Macrium Reflect showing full partition

itsme1 said:

I know, but I use Hasleo Backup Suite. I can resize partitions *and* move the 16MB MSR partition(left or right into unallocated space). That saves me from having to use partition managers that might cause issues.

DiskGenius is good, and I haven't had any errors with it, but you can't move the MSR partition. You would have to delete it, expand the EFI partition, leave 16MB of unallocated space, and then recreate the MSR partition using diskpart.

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Just to clarify for the OP. MRP refers to the 16 MB Microsoft Reserved Partition and is nothing to do with the Recovery Partition. It is tiny and I see no advantage in moving it.

kelper said:

Just to clarify for the OP. MRP refers to the 16 MB Microsoft Reserved Partition and is nothing to do with the Recovery Partition. It is tiny and I see no advantage in moving it.

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You have to move it to enlarge the EFI partition!

I create unallocated space at the beginning of the C: partition, slide the MSR partition to the right, and enlarge the EFI partition.

Jim64 said:

How do I go about this without third party software?

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The Recovery Partition can officially be resized this way:

After much deliberation I uploaded a screenshot to ChatGPT with a briefing to enlarge recovery partition and just followed instructions using command prompt/diskpart, didn't take long. I'll do EFI partition another day, not so bothered about that. Thanks for all the input.

That's good and it's a nice round 2GB, there aren't a few MB lying around.

Attention, Microsoft has increased the EFI partition size to 200MB for the 2023 certificates which are starting to be deployed. You might run into problems and you might not even know it because the errors might be reported in the event observer, which almost no one looks at.

I had seen a message from garlin indicating that the efi partition had been enlarged for the 2023 certificates. On one computer I had a problem so I had to do a clean install and indeed the partition was 200MB. So I enlarged the EFI partition on other computers.

With diskgenius+diskpart you can easily enlarge it.
With diskpart you delete the msr partition, and after extending the efi partition with diskgenius, you recreate the msr partition with diskpart. You leave 16MB of unallocated space between the efi partition and the c: partition so that you can recreate the msr partition.

I decided on a 500 MB EFI partition and I'm needing some more advice. Rather than the destructive method of deleting and recreating of partitions I tried with resize/remove as it seemed less could go wrong. I started at the previous state:
EFI 100 MB - MSR 16 MB - 929.40 GB - Recovery 2GB

To get a 500 MB EFI partition I created 400 MB unallocated space before C: using DiskGenius by Set Front Part = 409600 KB unallocated, Rear Part = 0 unallocated, so I had:
EFI 100 MB - MSR 16 MB - Unallocated 400 MB - C: 929.01 GB - Recovery 2 GB.

Then I used GParted Live to move the MSR partition by free space preceding 400 MiB, new size 16 MiB, free space following 0 MiB. Then enlarged EFI by free space preceding 0 MiB, new size 500 MiB, free space following 0 MiB, so when operations completed I had:
EFI 500 MiB- MSR 16 MiB - C: 929.01 GiB - Recovery 2 GiB

The thing is that GParted moved the MSR partition to the right, the EFI partition itself was successfully enlarged from 100 MiB to 500 MiB but it failed to grow the file system to fill the new 500 MiB partition, "GNU Parted cannot resize this partition to this size. We're working on it!" I then tried sudo fatresize in terminal which also failed. So what I actually had was:
EFI 500 MiB (with 100 MiB filesystem within it) - MSR 16 MiB - C: 929.01 GiB - Recovery 2 GiB

At this point I'd already spent too much time on this and restored Macrium image to original partition state above. So I can create the 400 MB space before C: and move 16 MB MSR to end of it. But I need a way to expand the 100 MB EFI partition and file system into the 400 MB unallocated space in front of it. Any suggestions? And I noticed the exclamation mark on MSR partition in GParted when I started it, don't know why it's there. One appeared on EFI after the operation failed.

I've already mentioned the methods: diskgenius + diskpart (delete and recreate the MSR partition).

Or, in one of my comments, the method using Macrium. See if with the macrium method you can restore only the efi partition while enlarging it, taking space allocated on c: etc.

As I already mentioned in one of my comments, do not touch the small unallocated space in front of the efi partition; it is for partition alignment and is important.

I know I'm late to this "party", so take this as a "FYI".

Imo painting in red a partition (specially "any" partition) is "clutter", but the kind of "alarming clutter" that convince users (even experienced ones) into thinking that something is very wrong and they must act urgently.

With the Recovery partition under Windows 11 it isn't the case. The stock management of this partition is very smooth under Windows 11. I always find it in red and never a single problem. I suppose WU enlarges it smoothly when needed (now 1.01/1.07 GB used, nothing ever touched manually). Bear in mind you don't use this partition for user files like videos, disk/media images/isos, temporary files, browsers' caches, virtual machines etc. I don't have space problems in C: at all (70/230 GB used), but even if one had them (let's suppose 228/230 GB) it's unlikely that say 20/100 MB taken or released by the Recovery partition is going to change a lot a C: 2GB free situation.

