How to remove a disk reserved by the system. Disk Reserved by the system - what is it and can it be deleted

Microsoft for release operating system Windows 10 has simplified the process of installing it on your computer as much as possible. You can install the system from a disk or flash drive by clicking on several menu items and waiting for a while. Despite this, after installation, many users are faced with the problem of having a new drive among the connected devices and disks labeled “Reserved by the system.” The article will discuss how to remove such a disk, why it appears, why it is needed, and how to prevent its creation.

Why is a system-reserved disk necessary?

At the stage Windows installations disk system reserved is created automatically if not executed forced shutdown. If the installation procedure is carried out correctly, it remains hidden from the user, who is not even aware of its existence. The appearance of the disk is a consequence of the creation of a separate 200-600 MB partition during the system installation process.

If after installation you go to “My Computer” and find the presence of a separate drive that says “Reserved by the system,” the reason for this may be the following:

The operating system was not installed from a licensed distribution;
At the Windows installation stage, work was carried out to redistribute disk space;
The operation was performed;
To a new one Windows drive was copied from another medium.

The system-reserved partition itself is required to store boot parameters. Starting with the Windows 7 operating system, a separate partition is allocated on the drive for the needs of the system, whereas previously it was located directly on the system drive.

In Windows 10, the system reserves from 500 to 600 MB for its needs, with more earlier versions she needed no more than 300 MB. This is due to the fact that Microsoft began adding functionality to the new operating system Windows recovery for this technical section.

Important: IN professional versions The Windows operating system has a BitLocker feature. It allows users to encrypt data on their hard drive or external media. Stored on a system-reserved disk necessary information to decrypt the data.

How to remove a system-reserved disk

Availability additional disk among drives may irritate or confuse users. In such a situation, they have a desire to remove the disk reserved by the system. Naturally, Microsoft made sure that a computer user could not delete data from it and format it even with administrator rights.

If you want to remove a system-reserved disk from the list of drives, you must do this as follows:

After this, the system-reserved disk will no longer be displayed in Explorer. In this case, its operation will not be disrupted, and if it is necessary to restore the system, Windows will be able to use the information from this section.

Important: If you have multiple drives installed on your computer, you may notice that there are two (or more) system-reserved partitions. This suggests that previously the connected disks also had Windows installed, which created this partition. For proper operation of the current system, the “old reserve” is not required, and you can safely delete it, and then format the disk, creating a partition that occupies the entire volume of the drive.

How to prevent Windows from reserving a disk

It was noted above that Microsoft specifically thought about creating this partition on the hard drive so that the user could restore the system if serious errors occurred on the base drive. Based on this, during the installation of the operating system it is better not to disable its creation in order to avoid possible problems. Despite this, it is possible to prevent Windows from reserving a disk during system installation; to do this you need:

Run command line before hard choice disk for future system. This is done during the Windows installation process using the Windows + F10 key combination;
Next, in the window that opens, you need to write and activate (using the Enter key) the command diskpart. After that, select using the command select disc 0 base hard drive. And then enter the command create partition primary to create the primary partition before Windows does it automatically;
After completing the steps, close the command line and continue installing the system, selecting the previously created partition from the options proposed for its location.

Important: This method cannot be used if it is necessary to preserve the structure hard drive, divided into several sections (for example, C and E). After executing the commands described above, all information from partition E will be deleted.

In the Windows 7 and 8 operating system and why it is needed. Nothing has changed for Windows 10. The same disk is displayed in the Disk Management utility and is intended to protect and store OS boot files. However, if it bothers you or you do not want to allow other users of your PC to manipulate this section, you should hide it. There are a lot of methods to hide a disk reserved by the system in Windows 10. Let's take a closer look at them.

Hide System Reserved using the command line

To hide the System Reserved drive in Windows 10, you should follow a few simple steps:

Press “Win+R” and enter “cmd”.

The console will open. Enter the first command “diskpart”. Then we write “list volume” to see all the partitions that the hard drive has.

Let's assume that Volume 1 is Reserved by the System (in our case, it is the system partition). Often its size is 450 MB.
Now enter “select volume N”, where N is the partition number.

After selecting the volume, enter “remove letter=E”, where E is the letter of the volume that you want to hide.
To exit the utility, enter “exit”.

Now in Windows 10 this section will be invisible.

How to hide a partition in Windows 10 via Disk Management?

Often, in the Windows 10 operating system, you can see the System Reserved section only in the Disk Management utility. Using the same utility, you can hide and display it. To do this we do the following:

Press “Win+R” and enter “msc”.

A new window will appear. Right-click on Reserved by the system or disk that you want to remove from this list. Select “Change drive letter or drive path...”.

In a new window, select the disk and click “Delete”.

The disk will not be deleted, it will only disappear from Explorer.

