Deleting the system partition on your device would be very bad news. The system partition stores critical files your operating system needs to boot up and function properly. Here's what you can expect:

• Boot Failure: Your computer most likely wouldn't boot at all. The system partition holds essential boot files that instruct your device on how to load the operating system. Without them, your computer wouldn't know where to start.
• Data Loss: While the system partition itself doesn't typically store your personal data like documents or photos, deleting it might cause further data loss if the process goes wrong.
• System Reinstallation: In most cases, you'd need to completely reinstall your operating system to recover from a deleted system partition. This would erase all your programs and data on the main drive unless you have a backup.

In short, deleting the system partition is strongly discouraged. It can render your device unusable and lead to data loss.

You should not delete it because the System Reserved Partition contains critical system files necessary for the boot process. If you delete this partition, your computer will no longer be able to start up. Deleting or damaging the system partition can result in the inability to boot the computer and may require advanced recovery techniques to restore functionality.

A system partition is a partition that’s been created by the manufacturer of a disk or that’s been created by an OS image when it was burnt to a USB disk. These partitions vary by type; some might be boot partitions, others may EFI partitions, or recovery partitions.

They contain information for recovering important system files and they cannot be created nor deleted like a normal partition.

The System Reserved partition serves several important functions:

• It contain important components such as the Boot Manager code and the Boot Configuration Database (BCD). These elements are crucial for initiating the boot process of the Windows operating system.
• Additionally, the partition reserves space for startup files necessary for BitLocker Drive Encryption. This allocation ensures that if you choose to encrypt your system drive with BitLocker, there's no need to repartition the drive to accommodate the encryption process.
• In Windows 10, the System Reserved partition also stores data related to the recovery environment. This includes tools and utilities used for troubleshooting and system recovery processes, enhancing the system's resilience in the event of startup issues or system failures.

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The System Reserved partition contains two important things:

• The Boot Manager and Boot Configuration Data: When your computer starts, the Windows Boot Manager reads the boot data from the Boot Configuration Data (BCD) Store. Your computer starts the boot loader off of the System Reserved partition, which in turn starts Windows from your system drive.
• The startup files used for BitLocker Drive Encryption: If you ever decide to encrypt your hard drive with BitLocker drive encryption, the System Reserved partition contains the necessary files for starting your computer. Your computer boots the unencrypted System Reserved partition, and then decrypts the main encrypted drive and starts the encrypted Windows system

Prevent the System Reserved Partition From Being Created

If you really don’t want this partition on your drive—for whatever reason—the ideal thing to do is prevent it from being created in the first place. Rather than create a new partition in unallocated space from within the Windows installer, you can create a new partition that consumes all unallocated space by using another disk-partitioning tool before running Windows installation.

When it comes a time, point the Windows installer at the partition you created. The Windows installer accepts that there’s no room for System Reserved partition and installs Windows onto a single partition. Bear in mind that you’re still not saving the entire 100 MB, 350 MB, or 500 MB that the partition would have taken. The boot files instead must be installed on your main system partition.

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If you want to reinstall your OS keeping all data create a partition first of all (maybe 25 GB) or more if you want to use a lot of Program files .

Now what happens when you delete the partition?

It depends.

It depends on what kind of partion it is.

If it's a free space deleting it won't do anything as there is nothing to delete.

You can later on allocate this free space to a fresh disk partition for your use.

If the disk partion contains any data and then you delete it all the data is gone and that disk partion will turn into free or unallocated space.

Now coming to the system partition thing if you delete it then the OS will fail to load.

That disk contains some codes to load the OS in to the disk (called as Boot loader Programs) and hence you won't be able to load any OS or do anything on your system if it's deleted.

Always have a back-up of important data so that you can rollback just in case things take the wrong turn.

Yes and it is recommended. The install program is set up to re-partition the hard drive with a boot sector and several partitions, some for the system, some for data.

If you are not familiar with disk geometries, partitions, etc. just let the installer do it.
This will wipe out all data on the disk. But it is the fasted and most reliable option.

