I am sure a lot of you have read the different ways that you can avoud creating the system reserved partition when installing Windows 8, and that is the best way to go. But what if you were asleep at the switch, or in too much of a hurry, and installed Windows 8 using the defaults and Microsoft created the system reserved partition before you knew it. Now you want to get rid of it because your Windows 8 system is installed in partition 1-2 instead of 1-1 and it is a real pain in the neck to keep backup and recovery procedures straight expecially if you have another data partition on the same drive. Well here is how you do it! Use your backup imaging program, I used Acronis, to make a backup of the system partition. Use the Windows 8 install DVD to boot into the command prompt and using DISKPART delete both the System Reserved Partition and the Windows 8 Partition. Now using your imaging program restore the Windows 8 partition to the contigious space that is now available. However at this point the system will not boot. So, using the Windows 8 install DVD again boot back into the command prompt. Run Bootrec /RebuildBCD. Bootrec will search for a Windows installation and when it finds Windows 8 it will ask you if you want to add this system to the BCD. Answer Yes and it will be done. At that point you can verify things by running BCDEdit from the command prompt and you will see your new settings. Restart your system and boot into Windows 8 normally, then DISKPART or Windows Disk management to verify that the Reserved Partition is gone.
Also holds recovery data which in case or boot problems maybe ease the recovery. Also it hold some log files in the Temp folder. I wouldn't delete that partition.
Hello pisthai, can you please provide me the source of the information, I would like to have it in detail. Because I have known that in Windows 7 it was required for BitLocker, but I don't use it so I avoid it from being created, as I use Shadow Defender and it doesn't include system reserved hidden partition unless I grant it a letter which I don't want to. I want to know that in Windows 8 if this partition is required in the RESET/REFRESH function in Windows 8.
Look at the 2 pictures: First is the complete content of the System Reserved Partition while the second is the content of the Temp Folder.
As I mentioned in the first post, this is most helpful to those people who run regular backups with programs like Acronis, Norton Ghost, Backup Exec, etc. If you don't run any backup programs and rely on Windows restore points then this probably isn't of any interest to you. Paragraph However, if you do run regular backups and occasional restores it is important that you don't accidently restore the wrong partition and wipe out all your data. For example, a persion running Microsoft Media Center probably has a 2 TB drive with about 100GB reserved for the system and the remaining space used for recorded TV programs and movies. If you have to recover Windows in this environment it is very easy to over-write the incorrect partition and wipe out all your recorded programs and movies. When you get rid of the reserved partition then you know that your system is always on partition 1-1 and in addition you only have one partition to recover. Paragraph Now for those concerned about losing the data in the reserved partition, not to worry. When you run bootrec /rebuildbcd all that data is rebuilt on your system drive. The only reason to keep this partition, in my opinion, is if you are going to run bitlocker which needs access to data on this partiton to decode the data on your encrypted drive(s). I have always avoided the creation of the reserved partition in new Windows 7 and 8 installations and it has never caused me any problems. To the contrary, it has allowed me to use one standard script to recover the Windows partition on any of my computers, workstation or server.
This ^ Its Acronis & Symantec that deserve the blame for people having to remove the system reserved partition. Better that than finding out after recovery that you have an unbootable system or cant do bare metal recovery at all because of it. bcdboot X:\windows /s X: and get rid of it
Hello. I would like to do the opposite thing, create the hidden system partition. I've got to install Windows 8 on an external disk. It cannot be done automatically. Thus I created a primary partition with Easeus partition master, leaving 100MB of unallocated space. And then I installed Windows there with the tool imagex. And it works right but it hasn't created the 100MB System reserved partition. Everything has been installed on to the C: partition instead. How could I manually create that system partition? Or how can I get Windows to use that unallocated space? thanks
First: the System Reserved Partition for Windows 8 has an size of 350MB and is FAT32!! You could use Diskpart for to create the right partition scheme.
WinRE.wim is locate in System Partition. If you deleted System Partition, you may lost ability to use recovery image. After follow the first post, to be sure the ability of using recovery image is exist, in Windows 8 try this command as administrator... ReAgentC.exe /Info This will show you the details of the recovery look like... ....... Microsoft Windows [Version 6.2.9200] (c) 2012 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. C:\Windows\system32>ReAgentC.exe /Info Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) and system reset configuration information: Windows RE status: Enabled Windows RE location: \\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk0\partition1\Recovery\ca99157d-86dc-11e2-afb6-0013d49f2edf Boot Configuration Data (BCD) identifier: ca99157d-86dc-11e2-afb6-0013d49f2edf Recovery image location: Recovery image index: 0 Custom image location: Custom image index: 0 REAGENTC.EXE: Operation Successful. C:\Windows\system32> .......
Cowboy, I also only use one partition. Here's another guide to install Windows 8 on only one partition: "superuser.com/questions/494684/is-it-possible-to-install-windows-8-in-only-one-partition"
I never install Windows w/o setting my partitions with Gparted before hand. If Windows creates the partition table then it will create another partition for recovery, but if you create the partition table before installing Windows then only the specified partitions will be created.