Hiding the Reserved Section through the Local Group Policy Editor

The entire operational array required for Windows operation 10 is stored on disk Reserved by the system. If you want to hide it using the local editor group policy, your actions should be as follows:

Press “Win+R” and enter “gpedit.msc”.

Go to the branch “User Configuration”, “Administrative Templates”, “ Windows components", "Explorer". In the window on the right, select “Hide selected drives from My Computer window.”

Double click to open the parameter and set the value to “Enabled”.

Afterwards we restart the computer.

Editing the registry as a method for hiding a drive in Explorer

To hide a section using this method, do the following:

Press “Win+R” and enter “regedit”.

The Registry Editor will open. Go to the branch “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Policies\ Explorer”. Right-click on last section and select “New”, “32-bit DWORD Value”. Let's name this parameter "NoDrive".
The value is set according to the table. In this table we select the value according to the letter of the reserved partition.

A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	J	K
1	2	4	8	16	32	64	128	256	512	1024
L	M	N	O	P	Q	R	S	T	U	V
2048	4096	8192	16384	32768	65536	131072	262144	524288	1048576	2097152
W	X	Y	Z
4194304	8388608	16777216	33554432

After making changes to system registry it is worth rebooting the system.

To learn how to hide the System Reserved section, watch the video:

If you are haunted by a disk (or rather a partition on your hard drive) marked “Reserved by the system,” then in this article I will describe in detail what it is and whether it can be deleted (and how to do it in cases where it is possible). The instructions are suitable for Windows 10, 8.1 and Windows 7.

It is also possible that you simply see a volume reserved by the system in your explorer and want to remove it from there (hide it so that it is not displayed) - I’ll say right away that this can be done very easily. So, let's take it in order. See also: How to hide a hard drive partition in Windows (including the System Reserved drive).

What is a system-reserved disk volume for?

A system-reserved partition was first created automatically in Windows 7; it was not present in earlier versions. It is used to store service data necessary for the operation of Windows, namely:

Boot parameters (bootloader) - by default, the bootloader is not located on the system partition, but in the “System Reserved” volume, and the OS itself is already on the system partition of the disk. Accordingly, manipulations with a reserved volume can lead to a boot loader error BOOTMGR is missing. Although you can make both the bootloader and system were on the same section. This partition can also store data for encrypting the hard drive with using BitLocker, if you are using it.

The system-reserved disk is created when creating partitions during the installation of Windows 7 or 8 (8.1), and it can occupy from 100 MB to 350 MB, depending on the OS version and the partition structure on the HDD. After installing Windows, this disk(volume) does not appear in Explorer, but in some cases it may appear there.

Now let's talk about how to delete this section. I will consider the following possible options in order:

How to hide a partition reserved by the system from Explorer How to prevent this partition from appearing on the disk when installing the OS

I do not indicate how to completely delete this partition, because this action requires special skills (transferring and setting up the boot loader, Windows itself, changing the partition structure) and may result in the need to reinstall Windows.

How to remove the “System Reserved” drive from File Explorer

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If you have a separate disk with the specified label in Explorer, you can simply hide it from there without performing any operations on it. hard drive. To do this, follow these steps:

Launch control Windows disks, to do this, you can press the Win + R keys and enter the command diskmgmt. msc
In the Disk Management utility, right-click on the system-reserved partition and select “Change drive letter or drive path.”
In the window that opens, select the letter under which this drive appears and click “Delete”. You will have to confirm the deletion of this letter twice (you will receive a message indicating that the partition is in use).

After these steps and possibly a reboot computer, this drive will no longer appear in Explorer.

Please note: if you see such a partition, but it is located not on the system physical hard drive, but on the second hard drive (that is, you actually have two of them), then this means that Windows was previously installed on it and, if it's not there important files, then using the same disk management you can delete all partitions from a given HDD, and then create a new one that occupies the entire size, format it and assign a letter to it - that is, completely delete the volume reserved by the system.

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How to prevent this section from appearing when installing Windows

In addition to the above option, you can also ensure that the system-reserved disk is not created at all by Windows 7 or 8 when installed on the computer.

Important: if your hard drive is divided into several logical partitions(Disk C and D), do not use this method, you will lose everything on drive D.

This will require the following steps:

During installation, even before the partition selection screen, click Shift keys+ F10, opens command line. Type the command diskpart and press Enter. After that, enter select disk 0 and also confirm your entry. Enter the command create partition primary and after you see that the primary partition has been successfully created, close the command prompt.

Then you should continue the installation and when prompted to select a partition for installation, select the only partition that is on this HDD and continue the installation - the System Reserved disk will not appear.

In general, I recommend not touching this section and leaving it as it is intended - it seems to me that 100 or 300 megabytes are not something for which you should delve into the system and, moreover, they are not available for use for a reason.

What is a system-reserved disk volume for?