I would go as far as saying you can take it a step further. Obtain the disk software from the manufacturer and run it. It is usually a standalone special disk that boots itself up and runs its own mini-operating system, detects the disk, and allows you to low-level format it. Low-level format is where the manufacturer’s software reinitializes the disk to factory defaults. First you can run a low-level diagnostic at a basic level not possible with any other software, to detect and avoid any bad parts of the disk. This is good if the disk is more than 2 or 3 years old, but is good practice when obtaining a used disk of any age. After those tests pass, and a low-level format is performed, the disk is in good shape to be reformatted by the installation software.

Yes, just use diskpart to clean the drive and it will delete all partitions on your drive. You can also delete just the Windows partition.

Boot from a Windows installer on USB/DVD.

When you are at the setup screen hold shift and press F10 and a command prompt will open. Write diskpart and hit enter.

The screen will pause for awhile as diskpart loads, eventually you will get a diskpart command line.

Type list disk and hit enter, a list of your hard drives on your computer come up by size. Identify which one has the partition you wish to delete.

Type select disk 0 and hit enter where you put the number of which disk you want to access in place of 0.

Type list partition and hit enter, it will show a list of partitions. Identify the number of which one you want to delete (the Windows one).

At this point if you wish to delete all of the partitions simply type clean and hit enter and your drive will be erased. Otherwise if you want to just delete the Windows one type select partition 0 and hit enter. Where 0 is the number of the partition you wish to delete.

Type delete partition and hit enter. Your Windows partition will now be deleted.

Lucky for you, there are zillions of ways to kick Win outta your system:

• Use fdisk, the standard disk partitioning utility in *Nix. Simply let fdisk list your partitions by:

sudo fdisk -l 

which will show something like:

Disk /dev/sda: 931.5 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors 
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes 
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes 
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes 
Disklabel type: gpt 
Disk identifier: C543808E-CFA0-41B4-AC07-20D165597DB0 
 
Device          Start        End    Sectors   Size Type 
/dev/sda1        2048     411647     409600   200M EFI System 
/dev/sda2     1026048    1107967      81920    40M unknown 
/dev/sda3     1107968    1370111     262144   128M Microsoft reserved 
/dev/sda4     1370112    5564415    4194304     2G Windows recovery environment 
/dev/sda5     5564416   92323839   86759424  41.4G Microsoft basic data 
/dev/sda6  1935523840 1953523119   17999280   8.6G Windows recovery environment 
/dev/sda7    92323840   93347839    1024000   500M Microsoft basic data 
/dev/sda8    93347840 1935523839 1842176000 878.4G Linux LVM 
 
Partition table entries are not in disk order. 

then run fdisk with the partition you want to delete:

sudo fdisk /dev/sda3 

then choose ‘d’ (delete), then ‘w’ (write changes and exit). And your partition is gone.

• Use parted, the GNU fdisk-competitor. invoke it and ask it to print a list of partitions:

(parted) print 
Model: ATA ST1000LM014-1EJ1 (scsi) 
Disk /dev/sda: 1000GB 
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B 
Partition Table: gpt 
Disk Flags:  
 
Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name                          Flags 
 1      1049kB  211MB   210MB   fat16        EFI System Partition          boot, esp 
 2      525MB   567MB   41.9MB  fat32        Basic data partition          hidden 
 3      567MB   701MB   134MB                Microsoft reserved partition  msftres 
 4      701MB   2849MB  2147MB  ntfs         Basic data partition          hidden, diag 
 5      2849MB  47.3GB  44.4GB  ntfs         Basic data partition          msftdata 
 7      47.3GB  47.8GB  524MB   ext4                                       msftdata 
 8      47.8GB  991GB   943GB                                              lvm 
 6      991GB   1000GB  9216MB  ntfs         Microsoft recovery partition  hidden, diag 

and delete using rm:

rm NUMBER 

• GParted is a GUI front-end to parted. You can install it from most distro repositories. It provides the same functionality as parted, but in an easy-to-use GUI front-end.

(Screenshot taken on my Fedora box)

• You can go “low level” and use dd:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda3 bs=1024 count=1024 

you can wipe essentially any disk, file or directory by writing zeroes from /dev/zero. Note that this only destroys the disk, but doesn’t remove the disk entry from the partition table.

