What Is the System Reserved Partition and Can You Delete It?

Theo Lucia

Apr 20, 2022 • Filed to: Windows Computer Solutions • Proven solutions

Computers are perhaps the only kind of machines that have achieved the privilege of helping out such a large number of people in their careers and personal life. Almost everyone would require to use a computer at least every once in a while. The truth is that most people have personal computers like mobile phones.

So, it is important to know about the issues that are likely to arise in your computer, or else you wouldn’t be able to tackle a problem when one arises. Also, if a computer stops working properly, many things associated with the person using the device would be in trouble.

Even if you do not know the solutions to all the problems, you should know to implement one if you are provided with it. And there are various sites on the internet that offer solutions to various problems and issues related to the computer. One such popular query from the people is about the system reserved partition and whether it is possible to delete this. This article would deal with these two topics.

Overview

Before getting into deleting or manipulating the reserve partition, you should understand what it is and what it is for.

What is system reserve partition?

System reserve partition is a special partition in the hard drive of computers created by the Windows operating system. This started with windows 7, and both Windows 8 and 10 do the same. The operating system creates this special partition at the time you install the software on a new disk.

Earlier versions of the windows would not have a similar special reserve partition. The partition is present on the windows Serer 2008 R2 version too. In the case of Windows 7, the size of this partition is 100MB. The size has increased to 350 MB in windows8 and 8.1. the size has further increased to 500 MB in the windows 10 operating system.

You might have received the error that says, ‘We couldn’t update the reserved system partition.’ This is because the older version’s partition didn’t have the required space.

What does the system reserved partition do?

The two important things that the partition contains are:
When the computer starts up, it has to run the boot data in the boot configuration data store. (BCD). Also, when the computers fire up, it runs the boot loader from the system reserve partition.

If you think about encrypting the data in your hard drive using BitLocker encryption, then the data required to boot the computer would be stored in the system reserve partition.
The windows OS creates the partition during the installation process before prompting the user to allocate space for main system partitions on the computer.

Can you delete the system reserved partition?

Once the partition is created on the drive during the installation of windows, it is almost impossible to delete the partition. Even if you need to reduce the partitions, the reserve partition should be your last choice.

What happens if you delete the system reserved partition?

If you delete the system reserve partition that consists of the system related data, then computer will not boot. It means that your computer will just turn on, but the operating system will not launch, just displaying an error message on the screen.

Well, not need to panic! It is better to first check whether the system reserved partition is worth deleting. How to do that, read below!

How to check whether the system reserved partition is deletable?

Surely, you are not a professional and thus you may never know whether the system reserved partition is deletable. We are here to help and guide. The below mentioned steps will help you decide on the same.
Step 1: Click on the “My computer” option on the desktop and select “Manage.”
Step 2: A pop-up window will appear; select “Disk Management.”
Step 3: Check the system reserved partition and see whether it holds the “Healthy” tag.
Step 4: In this step, you will have to decide what to do with the partition.

If the system reserve partition consists of “System: information, you should not delete it as your system need to load the computer from this partition.

On the other hand, if the system reserve partition does not consist of “System” information, go ahead and delete it.

How to Prevent the System Reserved Partition from Being Created?

You can always prevent the partition from being created. The only way to do this is to install the OS on an existing partition.

Method 1. Extend the system reserved partition.

Step 1: When you boot the installation disc, you would be asked to create partitions. Click ok.

Step 2: There would be two partitions. Delete the second one.

Step 3: Now select the system reserved partition and click extend.

Step 4: Click on the Format option, and now you would select this for installing windows.

Method 2. Use software called AOMEI partition assistant.

Step 1: Boot your computer from the AOMEI bootable media and right-click on the unallocated space. Then click on ‘create a partition.’

Step 2: In the window that arises, select the size and location and then click OK.

Step 3: Make sure that the changes are correct and then apply the results.

This software can be used to extend an existing reserved partition or move the partition without data loss.

Method 3. Use diskpart.

Step 1: Press the shift key and the f10 while the installation is going on. A command prompt window, type in disk part and click enter.
Step 2: Now, create a new partition in the unallocated space with the help of the disk part tool. Then continue with the setup process, choose the partition that you have already created when asked to create one.

Remove an existing system reserved partition:

Simply deleting the partition is not possible because the boot files would be stored there. So first, you need to bring the boot files to the main windows system drive. This might sound easy, but this is a process that involves workings with registries, drives, updating the BCD store, etc. So, make sure that you know what you are doing before starting.

Conclusion:

As already told above, it is important to find out whether the system reserved partition is deletable. If it consists of the system data, do not delete it, or else your computer will face problems with booting up. On the other hand, if it does not consist of data, you can go ahead and delete it.

There are various guides available on the internet that would be helpful to those who are having doubts about the topics related to the system reserve drive. But make sure that only reputed sites are selected for reference. In case you ended up deleting the system partition that consists of important data, you can always rely on Wondershare recoverit to safely recover all the data.

FAQs:

What happens if I format the system reserved partition?

There is no problem in deleting the partition while formatting your PC. The system reserved partition will be created once again after you set your first partition to install windows.

Why is the system reserved partition created?

The partition is created when you select an unassigned space for installing a new window. This Partition consists of Boot Manager Code, Boot Configuration Database, and the start-up files used for BitLocker Drive Encryption.

Is system reserved partition necessary?

Yes, system reserved partition is necessary to use BitLocker drive encoding. Apart from that, vital boot documents are also stored here.