Is
System Reserved Partition not showing in Disk Management
? Are you looking for effective methods for fixing this issue? Here, this post from
MiniTool
provides several solutions that may help you work this issue out. You can have a try.
What is System Reserved Partition
The System Reserve Partition is a small partition on your hard drive that is used to store boot information for Windows. This partition was first introduced with Windows 7, so you can only find it on Windows 7 and the later versions. It consumes 100 MB of space on Windows 7, 350 MB of space on Windows 8, and 500 MB of space on Windows 10.
This kind of partition is created to reserve a portion of disk space for possible subsequent use during the clean installation process of the Windows operating system. It is often located before the system partition (normally C: drive). Additionally, the System Reserved Partition doesn’t have a drive letter. So, you can see it just in Disk Management or a third-party partition manager.
The System Reserved Partition is essential for a PC to boot up. You can view the main functions of this partition below.
Holds the
Boot Manager
Code, Boot Configuration Database (BCD), and Windows Recovery Environment.
Reserves space for startup files such as the BitLocker Drive Encryption so that you are likely to encrypt your system drive using BitLocker without repartitioning the drive.
Why is System Reserved Partition Not Showing in Disk Management
Since Windows usually doesn’t assign a drive letter to System Reserved Partition, you can only see this partition by opening Disk Management or other similar third-party tools. However, sometimes you may find System Reserved Partition not showing in Disk Management. It’s a troubling issue and may occur due to multiple reasons. Here we summarize several cases where you may encounter the issue on your Windows 10:
The size of this partition is less than 600MB.
The Boot Manager is missing.
During the process of cloning the drive, this partition may be renamed/modified or not cloned by the cloning software.
You delete this partition accidentally.
Once the “Windows 10 System Reserved Partition missing” issue happens, you are unable to update your PC or boot up the system, receiving the error message that says
Operating System not found
or
boot failure
. To make sure your Windows can run normally, you have to take measures to fix this issue. If you have no idea how to get rid of this issue, you can try the following methods.
In case data loss occurs due to any improper operation during the process, you’d better
back up your Windows
in advance.
Method 1: Increase Space in System Reserved Partition
Extending System Reserved Partition to get more space may help you solve the “Windows 10 System Reserved Partition missing” issue. Since there is no unallocated space adjacent to System Reserved Partition, you may see
Extend Volume grayed out
while attempting to extend this partition in Disk Management.
To ensure this operation can be done successfully, you ought to use a piece of third-party partition managing software. Here, we highly recommend MiniTool Partition Wizard to you. It’s a professional partition manager that contains a bunch of functions, such as creating/formatting/extending/resizing partitions, recovering data/partitions, migrating OS to SSD/HDD, and so on.
In this section, you will learn how to extend System Reserved Partition with MiniTool Partition Wizard in detail.
Part 1: Create a Bootable USB Flash Drive
To begin with, it’s recommended that you create a bootable media with the Bootable Media Builder function of this tool so that you can boot your system into the
MiniTool PE Loader
screen.
The Bootable Media Builder is supported in Pro and higher editions. So, upgrade MiniTool Partition Wizard to a proper edition before the operation. Besides, this operation will format your USB drive. So, you’d better make a backup first.
Step 1
: Connect your USB flash drive to a computer that can run normally.
Step 2
: Download and install MiniTool Partition Wizard. Then launch it to enter the main interface.
Now, you can try increasing the partition size with the instructions below.
Step 1
: Insert this bootable USB drive into your problematic computer. Then boot your computer from the bootable USB drive. Wait a while and MiniTool Partition Wizard will launch automatically.
Step 2
: Highlight System Reserved Partition and then select
Extend Partition
from the left action pane.
Step 3
: In the prompted window, select unallocated space or a partition to take space from. Then drag the sliding handle to decide how much space you want to take.
Step 4
: Click
OK
and
Apply
to confirm the pending operation.
Step 5
: After you finish the process, restart your PC to see if the missing System Reserved Partition is shown in Disk Management.