As the name indicates the Recovery Partition is used to restore operating system and is a disk partition that stores information and files needed to restore the operating system of a computer.

By default, this partition is usually located on the hard drive. It can be used to reinstall the operating system, as well as to perform system repairs in the event of a hardware or software failure.

First of check if your system has Recovery Partition. To check if you have a recovery partition on your Windows 10 computer.

• First, you can open the Disk Management utility and look for a partition with the label “Recovery”.
• Another way is you can open the Command Prompt and type “wmic partition get name, size, type” to see a list of all partitions on your computer. Finally, you can use a third-party tool such as AOMEI Partition Assistant to inspect your hard drive for partitions.

It is is safe and easy to delete the Recovery Partition, however, there are risks involved with deleting a recovery partition. If you delete the recovery partition, you may no longer have the ability to restore your computer to its original settings. You will also no longer have the ability to create a backup image of your system. In addition, it may not be possible to undo the deletion of the recovery partition.

Deleting a Recovery Partition in Windows 10 is a simple process. To do this, you need to open the Disk Management Utility tool:

• Open Disk Management and type diskmgmt.msc into the search box
• Now you can see the partitions, right-click on the Recovery Partition and select Delete Volume
• Confirm your decision and the Recovery Partition will be deleted.

Thanks.

Recovery partition is a small partition on your hard drive that can help you restore your Windows Operating system or troubleshoot system issues in case of any system failures.

When you check Disk Management, Recovery partitions are labeled “Healthy (Recovery Partition)” and have no letters. Also, if you right click these partitions, you only have the ‘Help’ option unlike other partitions with more options like ‘Open’, ‘Shrink Volume’, ‘Extend Volume’ and others.

You cannot delete a recovery partition with Windows Disk Management because it contains vital system files. You can use diskpart.exe to delete the recovery partition.

A new recovery partition is created. This means the old recovery partition will be outdated and can therefore be deleted to free up some disk space.

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OEM partitions are basically recovery partitions that are created to help users restore their laptops to the original state in case of a system error. These partitions are created by the manufacturer itself and contain all the essential files that’ll help you restore your laptop to its factory settings without any hassle.

You can open the Disk Management tool to check if your PC/laptop has an OEM partition or not. In general, a new laptop always comes with a single OEM partition. However, when you update your laptop to the newer Windows OS, the system automatically creates a new OEM partition as well.

As an OEM partition occupies a lot of space on the computer (especially, if there is more than one). So when you need to free up unallocated space on your disk, you will not find anything better than removing an OEM partition.

However, you should not delete the OEM partition; it may cause more problems. In addition, it is better to have the Windows installation CD (in case you need to restore the OS) or to have a backup/image of the system, so your computer will be safe.

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Use some form of partition management tool. Most likely, you will NOT be able to adjust such things on the current “system” drive. Very few operating systems allow you to change stuff like partitions on the drive the OS is installed onto.

Which likely means, you need to reboot from another OS on another drive. Easiest would be to place some Live-System Linux (probably something like Linux Mint) onto a USB stick and then boot from that, so you can use its internal partition manager tools.

Otherwise, if the disk is a second drive, not the one on which the current OS resides, you can use any of many tools available:

On Windows, that would be either the GUI tool Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) or the command line tool DiskPart.

For other operating systems, similar tools can be had.

Like the Disk Utility built into Apple’s MacOS.

Or a very common Unix / Linux tool called GParted:

Or the KDE Partition Manager:

Or some 3rd party program.

Nearly all of them show what physical drives are attached, and what partitions are there at the time. With options to delete, create, resize, move, merge, etc. Depending on the tool.

If in doubt, I’d go with a Live System Linux, and use something like GParted or KDE Partition Manager. They’re as comprehensive as it gets, and work with EVERYTHING (unlike some others).

Partitions are logical containers, and one partition can occupy the entire disk space or just a portion of the disk. Without partitions, the disk is unallocated and cannot be used to store data. When creating partitions, we can decide the size, count, file system, and type based on specific requirements.

