What's going on during GX75VX Refresh?

[RktSciRet]

New to forum, second post, howdy everyone.
I just bought a new G75VX-DS72 from Newegg 1/2/2014. As delivered:
G75VX-1.0
Win8 64, build 9200
UEFI Bios v204, 10/31/2012
16Gb (4x4Gb) Ram
Disk 0 LITEONIT 256Gb ssd, 5 volumes: 300mb EFI sys, 900mb Recovery, 95.39Gb NTFS OS (C:, 121.78Gb NTFS Data (D:, 20.01Gb Recovery
Disk 1 Hitachi 750Gb, 2 volumes: 349.32Gb NTFS Primary (E:, 349.32Gb NTFS Primary (F:
Optical Matsh*ta BD-CMB UJ160
GTX 670MX
Broadcom 802.11ac

I have several questions:
I want to update to latest drivers and ultimately to win 8.1
Didn't like the multiple partitions, so I deleted the second visible volumes on each disk (empty space?) and extended the C and E drives into the resulting unallocated space using windows disk management with no apparent problems. These became drives C and D, respectively and the operating system appears unaffected. I proceeded to update windows 8 as instructed in prep for win8.1 with the 90+ important updates and about 10 of them would not install. After troubleshooting, and performing some suggested fixes that didn't work but left the update system crippled, showing no update history and saying no updates have been installed (this is a problem with one of the fixes because the list of installed updates clearly shows the 80+ updates that had been installed), I found that manual install of each update worked on all but one (which is not needed for win8.1). Duiring this process I had refreshed (not reset) the computer twice by going to the General tab of PC settings. This was uneventful and seemed to work, restoring the operating system to the new larger C volume as expected with one exception.
Disk 0 (the boot SSD) now has three recovery partitions (5 total partitions) as follows:

300mb EFI sys, 900mb Recovery, 216.82Gb NTFS OS (C:, 350mb Recovery, 20.01Gb Recovery

I had extended the C drive into all available space. I did not notice the 350mb Recovery partition until after the second Refresh.

My question are:
Why three Recovery partitions? For that matter, why two in the first place?
Have I adversely affected my SSD's alignment? How can I easily check this?

[Myk_SilentShado]

the 300MB is important for Win8.1, system stuff gets loaded there for in case of emergencies. The 900MB, which seems somewhat tiny should be for your Laptop's Windows install....though like I said, it's smaller than i'd expected.

[RktSciRet]

I agree. 900mb seems small for OS and bloatware restore. I suspect the OS + bloatware are on the 20.01Gb Recovery partition which, like the 900mb partition, has not been changed. The changes are my combining the C and D volumes into the new C volume, and the mysterious addition of yet another (third) Recovery Partition (the 350 mb one). I was just curious as to what it (the 350 mb one) is and why it is, in order to intelligently speculate on what to expect of future Refresh operations.

From Factory on disk 0:
300 mb EFI System Partition
900 mb Recovery Partition
95.39 Gb OS C: drive
121.78 Gb Data 😧 drive
20.01 Gb Recovery Partition

I deleted D:, and extended C: into the empty space, Refresh, Refresh,

Now:
300 mb EFI System Partition
900 mb Recovery Partition
216.82 Gb OS C: drive
350 mb Recovery Partition
20.01 Gb Recovery Partition

OK, The plot thickens:
On disk 0, I opened DISKPART> LIST PARTITION

There are 6 partitions listed counting the Reserved partition not visible in Disk Management
Partition / Type / Size /Offset
1 / System / 300MB / 1024 KB
2 / Recovery/ 900 MB / 301 MB
3 / Reserved / 128 MB /1201 MB
4 / Primary / 216 GB / 1329 MB
5 / Recovery /350 MB / 218 GB
6 / Recovery /20 GB /218 GB

Questions remain: What happened during refresh to create the additional recovery 350 mb Recovery partition? Why so many Recovery partitions? and How do I make sure my SSD is aligned for best performance. Can anyone tell from the Diskpart info?

[RktSciRet]

OK, with more research I found the quick answer to whether my ssd is aligned.

"Open msinfo32 » Components » Storage » Disks » Partition Starting Offset
Use calc.exe to divide the number of bytes by 4096. If the result is a full number, you're fine."

Partition starting offset 1048576
I'm fine.

Still would like to know what all the added partitions are.

[RktSciRet]

OK, with more research I found the quick answer to whether my ssd is aligned.

"Open msinfo32 » Components » Storage » Disks » Partition Starting Offset
Use calc.exe to divide the number of bytes by 4096. If the result is a full number, you're fine."

Partition starting offset 1048576
I'm fine.

Still would like to know what all the added partitions are.