Win 7/64 pro "Reserved partition" question
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From: Sardine on 29 Dec 2009 15:45 My installed W7 has its active booting partition be a small 100 MB partition that has no drive letter assigned, it is called "reserved". I'm told that if I had installed to a formatted drive, this small partition would not exist. I'd like to get rid of it and have W7 boot right to the C: system partition. In doing some fiddling with ShadowProtect Inage Backup I managed to eliminate the small partition and now I boot just fine to C: and my "F8" function on booting still works fine. Am I in a "bad" situation or is this acceptable to keep this way? Fungus
From: Bobby Johnson on 29 Dec 2009 16:28 The 100MB reserved partition is the default structure Microsoft designed into Windows 7 when doing a clean install. This was supposed to as a security measure to reduce the affect of malware writing to your boot partition. The best thing to do is to just ignore it and forget about it. On 2009-12-29 15:45, Sardine wrote: > My installed W7 has its active booting partition be a small 100 MB > partition that has no drive letter assigned, it is called "reserved". > I'm told that if I had installed to a formatted drive, this small > partition would not exist. > > I'd like to get rid of it and have W7 boot right to the C: system > partition. > > In doing some fiddling with ShadowProtect Inage Backup I managed to > eliminate the small partition and now I boot just fine to C: and my "F8" > function on booting still works fine. > > Am I in a "bad" situation or is this acceptable to keep this way? > > Fungus
From: Jerry on 29 Dec 2009 16:41 The Windows 7 forum may have answers too: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/w7itpro "Sardine" <sardine8(a)myway.com> wrote in message news:hhdpor$n0a$1(a)news.xmission.com... > My installed W7 has its active booting partition be a small 100 MB > partition that has no drive letter assigned, it is called "reserved". I'm > told that if I had installed to a formatted drive, this small partition > would not exist. > > I'd like to get rid of it and have W7 boot right to the C: system > partition. > > In doing some fiddling with ShadowProtect Inage Backup I managed to > eliminate the small partition and now I boot just fine to C: and my "F8" > function on booting still works fine. > > Am I in a "bad" situation or is this acceptable to keep this way? > > Fungus
From: R. C. White on 29 Dec 2009 17:01 Hi, Fungus. "Sardine" <sardine8(a)myway.com> wrote in message news:hhdpor$n0a$1(a)news.xmission.com... > My installed W7 has its active booting partition be a small 100 MB > partition that has no drive letter assigned, it is called "reserved". I'm > told that if I had installed to a formatted drive, this small partition > would not exist. > > I'd like to get rid of it and have W7 boot right to the C: system > partition. > > In doing some fiddling with ShadowProtect Inage Backup I managed to > eliminate the small partition and now I boot just fine to C: and my "F8" > function on booting still works fine. > > Am I in a "bad" situation or is this acceptable to keep this way? > > Fungus No, you are not in a "bad" situation. But the way Win7 did it also was not a "bad" situation. Most users do not understand the "backwards" definitions of "system volume" and "boot volume". See KB 314470, "Definitions for system volume and boot volume", http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314470/EN-US/ , for the actual meanings, which are opposite to most users' understanding. And look in the Status column of Disk Management to see which of your partitions has each of those labels. Windows has evolved a lot since the days when there was only a single HDD with only a single partition that served as BOTH the system and boot volumes. The typical system - especially for newbies - is still organized the same way. But many users now have multiple HDDs, and each HDD might be divided into multiple volumes. But the basic boot process hasn't changed through several generations of Windows. The BIOS hands control to the System Partition, which contains the boot manager, which locates the boot volume, loads Windows from there, and turns over control to Windows. Like the letter "Y", the whole system stands on a single leg, but can branch to either of two arms, depending on which OS the user chooses for the current session. Actually, of course, there can be one or more arms. If there is only a single Windows installed, the "Y" becomes an "I", but the process still begins with the one leg and then branches to the only arm available. That one leg is the System Volume; each of the one or more arms is a potential Boot Volume. The System Volume is used just once per session and then typically ignored until the system is rebooted, so Microsoft tried in Win7 to eliminate SOME of the confusion by creating that small partition to hold the few small startup files, and did not even assign that partition a "drive" letter to keep it from being deleted or used by accident - or by malware; most users don't even realize it is there. Win7 also continues Vista's practice of assigning the letter C: to its own Boot Volume, rather than to the System Partition, as WinXP and prior Windows versions did. When installed by booting from the Win7 DVD, Setup does not know of any prior drive letter assignments, so it assigns C: to whichever partition the user selects to install Win7 - whether that is the first partition on the first (or only) HDD, or the 3rd partition on the 4th HDD. (When installed by running Setup from the desktop of an existing Windows installation, Win7 Setup uses the letters previously assigned by that existing Windows.) So the hidden partition you saw was "by design" and Win7 should have worked very well with it. By eliminating that partition and making another partition your system volume, you've changed the location of the bottom leg of the "Y" in my illustration, but so long as that leg exists and the BIOS can locate it, your system should boot just fine. The only real requirement for the system volume is that it be the Active primary partition on the HDD designated in the BIOS as the boot device. RC -- R. C. White, CPA San Marcos, TX rc(a)grandecom.net Microsoft Windows MVP Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8089.0726) in Win7 Ultimate x64
From: Charlie Russel - MVP on 29 Dec 2009 17:37
This small reserved partition had another reason for existance as well -- BitLocker requires a small system partition that is unencrypted. In Vista, you had to either manually create this, or use the tool that was provided to create it when you enabled BitLocker. In Win7, this is created by default. -- Charlie. http://msmvps.com/blogs/russel "Bobby Johnson" <rjohnson(a)discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message news:eMgHL4MiKHA.2164(a)TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl... > The 100MB reserved partition is the default structure Microsoft designed > into Windows 7 when doing a clean install. This was supposed to as a > security measure to reduce the affect of malware writing to your boot > partition. > > The best thing to do is to just ignore it and forget about it. > > > On 2009-12-29 15:45, Sardine wrote: >> My installed W7 has its active booting partition be a small 100 MB >> partition that has no drive letter assigned, it is called "reserved". >> I'm told that if I had installed to a formatted drive, this small >> partition would not exist. >> >> I'd like to get rid of it and have W7 boot right to the C: system >> partition. >> >> In doing some fiddling with ShadowProtect Inage Backup I managed to >> eliminate the small partition and now I boot just fine to C: and my "F8" >> function on booting still works fine. >> >> Am I in a "bad" situation or is this acceptable to keep this way? >> >> Fungus |