Things to take care of before partition:

• To delete partition, you will requires that you should get the Administrator privileges for the computer, thus you need to login computer as administrator.
• Back up your data, deleting partitions is destructive to files, for files will be deleted at the same time. Please copy the files you want to preserve to another partition or hard disk in advance.

To delete partitions on your HDD (Hard Disk Drive), you can use disk management tools built into your operating system. Here's a general guide for Windows:

Step 1. Launch Disk Management: right-click on the Start menu and choose "Disk Management".

Step 2. Find the partition you want to remove, right-click on it and choose "Delete Volume" from the context menu.

Step 3. Click "Yes" button to continue if you've backed up data.

Step 4. Click "Yes" again to force delete the partition.

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Q: Can I delete logical partition?

Yes. In Windows you can use diskmgmt.msc. In Linux you can use fdisk.

Logical partitions are found on MBR partitioned drives as these can have upto four primary partitions, although Windows normally allows a maximum of three primary partitions and one extended partition, which is subdivided into logical partitions.

GPT partitioned drives overcome the 4 primary partition limit so do not need the extended partition and logical partitions.

fdisk will allow you to delete the extended partition, which effectively deletes all the logical partitions from the partition table. diskmgmt.msc requires all logical partitions to be deleted before the the extended partition is deleted.

Windows has restrictions on what can be done with partition tables on USB pendrives. These vary with different versions of Windows.

Mainly, you won’t be able to restore your computer to the original manufacturer’s state using that partition should the need arise.

In the not so long ago days, a CD or DVD would be provided for this eventuality.

Now, you’re expected to keep the recovery partition in the event something goes Horribly Wrong (which still won’t help if the hard disk itself fails) and reinstall the system from that.

You can always create your own set of recovery discs for this occasion, which you should have been prompted to do when initially setting up the computer.

If using Windows, the Windows Media Creation Tool can be used to create a recovery DVD or flash drive to install from in case of emergency. Note this will include Windows only, not the add-on software your computer came with. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, a lot of that is junk anyway. One thing that hasn’t changed since the 90s.

If you boot into another operating system at the time. Then yes. Windows cannot delete (or in fact do anything to) the partition from which it is running. Even if that other operating system is also Windows. my preference would be to use something like a Live version of some Linux “burned” onto a USB drive - would give you the most possible choices and be easy, quick and cheap to do.

An alternative is to take the drive out and connect it to another computer. Probably best to use something like a USB dock for this instead of having to fiddle with the other computer’s SATA ports as well.

Remember though: Doing this erases everything that was on that partition. Windows, all programs, and all data that was saved onto it.

The recovery partition allows you to return your computer to its “out of the box” condition. It will reinstall Windows without any updates, reinstall any programs that came with your computer, also without any updates. It will overwrite any programs you installed. It will also not include any data you had. It doesn’t take up all that much space, so it is probably not worth eliminating it. If you look through your computer’s documentation, there is likely a section on removing it and merging the space with the rest of your drive.

Keep in mind that this is a section on your hard drive. If the hard drive fails, you are apt to lose the recovery partition, too.

What I suggest doing is get a good disk imaging program. This will allow you to make your own recovery on an external drive that contains all the updates, all your programs and any data you store on your boot drive. If you update this regularly, even if your hard drive fails so thoroughly that replacement is the only option, you only lose whatever you’ve done since the last backup. Hard drives are almost cheap. Data that is not backed up is probably lost forever.

Q: Can System restore recover a deleted partition?

System Restore, if enabled, will attempt to return the operating system with drivers and any properly installed applications on the partitions to which it is applied and return them to somewhere near their previous state. I have found it not to do this very well, so I don’t rely on it.

System Restore captures images of key files and stores them in a compressed file hidden inside the “System Volume Information” folder. Windows won’t let you open the folder so you can only see what is there using the System Restore tools.

When you delete a partition, you lose access to its contents including the SVI folder for that partition, so System Restore cannot recover the information.

Some tools, such as Testdisk or Recuva, may be able to restore the partition that was deleted. Alternatively, the technique I normally use is to boot a PC from a Live Linux USB pendrive and use fdisk to recreate a partition by referring to the disk map of the physical drive that I keep. I have never tried this on a GPT disk, but on an MBR disk, even with logical partitions in an extended partition it can recover the complete partitions providing the space has not been reused.

