Get rid of hidden system restore partition

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I have a Toshiba laptop which I’ve upgraded to Windows 10 with little trouble and no issues. I now have a few system image backups I took with Macrium Reflect. The laptop contains a hidden system restore partition (which will presumably restore the original old Win7). As I will never need this partition, how do I get rid of it and free up 10GB?

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Can you post Disk Management screen shot ?

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There’s a screenshot  from the Disk Management snap-in and one from Macrium reflect.

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It seems that Disk Management thinks the small partition is the recovery partition and the 10GB partition is just an additional partition. Macrium thinks the small partition is the system partition and the 10GB partition is the recovery partition. I’m confused. What the **** is a separate “System” partition? I thought all that stuff was on C: Is this just Toshiba messing with my mind? Can I do an image backup of C:, then do a complete reformat and then a restore of the C: image?

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[DougCuk]

The third partition (10.17GB) appears to have a disk Label “HDDRECOVERY” – but this is not displayed in the Disk Management Console view – most likely because it is marked as an OEM hidden recovery partition. This partition can be removed.

It is slightly confusing as to why your SYSTEM boot partition (the 1.46GB Active, Recovery Partition) is so large. Windows 10 usually creates a 0.5GB (500MB) partition on an MBR formatted disk – yours is 3 times that size.

I usually use the free version of EaseUS Partition Master to reconfigure disks – with this utility you will be able to delete the 10GB partition. Once you have deleted the partition this utility would then allow you to expand the C: drive to incorporate the 10GB of “unallocated” space.

You should always have your data backed up (or an disk image) before attempting this type of reconfiguration. However I have never had a failure using this utility – but to keep things simple I would recommend separate steps – delete the partition first and then expand the C: drive afterwards .

• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by DougCuk.

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Tom

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Tom wrote:

how do I get rid of it and free up 10GB?

You have so much free space you will never need that 10GB. I’d leave it alone.

If you ever find yourself running out of space it’s a good excuse to upgrade the disk / machine.

cheers, Paul

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