Is it possible to install a complete Windows 7 System into a single partition?

Question

The computer I have came with Windows 7 pre-installed.  Instead of supplying a recovery disk the manufacturer provided a recovery partition, which of course will be useless should my hard drive fail which is the one event everyone wants to be prepared
to handle when it happens.  This recovery partition doubles as a newly designed boot manager which is quite a different animal than what I was accustomed to with Windows XP and prior releases.  The recovery partition is also the active partition
and from what I've read I have the idea that I will not get the desired result if I should try and make the main Windows 7 partition (i.e., C: drive) active.  While I have used boot managers and think they have merit the idea that my main Windows partition
is incapable of being booted is something that I think is a very bad setup.

Answer 1

Hi Snook red,
In addition to what has already been suggested by everyone here. If you perform a clean install of Windows 7 using default settings on an unpartitioned disk, after setup you will find 2 partitions in Disk Management:
 (No Letter):100 MB       
Primary Partition, System, Active, this is the boot partition, which contains Bootmgr and the Boot folder.
C: Primary Partition, contains system file such like Page File, crash Dump file. This is the Windows partition.
This partition is being created for a few main reasons:
Bitlocker requires that the boot files and Windows files be separated. This is why Windows Vista needed the Bitlocker Drive Preparation tool. Also, this system partition may be used by utility software, such as backup problems, to support dual boot scenarios.
Protect against delection, such as in a dual boot scenario. It is easy to lose the boot files due to a format when reinstalling an OS which is on the system partition. In this new configuration, the Windows partitions can be formatted without impacting system
boot.
The drive received no drive letter as further protection against accidental deletion of the boot files.
For a single drive system, you can use these steps to create a single partition on the drive, to prevent the creation of the 100 MB system partition:
Use Shift + F10 to open a command prompt while at the “Where do you want to install Windows” step of setup.
Use the following commands to create the partition:
Diskpart
Select disk 0
Create part prim
Active
Exit
Close the command prompt and then click Refresh in the setup wizard to reflect the change.
Note: If you need to remove all existing partitions from the disk, you can use the “clean” command after “select disk 0” to remove all existing partitions.
If you have already installed your system on your computer, you could move your boot file with your system by using
BCD boot
Important: The use of a separate system partition is encouraged, to help reduce the occurrence of problems with startup. If possible, keep the default behavior whenever possible.
For more information about BCD boot:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/us-en/library/dd744347(v=ws.10).aspx
Regards
DiWuNewFolder