Hasleo Backup Suite (HBS) FAQs

[garioch7]

How Do Windows Updates Affect Hasleo Backup Suite by Resizing the Windows Recovery Partition (WinRE)?

Primary Sources:  @admin, @al3x, @Froggie, and @garioch7.


Primary Link:  https://www.easyuefi.com/forums/thread-3804.html



Whenever Hasleo Backup Suite (HBS) encounters a different disk “geometry” (one of more partitions being deleted, created, or resized) for a System Backup, it will initiate a full backup of the System Backup task of the changed partition(s) followed by the subsequent Differential and/or Incremental backups, regardless of the next scheduled backup task type.  HBS requires a new “Grandfather” backup, as described in a previous HBS FAQs post, to then again restart the scheduled backup task to ensure that the subsequent Differential and Incremental backups can be successfully restored.


The Forum Administrator stated:

For system backups, "Smart Backup" is enabled by default, but for disk or partition backups it is not. For system backups, the goal is clear: users want to back up all partitions related to the operating system. For disk or partition backups, however, users may only want to back up the selected partitions and do not want to automatically include partitions created later. Therefore, it is safer to let users decide for themselves whether to enable this feature.

(Forum Team discussion)

It should be noted that, at the time of the initial publication of this FAQ post, serious consideration is being given to making the “Smart Backup” option the default for creating Disk/Partition Backup tasks as well, that the user may turn off, if they so desire.


Windows Updates frequently increase the size of the Windows Recovery files.  A recent Windows 11 update (September 2026: 26200.9445) resulted in a size increase of approximately 30 MB used by Windows in the WinRE partition of the author’s computers.

@al3x, a respected backup specialist, also noted this after the September update, but it triggered a new WinRE partition.

The new Win11 update this week (KB5124008, 26200.9445) resized my RE partition. The OS partition was shrunk and the RE partition rebuilt, causing HBS to do a full backup of C:\ instead of an incremental. No orphaned RE partition for me.

(Forum Team discussion)


If there is insufficient room to accommodate the increase in the size, but the existing Windows Recovery partition (WinRE partition) cannot be expanded, Windows usually creates a new WinRE partition, sometimes “orphaning” the previous (old) WinRE partition.

If a WinRE partition has available unused space, Windows will preferentially use the required amount of that available space.  Some OS disks do not leave much room in the WinRE partition.  That is when this issue may arise.

When that occurs, Windows still cannot extend the WinRE partition, and then recreate it.  Windows does not simply allocate additional disk space to the WinRE partition to which it adds the new WinRE files and folders.  The “new” WinRE partition must be rebuilt when the “old” WinRE partition is out of available space by the WinRE partition changes introduced by a Windows Update.

If the Smart Backup option is enabled, a full Disk/Partition Backup Task that includes all existing partitions on the OS disk will back up the new WinRE partition, other partitions, and the old “orphaned” WinRE partition.  Furthermore, the size of those backups becomes much larger for no good reason.  The old “orphaned” WinRE partition is useless to Windows, and consequently, to the user, as far as is known.

When asked what happens if the Smart Backup option is not enabled, the Forum Administrator had this reply:

If Smart Backup is not enabled, it means Hasleo Backup Suite will not automatically adapt to partition changes. The backup task stores information about all selected partitions, and when the backup runs, Hasleo Backup Suite uses that information to locate each partition. Therefore, once a partition's geometry changes, Hasleo Backup Suite will not be able to find that partition and will report a "Specified partition not found." error.

For example, the original partition layout on the disk might be:

ESP | OS_OLD | WINRE_OLD

After a Windows upgrade, the partition layout on the disk becomes:

ESP | OS_NEW | WINRE_NEW | WINRE_OLD

If Smart Backup is not enabled, Hasleo Backup Suite will not find OS_OLD, because that partition's geometry has changed and it has become OS_NEW. In this case, the program will report a "Specified partition not found." error.

If Smart Backup is enabled, Hasleo Backup Suite will automatically re-select all partitions for backup and will perform a full backup of OS_NEW and WINRE_NEW, even if you selected an incremental or differential backup.

(Forum Team discussion)

When the Forum Administrator was requested to provide more details about what happens in this scenario if the next scheduled backup were an Incremental backup, the response was:

For an incremental backup, even if some partitions undergo a full backup due to geometry changes, the entire backup image is still marked as an incremental backup. Therefore, it still applies the incremental backup retention policy, and the merge will not fail. We have already taken these situations into account.

