Recovery Drive Full in Windows 10 – How to Extend it Securely?

Windows 10 Recovery partition is full

“So I updated my Windows 10 to the Spring Update 1803, and I get a new partition. Windows keeps prompting me that the ‘partition G:\’ is full. I checked that partition which is a 450MB drive with 400MB in use. I can see there is G:\Recovery\WindowsRE\Winre.wim inside the drive with the help of disk cleanup. It seems like a Recovery Partition. Can I remove it? If not, how can I increase the partition space? I just don’t want to see the prompting any more. Help!”

It is a help post on Recovery Drive is full in Windows 10. What is the Recovery partition and how come you get it? What can you do about that drive? Everything about the Windows 10 450MB Recovery partition will be introduced in the next part.

What is Recovery drive in your Windows 10?

When you install Windows 10 on a GPT disk, you’ll get a Recovery Partition (System Reserved Partition on MBR disk) and an EFI system partition without a drive letter. The Recovery Partition size is about 450MB or 500MB for Windows 10 (200MB for Windows 8/8.1 and 100MB for Windows 7).

Recovery partition, as its name implies, allows you to restore Windows OS to a certain state. So to some extent, it is not harmful to system booting and you don’t need to delete it. The partition will also be created after a system upgrading like Windows 7 to Windows 8/8.1/10 or a simply updating. There is no wonder multiple Recovery partitions in Windows 10 have been created.

By default, Recovery drive is hidden and cannot be accessed in Windows Explorer. So the problem in the example is a specific issue about that update. It can be fixed by removing drive letter of the partition. Also, you can disable low disk space check in Registry Editor.

What to do when Recovery drive is full in Windows 10?

There are two ways in total to fix Windows 10 450MB Recovery partition full in different situations. Let’s get to know them one by one.

1. Remove drive letter for Windows 10 Recovery drive

If you get the low space warning as the user in the example, you can try to remove its drive letter to skip Windows checking.

1. Run Diskpart.exe as administrator.

2. Input following commands successively.

•list volume (identify the Recovery drive with partition size)

•select volume #(replace the drive number with the correct one)

•remove letter=D

3. Close Command Prompt and restart your Windows 10 to take effect.

Some Recovery drive becomes full day by day, chances are that the drive is occupying by some programs (usually Windows Backup) and the files (System Images) are producing constantly. Just check what inside of the drive and stop the program. Otherwise, you can resize Windows 10 Recovery partition for that purpose.

2. Extend Recovery partition in Windows 10

Alternatively, you can try to extend the Recovery drive to make it bigger when it is almost full in Windows 10. If there is adjacent unallocated space behind the Recovery drive, you can use the Disk Management or DiskPart to extend the partition. If not, you can resort to the free partition manager:AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard.

This partition software is more advanced than Windows inbuilt tool. If there is unallocated space, but not adjacent to the recovery drive, it allows you to move the partition, which locates in the middle of the recovery partition and unallocated space, to the right side so as to make them adjacent. At last, extend the recovery drive with the unallocated space. Besides, you can also use its “Merge Partitions”feature to directly merge the non-adjacent unallocated space into the to-be-extended partition. Free download it and have a try.

Note:✎

The following demonstration is based on there is already unallocated space for extending Recovery drive. If there is no such space available on the disk,please first shrink another partition with redundant space to get one.

Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard on your Windows 10. Right-click the Recovery drive and select "Advanced" > "Merge Partitions".

Step 2. Tick the unallocated space and click on “OK”.

Step 3. Click "Apply" and then "Proceed" to execute the operations.

The advanced version AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional allows you to allocate free space from existing partition to another without shrinking and merging.

Summary

When you find Recovery drive full in Windows 10, you have two solutions for corresponding situations, remove drive letter of Recovery drive and make it hidden, or extend the Recovery drive to contain more space. AOMEI Partition Assistant also helps you copy Recovery partition to USB drive if the need ever arises.