Remove Microsoft Reserved Partition Mac Drive
Can I Delete Microsoft Reserved Partition

Remove microsoft reserved partition mac os

Important: This article covers removing the System Reserved partition created when installing Windows 7/8.x/10 on a MBR drive. Do not attempt to perform this procedure on UEFI systems where Windows is installed on a GPT drive.

Problem:

Just select the drive or partition that you wish to erase from the left panel. On the right, this will display the details about the selected drive/partitions along with several options. Go to the toolbar and click on the “Erase” option to delete disk partition content from Mac. To delete the System Reserved partition, you first have to move the boot files from the System Reserved partition onto the main Windows system drive. And this is harder than it sounds. It involves messing with the Registry, copying various files between drives, updating the BCD store, and making the main system drive the active partition. Step 1: Remove Windows. We can use Boot Camp Assistant to remove Windows first. This will remove the Windows partition, and restore your Mac back to its one-partition state. Your Mac data and istallation will be untouched, and the free space created will be added to the Mac partition. Run Boot Camp Assistant. If the Select Tasks step appears, select “Remove Windows 10 or later version,” then click Continue. Do one of the following: If your Mac has a single internal disk, click Restore. If your Mac has multiple internal disks, select the Windows disk, select “Restore disk to a single macOS partition,” then click Continue. Step 4: Click Restore to remove the Windows partition and restore the disk to a single-partition volume for macOS. The restore process, depending on the size of the partition and drive, may take a.

Windows setup created a System Reserved partition and installed the booting files on it. As a result, booting directly from the Windows partition is not possible.

Cause:

During the installation of Windows, a previously created primary NTFS partition was not specified as the destination. Windows Setup created the System Reserved partition containing the booting files and a second partition containing Windows. The size of this partition varies depending on the Windows version, but is usually 100MB to 500MB.

Solution:

Copy the Windows booting files and Windows RE (Windows 8.x/10 only) to the Windows partition, apply the necessary BCD file corrections, and (optionally) remove the System Reserved partition.

Important: The Windows booting files must reside on a partition with a NTFS cluster size of 4K (the default size). If your Windows partition does not have 4K clusters you will not be able to move the booting files to it. An example would be that you've formatted the Windows partition with 8K clusters. More information can be found in this Microsoft KB article.

Note: If you are using a version of Windows that supports BitLocker (e.g. Windows 7 Ultimate/Enterprise, Windows 8 Pro/Enterprise, Windows 10 Pro) and are currently using or plan to use BitLocker, do not remove the System Reserved partition.

Note: These instructions assume that the Windows partition is a primary partition. If Windows is installed to a logical partition, removing the System Reserved partition will most likely result in a non-booting system unless using a boot manager such as BootIt BM.

Instructions:

Remove Microsoft Reserved Partition Mac Drive

Part 1 - Copy the Booting Files and Configure the Windows Partition for Booting

Boot into Windows. If Windows boots to the Start screen (e.g. Windows 8) go to the Desktop.
To allow access to the System Reserved partition, use Disk Management to assign a drive letter to it:
1. Press WinKey+R (press and hold the Windows key and press R) to open the Run dialog.
2. Type diskmgmt.msc into the Open box and click the OK button. The Disk Management window will be displayed (may take several seconds to scan the drives).
3. Right-click on the System Reserved partition and select Change Drive Letter and Paths... from the pop-up menu.
  Note: If the System Reserved partition is hidden the label won't be shown (it will be blank) and the option to change the drive letter will be disabled. The partition will most likely be displayed as '100 MB Healthy (Active, Primary Partition)' (the size shown will vary depending on the version of Windows) and be located at the start of the drive, prior to the Windows partition. Please see Appendix A at the end of this article to unhide the partition.
4. Click the Add button.
5. An available drive letter will automatically be selected. You can keep it or select a different one. When finished, click the OK button. In this example, E: will be assigned to the System Reserved partition.
6. Leave the Disk Management window open (it will be needed again in later steps).
Note: If an AutoPlay window or pop-up appears, just close it or ignore it.
Press WinKey+E to open Explorer.
Make note of the drive letter assigned to the System Reserved partition and the letter assigned to the Windows partition. In this example, C: is the Windows partition and E: is the System Reserved (booting) partition.
Note: It's a good idea to give the partitions meaningful labels. This can help you tell them apart more easily. For example, the label for the Windows 7 partition might be Win7. This can be especially helpful when trying to tell which partition is which from the Command Prompt.
Close Explorer once you've determined the drive letter assignments.
Start an Administrator mode Command Prompt. To do this in Windows 7, click on the Start button, then All Programs, then Accessories. Right-click on the Command Prompt item and select Run as administrator from the pop-up menu. In Windows 8.x/10, press WinKey+X (or right-click the lower-left corner of the Desktop) and click Command Prompt (Admin) on the pop-up menu.
If a UAC prompt is displayed, click the Yes button.
Windows 8.x/10 only: Disable the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE). Run the following command:
reagentc /disable
Verify that the winre.wim file was correctly moved to the C:WindowsSystem32Recovery folder by running the following command (if your Windows partition is not C:, use the letter that's correct for your system). You should see the file in the directory listing.
dir /a C:WindowsSystem32Recovery
Note: This step is necessary because WinRE also needs to be moved from the System Reserved partition to the Windows partition. Leaving WinRE enabled will result in a broken/unusable WinRE after this procedure has completed. If the above command does not report success, you may need to manually copy the WinRE files (in the hidden Recovery{GUID} or RecoveryWindowsRE folder on the System Reserved partition) to an alternate location.
Unload the BCD registry hive by running the following command:
reg unload HKLMBCD00000000
Copy the bootmgr file from the System Reserved (booting) partition to the Windows partition (make sure to use the drive letters as assigned on your compu