How to remove System Reserved from my computer?

Question

Here's the full story: I had windows 7 professional 64bit installed on one hard drive. I later got a second hard drive for extra storage space. For some reason my windows installation crashed and I decided to reinstall. I didn't want to just format the hard drive because I had a lot of things I wanted to keep from that hard drive so I unplugged the hard drive with the faulty windows installation and installed windows on the second hard drive. I then copied the files I needed to the new hard drive and tried to clear the old one. I unplugged the new hard drive with the new windows and put the windows install disc into the DVD drive. I went through the wizard until I had to choose a partition. I deleted the system reserved partition and formatted the local disc. I then cancelled the windows installation. I then restarted to see if it had removed windows. It said something about boot loaders and press Ctrl alt delete to restart. I turned it off and booted in the new windows installation. The old drive has been formatted, there's nothing there, but there is still the system reserved drive with 86.2mb free of 99.9mb. I don't want this drive to show. I just want my OS dive and another drive for storage space. How do I get rid of the system reserved drive? Preferably without having to move the OS to the old drive. I don't want to have to copy hundreds of gigs all over again

Answer 1

You articulated that very well, but let me ask, Did you once have a Linux partition on that drive, or are you talking about the factory system reserve from the original old drive. If it's the old drive, do what you already did, again, delete all partition, and reformat the entire disk as one NTSF drive. You can even do that with an old XP CD.

Then if you want to reformat, you can do that from your operating system.

You could also the second drive, a backup mirrored copy of your master drive using free cloning software. Do a google search EZgigIV or use free partition software like Partition Magic (search EPMsetup). If it's the master drive with your operating system on it, that has the system reserve, you're kind of stuck with it, unless your willing to reformat it. And if the master has the reserve, I wouldn't clone it, except to have the data backed up. Hopefully you installed the O/S on the drive without the reserve, it'll make it easier to remove the sys reserve.

Good luck. .

Answer 2

Hi,



Type "disk management" without quotes into the Start/Search box and hit



In the disk management window you can delete the System Reserved partition. (You can also right-click the large data partition and choose to expand it to take over the 100mb that sys reserved previously used.



Alternatively, you can just right-click the sys reserv partition and choose Change Drive Letter and delete its drive letter or select None. The partition would still be there but would not show in Computer.

Answer 3

you have made a mess



here is a similar person to you, if you have a read it might help



The Reserved drive is Windows 7 feature to provide RECOVERY options so

its integral to windows 7. You probably can get rid of it, but its just gonna end in

you not getting recovery options.

if i were you i would delete all the partitions, making the disk BLANK and then

install windows using all the defaults.



you should never fight the system thats there to protect you.

its taken microsoft 30 years to offer this option so make use of it wisely