(I also have another partition in red, the main one of a 2TB data disk used for disk images of Windows and seldom several GB of temporary stuff, it now has 20 GB free, when I record a new disk image I use to delete the oldest one; the management of this partition is 100% manual but being "in red" is its normal state).

My experience under Windows 10, specially since KB5034441 is the contrary one. I even tried 100 GB as Recovery partition size, w/o success. I finally got to install it using the dynamic update and a script published by MS. I failed with some successors of KB5034441 too. I believe MS changed some Recovery partition code precisely with this update, but Windows 11 has modern and effective code from start (maybe it uses or can use C: free space for temporary stuff, and it cleans it well afterwards). That said 1GB is enough in general for the Win10 Recovery partition.

I don't have valid experience with the EFI partition though. Enlarging it "normally" (to 200 MB for example) would be valid for afterwards cleaned temporary files, but not for never cleaned and hence accumulated temporary files, in theory.

JLArranz said:

I don't have valid experience with the EFI partition though. Enlarging it "normally" (to 200 MB for example) would be valid for afterwards cleaned temporary files, but not for never cleaned and hence accumulated temporary files, in theory.

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The ESP doesn't get "cluttered" by actual Windows files, but a lot of OEM's like to borrow the volume to hold their BIOS flashing tools or firmware images. It's a convenient staging location because it's FAT32, which all UEFI's can read.

The problem is the 3rd-party tools don't get cleaned out, and when Windows wants to push a new version of the boot manager to the EFI, it runs out of space. There isn't a standard cleanup process, other than purging folders not named "\EFI\Boot" and "\EFI\Microsoft\Boot".

To avoid running of space, the current advice is to assign 260-400 MB to the EFI volume. You can get away with less if your OEM requires you to use an external USB drive for flashing BIOS images (since it won't be borrowing disk space).

@JLArranz

No, for me on my Windows 11 computers the recovery partition has not grown or a new one has not been created. I got winload.efi 0xc0000428 error (SkuSiPolicy applied) because the partition did not update automatically. Once on the desktop computer, in the event viewer I saw the error for the recovery partition which could not be updated. So I took the initiative and increased it to 2GB. Now everything is fine.

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Turns out Aeomi Partition Assistant Standard does the whole job but I couldn't get an exact free space size with it, kept jumping to about 380 MB when trying to get 400 MB. All worked fine anyway.

Then as a comparison I loaded another image backup, created the free space with DiskGenius, moved the MSR with GParted, and recreated the EFI partition with diskpart. This gave me exactly 500 MB new EFI partition, all present and correct, perfect. So job done and thanks for all the input, always appreciated. If I ever need to do this again it'll be easy.

Blimey - talk about using a sledgehammer to crack a nut going through hoops and loops to resize recovery partitions just to avoid a second one to be created.

It is so easy to simply delete a no longer used recovery partition and reclaim space using a 3rd party tool like minitool partition wizard (even free version works) usually in a couple of minutes or so.

I have seen users resize the recovery partition too much e.g. 1 GB when in fact it can be a lot smaller

Problem is you never know hiw big you should make it to prevent a second one being made so people err on side of caution and you just end up waating space.

So to some extent, resizing recovery partitions is a rather pointless activity. It seems to me it is more OCD than of nay realistic benefit.

I just ignore recovery partitions letting windows create a second one when needed then just tidy up afterwards.

cereberus said:

I have seen users resize the recovery partition too much e.g. 1 GB when in fact it can be a lot smaller

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The latest Winre.wim is over 700 MB, and its only going to get bigger. 1 GB or less is not enough.



I realize some users have space issues, but some do not.

Jim64 said:

Turns out Aeomi Partition Assistant Standard does the whole job but I couldn't get an exact free space size with it, kept jumping to about 380 MB when trying to get 400 MB. All worked fine anyway.

Then as a comparison I loaded another image backup, created the free space with DiskGenius, moved the MSR with GParted, and recreated the EFI partition with diskpart. This gave me exactly 500 MB new EFI partition, all present and correct, perfect. So job done and thanks for all the input, always appreciated. If I ever need to do this again it'll be easy.

Click to expand...

If you haven't already, check the partition alignment. Launch DiskGenius, select your disk from the tree view on the left, go to the "Tools" menu at the top, and select "4KB partition alignment detection", a "Y" indicates they are aligned, while a red "N" means they are not.

Select the EFI partition in DiskGenius, choose "Resize Partition," and check if there is a small amount of unallocated space at the beginning of the partition indicated in the "space of front part" field. I have 1006.00KB in that field.

Normally, Macrium should align the partitions when you restore. That is how it works for me with Hasleo Backup Suite.

DiskGenius shows all partitions aligned. I saw a 1024KB offset when I created the EFI partition so assumed that was it, DiskGenius shows 1004.00 KB preceding.

Jim64 said:

DiskGenius shows all partitions aligned. I saw a 1024KB offset when I created the EFI partition so assumed that was it, DiskGenius shows 1004.00 KB preceding.

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That should be fine.
You can check where the EFI partition starts in msinfo32.
In the Run dialog box, type msinfo32, then Components, Storage, and finally Disks. Locate the 500MB EFI partition, below the "partition size", you will see the partition's starting offset. It should be 1,048,576 bytes.