A system-reserved partition was first created automatically in Windows 7; it was not present in earlier versions. It is used to store service data necessary for the operation of Windows, namely:

Boot Options ( Windows boot loader) - by default, the bootloader is not located on the system partition, but rather in the “System Reserved” volume, and the OS itself is already on the system partition of the disk. Accordingly, manipulations with a reserved volume may result in a boot loader error. Although you can make sure that both the bootloader and the system are on the same partition.
This partition can also store data for encrypting your hard drive using BitLocker, if you use it.

The system-reserved disk is created when creating partitions during the installation of Windows 7 or 8 (8.1), and it can occupy from 100 MB to 350 MB, depending on the OS version and the partition structure on the HDD. After installing Windows, this disk (volume) is not displayed in Explorer, but in some cases it may appear there.

Now let's talk about how to delete this section. I will consider the following possible options in order:

How to hide a system-reserved partition from Explorer
How to prevent this partition from appearing on the disk when installing the OS

How to remove the “System Reserved” drive from File Explorer

If you have a separate disk with the specified label in Explorer, you can simply hide it from there without performing any operations on the hard disk. To do this, follow these steps:

After these steps and possibly restarting the computer, the drive will no longer appear in Explorer.

Please note: if you see such a partition, but it is located not on the system physical hard drive, but on the second hard drive (i.e. you actually have two of them), then this means that Windows was previously installed on it and, if not there, important files, then using the same disk management you can delete all partitions from a given HDD, and then create a new one that takes up the entire size, format it and assign a letter to it - i.e. Completely delete a system-reserved volume.

How to prevent this section from appearing when installing Windows

In addition to the above option, you can also ensure that the system-reserved disk is not created at all by Windows 7 or 8 when installed on the computer.

Important: if your hard drive is divided into several logical partitions (Disk C and D), do not use this method, you will lose everything on drive D.

This will require the following steps:

During installation, even before the partition selection screen, press the Shift + F10 keys, the command line will open.
Enter the command diskpart and press Enter. After that enter selectdisk 0 and also confirm your entry.
Enter the command createpartitionprimary and after you see that the main partition has been successfully created, close the command prompt.

Display in Windows Explorer or file manager of an extra disk partition with the inscription “Reserved by the system” is not the norm. The chances of encountering this if Windows was installed from scratch (on a formatted disk partition), and the distribution was downloaded from the official Microsoft website or the installation was carried out from a licensed disk, are negligible. But a partition labeled “Reserved by the system” may appear in the number of disks and devices after experiments with redistributing disk space, restoring the system from backup copy and similar operations. This situation may also be a consequence of the use of pirated custom builds of Windows.

The section called “Reserved by the system” is, so to speak, the technical floor of Windows. This section, as the name suggests, is reserved by the operating system for its own needs, in particular, for storing boot parameters. Reserve a separate one for yourself Windows space started with version 7. In earlier versions of Windows, system disk C. During the evolution of the operating system, its creators decided to transfer critical data for loading and Windows performance to a separate disk partition and, naturally, hide them from the user’s eyes. The debut version of this innovation, Windows 7, reserves little for its needs, only 100 MB of disk space. But as new ones come out Windows versions the appetites of the “Reserved by the system” section increased and for Windows 8 amounted to 350 MB, and for Windows 10 – as much as 500 MB. The increase in technical space was a consequence of the introduction in Windows, starting with version 8, of pre-boot functionality for restoring the operating system.

The technical section “Reserved by the system” is created automatically during the installation process of Windows 7, 8.1 and 10. This happens during the creation stage system partition disk.

There is no threat to the fact that the “System Reserved” section is displayed in Explorer. Of course, provided that it is not used to store files like any other disk partition. After all, then the system will have the volume it needs to accommodate the data. There is no threat because important data is deleted from this partition in the usual way from the Explorer interface or file manager it won't work. Even if the “System Reserved” section is displayed in Explorer, its contents are hidden from the user. Only in the section properties can you see how much space is actually occupied.

Like the system drive C, the reserved partition is inside the Windows is protected from deleting and formatting. Damage important system areas in this way by experimenting with the functionality of the Windows Disk Management utility or third party programs to work with disk space, it won't work.

What then is the problem with displaying this section in Explorer? Yes, in principle, there is no problem. There is simply no need for an unused element in the number of computer disks and devices. And so that it doesn’t flicker before your eyes once again, you can remove it. But it’s better not to remove it the way some “experts” advise on the Internet - by deleting the “Reserved by the system” section and transferring its contents to the system drive C, and the right way, a way to hide this section.

To do this, launch the disk management utility. Quick access to that in Windows systems 8.1 and 10 are implemented by pressing the +X keys.

In Windows 7, you can use either the internal search or the Run service (start key + R). In the fields of both, enter the command:

In the disk management window, click the “Reserved by the system” section, call context menu and select the item to change the drive letter, as indicated in the screenshot.