Someone has given me a Christmas Present!

[joddle]

After installing the latest W10 updates I find I now have a new little partition on my C drive called - System Reserved. Never has such a thing before - or at least it has never showed up as a drive with a drive letter before. It is set at 99 mbytes with 65 mbytes free but there is nothing in it!

 

How did it get there? Can it be safely removed? - I get dire warnings if I try and delete saying other things may well not then function.

[Rustys]

See if this helps to explain what it is used for.

 

The System Reserved Partition holds the Boot Configuration Database, Boot Manager Code, Windows Recovery Environment and reserves space for the startup files which may be required by BitLocker, in case you use the BitLocker Drive Encryption feature.

 

https://www.howtogeek.com/192772/what-is-the-system-reserved-partition-and-can-you-delete-it/

[joddle]

My unchecking "show hidden files" in file options it has gone for now - but why did it suddenly appear? for months nothing then all of a sudden there it was and designated as my I: drive which was a real pain as I use that drive letter for my external drives for auto backups and so the system partition got swamped which is when I noticed it.-

[Rustys]

That has been created since Windows 7. So it is not something that has just appeared. As to why it now has a drive letter associated to it we will need to ask @KenB and or @starbuck. May be caused by an update or one of the new releases I can not say hoping that they might have an answer for us.

The System Reserved partition was introduced with Windows 7, so you won’t find it on previous versions of Windows.

[joddle]

That has been created since Windows 7. So it is not something that has just appeared. As to why it now has a drive letter associated to it we will need to ask @KenB and or @starbuck. May be caused by an update or one of the new releases I can not say hoping that they might have an answer for us.

 

But this was a clean install of W10 onto this machine W7 has never been on this HDD - I had install W10 afresh after a HD failure last year. However last week it did just appear - I had changed nothing. It was not visible a week ago although may have existed unseen - When the drive appeared it had a drive letter which is when it was noticed - as a result my backup process was trying to write to it!!!! Looking in the partition there are no files or folders which show up at all although the disk manager says it is not empty.

[Starbuck]

My unchecking "show hidden files" in file options it has gone for now - but why did it suddenly appear? for months nothing then all of a sudden there it was

It would have been created when Win10 was installed.... but something must have shown the 'Hidden Files' .... making it visible to you.

 

Looking in the partition there are no files or folders which show up at all although the disk manager says it is not empty.

Normally the System Recovery won't be assigned a drive letter.

If you wish to view the contents of this partition, you will have to first give this partition a Drive Letter, using Disk Management.

Next open Folder Options and allow showing of hidden files, folders, and drives option, as well as protected operating system files.

Once you have done this, open your File Explorer to view the partition and the files it contains.

You may see files like bootmgr, BOOTNXT, BOOTSECT.bak and folders like Boot, Recovery, System Volume Information, $RECYCLE BIN, etc.

 

Can it be safely removed?

I would recommend that you do not delete this partition.

[joddle]

Thanks Starbuck - even with file options showing hidden files and it having a drive letter there appears to be nothing in it but its size in explorer suggests at least a third of it is used! Anyway have now removed the drive letter and it now does not show so maybe its been there all the time!