Solved Just noticed that a recent Recovery install reduced size of EFI partition to 100MB and moved the others.

I have had to do 2 separate recovery reinstalls in the past 6 months. They were both successful. I only noticed today that the EFI partition was only 100MB. The other partitions had also been rearranged and some previously unallocated space was removed.

I have been reviewing the secure boot threads and decided to review my partitions. Ugh.

Open disk management > widen each columns and rows > post images or share links

Oh thanks ZBook. I dont really have a problem. I know who to rearrange resize the partitions. I was just a bit surprised I had not already noticed it. I think I am surprised I had not seen any documentation that mentions the partitions would get moved and resized during a Repair install.
Appreciate your interest though.

I did a repair install using installation media. If that is what you are referring to.

It created a recovery partition because there wasnt an existing one.

The existing 300mb esp remained

Similar situation. On the 1TB boot disk before the repair I had the EFI partiion located first and sized at 1GB. The MSR partition was next at 500MB. Next was the OS. I had the recovery partition at the end and sized at 1GB. To the right of that I had 1GB unallocated. Now, after the recent reapair install they were all changed. That was a few weeks ago but I only noticed it today.
What I was really wondering though, is there any documentation some where that I missed that states partition changes like this can or will happen after a repair install. Thanks.

MachineLanguage said:

What I was really wondering though, is there any documentation some where that I missed that states partition changes like this can or will happen after a repair install. Thanks.

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No, not to my knowledge. I've done several repair installs and never had it rearrange my partitions.

GPT (and modern techniques even in MBR) seem to dislike unallocated spaces and gaps. The 1GB unallocated you had at the end triggered it all. Your system thinks an ESP/EFI should have 100 MB and it creates one. Did you enlarge a previous 100 MB ESP to the 1 GB one you had? This is another possible cause, "possible" b/c I'm not sure if an enlarged ESP is recognized "w/o doubt", although normally it's bootable.

The newest version of MiniTool Partition Wizard doesn't leave 1 MB gaps among partitons in MBR disks unlike older versions. These gaps weren't necessary for anything including the boot sector and partition tables, if you want you can extend the MBR 1st partition up to the left edge (and the last partition up to the right edge if it's aligned to MB, what happens in many pendrives), if so the boot sector and more if needed will just be hidden sectors inside whatever partition. In GPT, a scheme I have a lot less experience with, does leave a 1 MB gap at the beginning, where there're GPT structures. All my GPT disks happen to have misaligned space at the end where the ending GPT structures seem to fit. GPT cannot hide sectors so all these structures must be outside the partitions.

I wil mark this post as closed but I do appreciate the insight you folks have offered. Most solutions for MS issues are found in this forum.
When I noticed this yesterday I asked co-pilot it reported several people have seen partition realignments after a repair install but could not point me to any MS documentation supporting this claim, except that some people have reported it.

Scott said:

No, not to my knowledge. I've done several repair installs and never had it rearrange my partitions.

View attachment 158622

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That looks like mine: