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That is a hidden partition reserved by Microsoft for future use.
I (personally) would not delete it. Just create a full system image and you should be good to go.
Hope this helps,
WOT
Great - thanks WOT.
Hi,
For future use ? It's the GPT file system partition, that's all.That is a hidden partition reserved by Microsoft for future use.
Cheers,
Oh really? I thought it was the MSR partition?
https://wiki2.org/en/Microsoft_Reserved_Partition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micros...rved_Partition
Hi,
Well yes, but it's the "for future use" that triggered my reply. It only varies in size depending on the size of the drive (16Mb to 128Mb).
If you convert a blank (as in in factory fresh or cleaned using diskpart) drive to GPT it will be the first partition on that drive.
You won't find it on Bios/Non-Efi systems as these do not support GPT.
The position of most partitions isn't all that critical on EFI systems although some positions may be inconvenient for practical reasons.
I've never experienced that GPT partition change in size, never.
Cheers,
WOT is mostly correct. The MSR partition is a bit of an enigma as nobody seems to be clear on its exact purpose, although some say it is/will be used by bitlocker for example.
I have many installs where it is not present with no impact at all. It is a real PITA actually as it is the only partition that cannot be moved once created even with tools like minitool partition wizard.
Leaving it there is no big deal, but on my 32 GB tablet, I delete it and all recovery partitions to gain a bit of extra space, only leaving the 100 MB EFI fat32 partition and the Windows partition.
The MSR partition was always 128 MB until W19 where by default it is now 16GB. It is always installed second after the Recovery partition on clean installs.
Wikipedia:
A Microsoft Reserved Partition, or MSR, is a partition of a data storage device, which is created simply to reserve a chunk of disk space for possible subsequent use by the operating system software of a Windows operating system. No data is stored within the MSR; Windows may take from the MSR partition for the creation of new partitions, which themselves may contain data structures.
Hi,
Yep. I found that out when I created a Windows To Go stick where only the basic two partitions are created.
Cheers,