Method 2: Repair BCD
If the “System Reserved Partition not showing in Disk Management” issue is caused by the missing Boot Manager, it may indicate the BCD files in your Windows 10 are corrupted or missing. In this case, you should try to fix this issue by rebuilding BCD.
As mentioned earlier, you cannot boot your system normally due to the missing System Reserved Partition. Therefore, you have to try these troubleshooting fixes in
Windows RE
(Windows Recovery Environment). To enter Windows RE, you can use
Windows installation media
. Alternatively, just follow the steps below.
Step 1
: Turn off your computer, and then press the
Power
button to turn it on. Once the screen lights up, press and hold the
Power
button again to turn off the computer.
Step 2
: Repeat the action of turning on and turning off your computer several times until a blue screen with
Recovery
appears.
Step 3
: Click the
See advanced repair options
button, and then select the
Troubleshoot
option in the next window that shows
Choose an option
.
Step 4
: After that, go to
Advanced Options
>
Command Prompt
.
Step 5
: Once you enter
Command Prompt
in Win-RE, you can now begin to rebuild BCD by typing the following commands one by one and pressing
Enter
after each.
bootrec/ fixboot
bootrec/ scanos
bootrec/ rebuildbcd
After these commands are executed, restart your Windows to see if System Reserved Partition is now in Disk Management.
Another possible solution you can try to solve the “System Reserved Partition not showing in Disk Management” issue is to rebuild the system partition. Here’re the detailed steps for this way.
Step 1
: Go to
Command Prompt
in Windows RE.
Step 2
: In the prompted panel, type
bcdboot c:\windows /s c:
and press
Enter
to create a boot configuration file on a system drive instead of the System Reserved partition.
Step 3
: After that, type
bootrec /fixmbr
and press
Enter
to execute this command.
Further reading:
If you fail to carry out the
bootrec /fixmbr
command and receive the error message:
Element not found
, you need to set the partition active. To do this, try the following steps.
Step 1
: Type the following commands in
Command Prompt
in Win-RE and press
Enter
after each of them:
diskpart
select disk *
(* represents the disk number of the system drive)
list partition
select partition N
(N is the number of the system partition)
active
exit
Step 2
: After that, carry out these commands to rebuild BCD files.
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /rebuildbcd
Method 4: Recover System Reserved Partition
If you delete System Reserved Partition accidentally, it’s sure you cannot find it in Disk Management. What can you do to restore the deleted partition? Fortunately, MiniTool Partition Wizard is here to help you recover System Reserved Partition. Just follow the step-by-step tutorial to get the partition back.
Step 1
: Go to
MiniTool Partition Wizard
in Win-PE. Then click the
Partition Recovery
option at the top toolbar.
Step 2
: In the pop-up window, click
Next
. Then select the specific disk where System Reserved Partition was located and click
Next
.
Step 3
: Select a scanning range according to your needs and then click
Next
to go on.
Step 4
: In the next window, select a proper scanning method and click
Next
.
It’s better to choose
Quick Scan
first. If the scan doesn’t find the lost partition you need, then try a
Full Scan
.
Step 5
: After the scan is completed, all the partitions including lost/deleted and existing partitions will be listed. You may also see a partition labeled as
System Reserved Partition
. Just check all the partitions (both lost and existing) you need and click
Finish
.
Step 6
: Finally, click
Apply
to execute the operation. Then don’t forget to right-click the restored System Reserved Partition, select
Set Active
and click
Apply
to mark this partition as active.
Method 5: Reset Windows
If the above solutions fail to solve the “Windows 10 System Reserved Partition missing” issue, you can try resetting your Windows. This way can always help you remove plenty of issues on your PC. To successfully perform this operation, you can try the ways mentioned in this post:
How To Factory Reset Windows 10: Full Guide
This post offers a couple of solutions to the “System Reserved Partition not showing in Disk Management” error. If you are one of those who run into this issue, you can follow these solutions to work it out. If you have any problems with this issue, you can leave a message in the comment part below.
Get anything wrong while using MiniTool Partition Wizard? If so, you can contact us via
[email protected]
. We will reply to you as soon as possible.
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