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I have two Windows 10 installations on a single GPT drive.

The current partition layout is: EFI WinRE MSR ...OS1... ...OS2...

Currently, OS1 is configured to use WinRE partition, as suggested here. OS2 does not have any WinRE yet.

Is it possible to:

  1. re-use existing (large enough) WinRE partition for both OS1 and OS2, or each installation requires separate WinRE?
  2. does answer (1) change if I will have to turn BitLocker on for OS2 per employer BYOD requirements?

Also:

  1. do "large" (i.e., feature) updates to both installations affect WinRE?

  2. is WinRE partition required to enable BitLocker, or this is wrong?

UPD:

My key idea (I'm asking about how to implement it) is to re-use 'auxiliary' partitions, if that's possible. I would like to be able to enable BitLocker on OS2 without having to re-partition the drive (even autoshrinking OS2 partition), so that OS2 should re-use existing EFI/WinRE partitions.

So:

  1. Is it possible to re-use existing (large enough) WinRE/EFI partitions for both OS1 and OS2, with at least one OS having BitLocker turned on?

  2. How should I configure OS2 to re-use one of these unencrypted partitions as a 'bitlocker-required unencrypted partition'?

  3. Does re-using partitions affects somehow stability (update of WinRE by feature updates) or security?

simon
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1 Answers1

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I believe that it's possible to share one WinRE partition between multiple installations of Windows.

To set the WinRE partition in Windows, use the command reagentc in an elevated Command Prompt. For example:

Reagentc /setreimage /path X:\Recovery\WindowsRE

This requires assigning the WinRE partition a drive-letter in Disk Management, which can be removed afterward. The above path will be translated to an independent format, such as \\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk1\partition4\Recovery\WindowsRE, so that the drive-letter is not required.

The specified folder should contain the file Winre.wim, which contains the WinRE image itself.

(I have never done it myself, but I think that this will work for you.)

Useful articles:

harrymc
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