How to merge Windows 10 “system reserved” and Recovery partitions
3rd September 2017
My initial reason for merging these two partitions was the need to have two more partitions on the disk – and with 3 primary partitions already in place (system reserved, windows 10 itself, and recovery) on the MBR disk that was only possible by adding an extended partition and then adding both new partitions to it – which is not what I wanted.
An additional reason appeared when I started researching the topic.
Apparently, Windows 10 no longer even creates the recovery partition during installation!
The entire WinRE is now stored on that same system reserved partition, which contains your window’s BCD!
The recovery partitions should only be present on Windows 10 installations which were either upgrades from a previous Windows version, or (as in my case) were installed within about 6 months after Windows 10 became available.
These instructions are also useful if you wish to increase the size of your system reserved partition – for example, if Windows 10 updates are failing because of that partition’s lack of free space.
WARNING: changing partition tables on your hard/solid-state disk may easily result in complete data loss!
Instructions below are provided as-is, to be used at your own risk. See full disclaimer on the About page.
WARNING: although it is also possible to merge the system reserved partition and windows 10 partition (so that the entire Windows 10 uses only 1 primary partition), I do not (and will not) offer instructions to do so. In fact, I recommend that you don’t merge the system reserved and windows 10 partitions.
Merging system reserved and recovery partitions, step by step.
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