You are right that subsequent incremental merges can be time-consuming, because the full data of the changed partitions will eventually need to be merged. This may make the merge process take longer than usual, but it will not affect the integrity of the backup chain.

(Forum Team discussion)

Users should note that if there are no partitions following the WinRE partition, then this issue does not usually arise unless there are no partitions after the WinRE partition and if there is also no unallocated space following it.


It appears that the frequency of “orphaned” WinRE partitions may be associated with the size of the OS disk.  Some less expensive, computers have 256 GB OS disks, or smaller, which leads the manufacturer to create smaller Windows OS partitions.  In the case of the WinRE partition, it may quickly become too small to accommodate increases in the WinRE partition file sizes and numbers.

To further confuse this subject, @al3x made the following observations:

Also something to note: The fact that there is nothing after the RE partition doesn't mean there will be no orphaned RE partitions.  Imagine this scenario:
| EFI part. | OS part. | OEM part. | RE part. |

There's nothing behind the RE partition, yet Windows can't rebuild the RE partition with a bigger size because the OEM partition is in the way. Windows will probably not try to rebuild the OEM partition, because it doesn't know the exact content and way to rebuild. So my guess is, it will shrink the OS partition and rebuild the RE partition in the new unallocated space.

New layout will probably be:
| EFI part. | OS part. (shrunk) | new RE part. | OEM part. | old (orphaned) RE part. |

Maybe the old RE partition will be deleted and the space left unallocated, I don't know for sure.

(Forum Team discussion)


The main issue is that while “orphaned” WinRE  partitions do occur on some computers, the precise details of when and why Windows decides to create a new WinRE partition continue to be the subject of speculation.


The Forum Administrator stated:

This is indeed a nebulous occurrence. Microsoft has not published any official clarification or technical documentation on this matter, and most of the information we currently have comes from community discussions and accumulated real‑world experience.

(Forum Team discussion)


Even more confusing is that “orphaned” WinRE partitions do not always occur under the scenario where the WinRE partition is too small for the additional WinRE partition files or their increase in size.  Sometimes, Windows will delete the old “orphaned” WinRE partition; in other cases, for equally undocumented reasons, it does not.


It appears that most of the time, Windows does not leave an “orphaned” WinRE partition, as explained by @al3x, a very knowledgeable backup specialist:

Actually it’s quite simple. To expand a partition to the left you need to move existing data blocks. Unfortunately Microsoft’s tools (including diskpart) still haven’t implemented that feature.

So instead they shrink the OS partition, delete the RE partition and recreate RE beginning from the new position after the OS partition.

https://www.easyuefi.com/forums/thread-3...ml#pid9791


That is indeed what should happen, but “orphaned” WinRE partitions are a reality for some computer users.

Regarding whether the WinRE partition is deleted or orphaned after a Windows update, what I can confirm is that orphaned WinRE partitions do indeed occur, and I have personally encountered this myself. There are also many online discussions about "multiple recovery partitions," which further confirms that this is not an isolated case.

As for the exact conditions under which Microsoft chooses to abandon the old WinRE partition and create a brand new one, there is currently no definitive or unified answer. However, a Microsoft Community Support Expert once stated:

"This can happen when Windows upgrades to a new version and the system checks if the existing recovery partition has enough space. If there isn't enough space, the system creates a new recovery partition instead of extending the existing one."
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answer...partitions

(Edited Forum Team discussion)


When an “orphaned” WinRE partition occurs, @Froggie, a respected backup specialist, had this explanation:

The problem is... if it's a pure Microsoft build, the RE partition is always last and if there's any room beyond that partition when the change is made, no problem, a simple RE partition extension to the right (free disk space).  If it's an OEM build, many OEMs place their own "recovery/diagnostic" partitions after the Windows RE partition.  This doesn't let Windows do a simple RE expansion to accommodate the change.  Their only solution is to manipulate partitions that they control... in this case, RE and the OS partition that it's next to.

I have never seen the case where the OS partition is only shrunk for the needed additional RE space... when that is needed, they create an entirely new RE out of shrunk OS space and re-register the RE partition accordingly.

