Why is 100mb reserved by the system

Not an IT pro? Windows Client. Sign in. United States English. Ask a question. Quick access. Search related threads. Remove From My Forums. Answered by:. Archived Forums. Windows 7 Installation, Setup, and Deployment.

Sign in to vote. I have a Dell laptop with two physical hard drives. When I installed Windows 7, I deleted all the partitions on both physical disks. I installed windows and left the second disk unallocated. So why did the installer decide to place the MB System Reserved partition on the disk that wasn't being used?

Friday, October 30, PM. I'm not sure why TrekDozer's response was marked as the answer, but it doesn't answer my question. My question was why did the installer place the partition on the second disk instead of the disk windows was being installed on? I know why the partition is made, I just don't know why it was made there. Hi The System Reserved partition is always placed on the 'first physical hard drive or partition'. From the image you posted, even though you are using the 'DISK 0' as the second drive, it's obvious that this drive occupies the number one position on that system.

Besides being used for the Bitlocker component, the System Reserved drives main purpose is to provide a safe place to keep the boot and WinPE files that may be needed for recovery in case of a disaster. This is why it must be placed on the first drive. Hope this helps. Thank You for using Windows 7. Saturday, October 31, PM. This MB partition is where the Windows boot loader resides.

If you format your drives before starting the Windows 7 installation it's possible to avoid having this extra partition. Although with two physical hard drives you may have to remove the second one during the installation, I haven't read anything about this situation with dual hard drives.

Thanks for the response. You can select C: drive or the drive after C. As it only needs MB at most, you can resize partition and generate some free space from C drive to increase the System Reserved partition. Here we take C: partition for example and our aim is to take some space from C: partition to System Reserved partition. Step 3. In the pop-out "Move and Resize Partition" window, tick the box: I need to move this partition and drag the slider bar from left to right.

You can also enter the specific amount of space you want to shrink. After that, click OK. Step 4. Step 6. In the pop-out window, drag the slider bar rightward to extend System Reserved into unallocated space.

Step 7. 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. On Windows 8, it also involves disabling and then re-enabling the Windows Recovery Environment.

We used the GParted partition editor on an Ubuntu live CD to delete the System Reserved partition, and then made the main Windows system partition bootable with no attempt at copying the boot files. The Best Tech Newsletter Anywhere Join , subscribers and get a daily digest of news, geek trivia, and our feature articles. Your computer starts the boot loader off of the System Reserved partition, which in turn starts Windows from your system drive.

Your computer boots the unencrypted System Reserved partition, and then decrypts the main encrypted drive and starts the encrypted Windows system.