery partition in Windows 10.

🚩 Mount Windows Recovery Partition Image

1. On the dark blue interface, select Explore Image under the Tools tab.

2. Select the recovery partition backup image that you want to mount from the list box, and click Next to continue.

3. Select a backup point and click the Next button to explore the backup image.

4. Then you can assign drive letter for the image partition, and click Next to mount the image.

5. Then, wait till the progress reaches 100%. Click Finish.

Unmounting Windows recovery partition is also simple with AOMEI Backupper. Click Tools > Explore Image > select the drive letter and click Detach. And it will detach the virtual partitions from My Computer.

Besides this function, AOMEI Backupper has many other useful functions.

🤖 Automatically backup system, disk, files with different methods and schemes. Its smart backup strategy and scheduled differential backup can save time and space.
🐜 Clone system and disk to another disk of different size without reinstalling. It provides you with advanced system clone, UEFI clone, GPT to MBR clone, and customized clone.
👻 Keep files in two or more locations same via mirror, two-way or real-time sync.

To Sum Up

In this article, you can learn two methods for Windows to mount the recovery partition. The recovery partition is an important part of your computer, and it is recommended that you create a backup of it in advance.

The third-party software mentioned in the second method can not only help you mount the recovery partition, but also help you protect the system and other data on the computer. You can also use it to create bootable media to help start your computer successfully in the event of any system problems.