The mention of doing that operation then deleting the old RE partition I have also never seen... although I can't say for a fact that it has never been done by Microsoft.

https://www.easyuefi.com/forums/thread-3...ml#pid9790
(Edited quote)


So, how does the Hasleo Backup Suite deal with this situation?

The Forum Administrator stated:

For System and Disk/Partition Backup tasks, if Windows updates or manual user operations change the geometry of certain partitions (such as start offset, size, etc.), HBS will perform a full backup of only those changed partitions to ensure recoverability of the backup data; it does not trigger a full backup of all selected partitions.

It is worth noting that in earlier versions, if partition geometry changed, HBS might have reported an error indicating that the partition could not be found. Subsequent versions introduced a "Smart Backup" feature, allowing HBS to automatically detect the changes and initiate a full backup accordingly.

File Backup tasks are file‑level backups.  They directly open and read the file contents without regard to the physical disk location or partition boundaries. Therefore, regardless of how Windows updates resize the recovery or system partitions, file backup tasks run normally and will not trigger an unexpected full backup due to partition geometry changes.

(Edited Forum Team discussion)


@Froggie has an innovative solution to prevent this issue from occurring.

This happens quite often during Windows upgrades.  When Windows finds the existing Recovery Partition to be too small to accommodate a WindowsRE.wim image update, it shrinks the OS partition by the amount needed to create a new, larger Recovery partition... creates and assigns the new Recovery partition, and winds up orphaning the old Recovery partition.  The result: a new registered Recovery Partition, a completely orphaned old Recovery partition, and a new shrunk OS partition.

This Windows "operation" always changes the geometry of existing automatic imaging tasks, and as a result either makes the task fail or forces a new, unexpected FULL image to reflect the new partition geometry.

The way I have solved it is to make your existing Recovery partition much larger (I use 2-GB)... that way Windows will always (at least for the foreseeable future) find enough room in that partition for any WindowsRE.wim changes required for any update/upgrade.

https://www.easyuefi.com/forums/thread-3...ml#pid9781
(Edited quote)


IMPORTANT NOTICE:

Only advanced users should attempt resizing the Windows Recovery Partition, and only after they have completed a full Disk/Partition backup of all OS Disk partitions so that, if a partition-resizing mistake is made, the OS Disk can be returned to its previous condition.  It is also essential to have a current Hasleo Backup Disk Emergency Disk available, in the event that the partition-resizing leaves the computer unable to boot properly.

The author recommends using a partition manager program to manage partition sizes, if it is necessary.  The Windows "diskpart" command is very complex, powerful, and unforgiving.  A simple web search of "Windows partition manager programs" will provide you with a list of free and paid software program options.


An important question that has been discussed is: does the user need a Windows Recovery partition at all?

You don’t really need the partition, that’s correct. You could also disable RE with reagentc /disable, then delete the RE partition and re-enable with reagentc /enable. That will recreate RE in c:\Recovery and it will work like before.

Or you could kill RE completely like you did. Technically that works, too. It’s just that I like to keep my Windows the most non-Frankenstein way possible to prevent possible later hiccups in case MS decides to do something weird with a new update. You never know.

https://www.easyuefi.com/forums/thread-3...l#pid10002
(Edited quote)

The author concurs with the advice given by @al3x.  The safest course of action is not to delete an active WinRE partition, despite the challenges that monthly Windows updates might cause for a minority of users.


CONCLUSIONS:

Currently, HBS users should ensure that the “Smart Backup” option is enabled for Disk/Partition backups that include OS partitions.

While infrequent, “orphaned” WinRE partitions do occur, and can impact full Disk/Partition backups of all partitions on an OS disk, they are not frequent occurrences.

The precise details of what triggers an “orphaned” WinRE partition are not documented.

This FAQ post will be updated when and if more information becomes available.



To learn more about the other impacts of Windows Updates on the Hasleo Backup Suite and other backup programs, please see this Hasleo Backup Suite Article/Tutorial.  It should be noted that the Hasleo Development Team remains committed to mitigating these impacts within the Hasleo Backup Suite program to the extent possible.


If any information is missing or you have suggestions to improve this FAQ post, please send a PM (Private Message) to @garioch7.


Authorized by: The Hasleo Forum Team

(Initial Post Date: 2026-09-19)