Can I Delete MSR Reserved Partition When Installing Windows 10?

Overview of the MSR reserved partition

An MSR, short for Microsoft Reserved Partition, is a partition of a data storage device, which is created to reserve a portion of disk space for possible subsequent use by a Windows OS installed on a separate partition.

Can I delete the MSR reserved partition on Windows 10?

If you find there’s not enough storage space on your hard drive, it may be possible to delete the MSR reserved partition after Windows 10 installation.  But by doing this, Windows 10 won’t boot properly as the boot loader files are stored on this partition.

How to install Windows 10 without creating the MSR reserved partition?

If you want to install Windows 10 on a new hard disk that’s completely empty and don’t want to see an MSR reserved partition after the OS installation, you can create a primary partition to occupy the entire amount of storage space in the course of the installation so the Windows installer will accept the fact that there’s no room for the system reserved partition. Now, do as follows to finish the steps.

1. Hit Shift + F10 simultaneously during Windows 10 installation to launch Command Prompt.

2. Type "diskpart" into the CMD window and hit the “ENTER” key.

3. Type "select disk *" and hit "ENTER". Here, "*" represents the sequence number of the hard disk where you’ll install OS. The sequence number can be found from the Disk Management program.

4. Type "create partition primary" to create a partition using the entire amount of unallocated space on the hard disk.

5. Proceed with the Windows 10 installation and select the partition you previously created when asked to create a partition.

How to move the MSR reserved partition to another hard disk?

"Should I delete the MSR reserved partition on Windows 10?" Then the answer is negative as told before. The partition contains the necessary boot loader files for your system to boot properly. However, you can move the MSR reserved partition to another hard disk if you find there’s not enough space on your current disk or the MSR reserved partition was mistakenly installed to the wrong drive.

Option 1. Use Disk Management

Disk Management is a Windows built-in disk manager to manage both your hard disks and their partitions. With this program, you can perform various operations including volume creation, formatting, and volume deletion. Now, we’re going to create a new partition for boot loader files on another hard disk and delete the old MSR reserved partition from the current hard disk.

1. Right-click on "This PC" on the desktop and go to "Manage > Storage > Disk Management".

2. Find the disk where you want to create the MSR reserved partition. Right-click on any unallocated space on the hard disk and select "New Simple Volume".

Note: If there’s no unallocated space on the disk, you can create some by deleting or shrinking existing partitions.

3. Follow the onscreen guide to create a new partition.

Tips:

★The size of the MSR reserved partition is 100MB on Windows 7, 350MB on Windows 8, and 500MB on Windows 10.

★You can label the new partition with "System Reserved" when you create it.

4. Assign a drive letter to the current MSR reserved partition to make it shown in File Explorer. Then, copy everything from the current MSR reserved partition to the newly created one.

5. Remove the drive letter from the newly created MSR reserved partition and then make it bootable.

6. Reboot your PC and check whether it boots normally. If yes, you can securely delete the old MSR reserved partition; or else, you must use a Windows OS repair disc to perform a startup repair.

Option 2. Try a third-party disk manager

As you can see above, it’s rather complex to move MSR reserved partition with Disk Management and meanwhile, there’re chances that the PC won’t boot after the migration. So, it’s imperative to find a more reliable alternative to do this. Here, I recommend – AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard – the most powerful and convenient freeware for disk management. With it, you can directly copy the MSR reserved partition to another hard drive in only a few clicks and most importantly, without data loss.

Can I delete MSR reserved partition when installing Windows 10? No, you can’t. However, you can move this partition to another hard drive if necessary with this practical third-party freeware.

Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard and wait until all hard disks and their partitions appear.

Step 2. Right-click on the current MSR reserved partition and select "Clone Partition".

Step 3. Select "Sector-by-Sector Clone" and hit "Next".

Clone Partition Quickly: Only clone the used space of the partition, and supports resizing the partition during the clone process.

Sector-by-Sector Clone: clone all sectors of the partition to another disk, no matter it is used or not.

Step 4. Select any unallocated space on the target hard disk and click on "Next". If there’s no unallocated space, then, you should delete a partition or resize a partition to create some.

Note: Remember to tick the option "Optimize the performance of SSD" if the destination disk is an SSD.

Step 5. Next, you can resize the new MSR reserved partition. Here, you should set the drive letter to "None". When it’s done, hit "Finish".

Step 6. Hit "Apply" as the screenshot shows to apply these changes.

Conclusion

Can I delete the MSR reserved partition when installing Windows 10? Generally, you’re not recommended to do so as it contains necessary boot loader files. But if you think it occupies your storage or you find it’s placed on a wrong drive, you can move it to another hard drive via Disk Management or third-party freeware - AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. By comparison, the latter one is more convenient as it’s faster and easier. The AOMEI product can do more than partition clone, other features including OS to SSD migration and hard disk clone are also supported by it. But to use some of them, you should upgrade the software to its professional edition.