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Windows 11 Clean Installation - Why is there a Recovery Partition?
Your license is stored in the BIOS, and the installer retrieves it automatically.
Windows 11 creates a Recovery Partition during a clean install to provide tools for system repair, recovery, and troubleshooting. The reasons for this are:
Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) – The recovery partition contains WinRE, which provides access to advanced troubleshooting tools, including startup repair, system restore, command prompt, and reset options.
System Protection & Reset Options – If Windows encounters serious issues, you can use the recovery partition to reset or restore the system without needing external media.
Separation from OS Drive – Keeping recovery tools on a separate partition ensures they are available even if the main OS partition is corrupted.
You can delete the recovery partition during installation, but this removes access to built-in recovery features. Alternatively, you can install Windows without it and later move WinRE to the main OS partition manually.