The real answer to the problem if to restore the whole drive from the latest of your regular image backups you should have been making. If you don’t make image backups and the drive suddenly fails completely, then you have lost everything. That is only one step better than losing the PC or having it stolen, when you have to buy a replacement computer before you can perform a restore from an image backup.

If you have any data files that are important to you, you should always keep file backups of those files so that individual files can be recovered when necessary.

No**, just as deleting a file doesn’t mean the file is gone, deleting a partition doesn’t mean the files/data is gone. With the right tools you can recover a forgotten partition and files, because all deleting does (on most stock OSes) is remove enough data information so it looks like it’s gone.

** However, the same caveat applies, if you overwrite the lost partition/data/files, yes the data will be harder to recover. Apparently some forensics level data recovery tools can recover data that has been overwritten, but it’s typically not cheap.

Because of the above issue, it’s actually worse to accidentally save over a file with the wrong data than to delete it.

Nonetheless, it’s usually more reliable to recover your data from your backups you make daily/weekly! Because if the drive fails or the data was overwritten, the recovery is useless and time/money was wasted. Wait, what backups you say?!?! Hey, if you aren’t making backups, you must not care about your data much.

First the recovery partition is set up to recover the OS and programs as you received the computer. If you do nothing and delete that partition, you cannot recover you OS and programs. You can however delete it IF you make a recovery DVD. Generally there is a recovery program that allows you to make the DVD. It is a good idea to make these regardless of whether you keep the partition or not, because the hard drive that it is on can crash and you are lost and faced with buying another OS. I personally make the disk as one of the first things I do with a new computer. Then if you really need to, you can delete the partition, but you very little additional capacity.

Same way you’d delete any other kind of partition. With fdisk, or parted, or gparted. Then what ? If you want the space back, you could just create a Linux filesystem on it, which you could do perfectly well without deleting it, although it’s a good idea to change the partition type to make it obvious. If you want to enlarge another partition to get more contiguous space, you’d have to delete both partitions then recreate the first one larger, then resize the filesystem. That’s easier if the Linux one comes first on the disk. Otherwise you might have to backup and restore the partition image. I’d not go there, I’m too cautions/lazy. I’d just reuse the existing partition as /opt or /backup or something like that.

If you’re installing a new OS and don’t care about dual booting with an existing one, you can delete an EFI system partition just fine and create a new one which only contains the bootloader for your newly installed UEFI compatible OS.

Otherwise, only delete it if there is a good reason, you can recreate it on the spot and you have a way to recover if somehow you fail to recreate it before hibernating, shutting down or rebooting (Sleep is fine because you don’t go through the boot process). And you need a very good reason for that.

Don’t delete the EFI system partition unless you know what you’re doing — it’s critical for your system’s boot process if you have a UEFI compatible OS installation.

Q: Is it safe to delete everything in Windows' Disk Cleanup?

Assuming you mean the tool that is available through the properties for a drive (C:, D:, etc), that you can reach through File Explorer, then it should be perfectly safe.

It is Microsoft’s own tool and as such should only clean up what Microsoft has deemed as safe. It has been around for many years and I have never had any issues with it.

It performs two passes. The first is just for the current user, and then it offers the option of the second pass for the whole system. I find that there may be only a few MB to clean up after the first pass, but if I run the second pass it can find a few GB of old update files it can also remove safely.

My only comment is that I don’t think it does a very complete job of the clean up and leaves a lot of garbage around from previous updates that could quite legitimately be discarded.

I have been using Disk Clean-up for many years on different versions of Windows, and never had any problems. However, you should still be making full image backups of your PC or at least C: in case something ever goes wrong such as drive failure, virus or malware damage or accidental deletion of important files. I keep multiple compressed backups of all my C: drives from around eight different Windows PCs. The 250 GB C: drive on my main desktop PC is archived in a 45 GB file on several external hard drives.

On a small PC, I can restore a 32GB C: drive in about 15 minutes if something goes disastrously wrong.