If you wonder how to remove the System Reserved partition in Windows 10, the simple answer is don’t. That is a crucial part of the operating system on your PC, and you should not remove it. You can hide it but should not remove it. This article will explain to you what is the System Reserved partition and what you can do with it.
What is the System Reserved Partition in Windows 10?
In a nutshell, the System Reserved partition is a small part of your boot drive with a few important files. It contains a boot manager and BCD. Also, Windows uses System Reserved to store files for encrypting the drive C with BitLocker. Deleting the System Reserved Partition will end up in a damaged boot manager and break your system.
It is also important to note that Windows 10 creates the System Reserved partition on devices with a Master Boot Record scheme. You will not find it on computers that use the GUID partition table (GPT).
There is only one scenario in which you can delete the System Reserved partition in Windows 10. You can safely remove it if you have swapped your boot drive and want to wipe the old one. In such a case, you can delete the System Reserved partition after removing it from your computer. Do not delete the System Reserved partition in Windows 10 if your PC still runs the operating system from that drive.
Note. Learn how to delete Swapfile.sys in Windows.
Delete System Reserved Partition
Again, you should not delete the System Reserved partition. Even if your PC has a tiny SSD or HDD with, for example, 64GB of space, deleting it will not give you much free space. At best, the System Reserved partition takes up to 500MB or even less.
What you can do, and, frankly, should do, is hide the System Reserved partition. You should not allow anyone to access that partition in any circumstances.
- Press Win + X, then click Disk Management.
Tip. You can also press Win + R and enter the diskmgmt.msc command.
- Wait for Windows to scan your drives and get all the data.
- Find the System Reserved partition and right-click it.
- Press Change Drive Letter and Path.
- Select the only available letter and press Delete. That will remove the System Reserved partition from File Explorer and keep all the necessary files available for the system’s needs.
You can also remove the System Reserved partition from File Explorer using a few commands in Command Prompt.
- Launch elevated Command Prompt (run as an administrator).
- Enter the diskpart command.
- Next, type list volume.
- Find the Reserved partition and remember its number and letter.
- Now, enter select volume #. Replace # with the number from Step 4.
- Enter remove letter=X. Replace X with the letter from Step 4.
That is how you can remove the System Reserved partition in Windows 10.
