Just a short post to document some of the things I came across in Windows 10 recently when trying to delete recovery partitions on a freshly migrated SSD boot drive.
Have you noticed that you can right click on the recovery partition but don’t get any delete options?
It’s time to roll up the sleeves and unleash some commandline magic. The basic gist is:
- Find the disk number and partition you want to delete in Disk Manager
- Run the DISKPART tool
- Make Magic Happen with Commandline ITPRO skills
Finding the Disk Number and Partition Number
First, you’ll need find the disk you want to re-partition. You can use the Disk Manager that comes up when you right click on “This PC” in explorer and select “Manage…”
See those “Disk Number” labels on the left? Make a mental note. You’ll need that info shortly..
Deleting Protected Paritions with DISKPART
Time to startup a windows commandline as admin. If you’ve never done that before, click on the Windows menu in the bottom left and type command. The search will display “Command Prompt”. Right click on that icon and choose “Run as administrator”.
With you Command prompt in play, run the DISKPART tool.
C:\>diskpart
Then match it up to the commandline output of LIST DISK:
DISKPART> list disk
Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 465 GB 1024 KB *
Disk 1 Online 931 GB 0 B *
Disk 2 Online 1863 GB 0 B *
Disk 3 Online 698 GB 0 B *
Then select the disk you want to deal with…
DISKPART> select disk 3
Disk 3 is now the selected disk.
And have a look at the paritions on that disk…
DISKPART> list partition
Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Recovery 1000 MB 1024 KB
Partition 2 System 260 MB 1001 MB
Partition 3 Reserved 128 MB 1261 MB
Partition 4 Primary 687 GB 1389 MB
Partition 5 Recovery 350 MB 688 GB
Partition 6 Recovery 9 GB 689 GB
You can see I’ve been accumulating recovery partitions on this drive! Given that I now have a recovery USB, I can reclaim these bad boys then extend my Primary partition to take up whole disk.
Then SELECT and DELETE any partitions you’re done with to free up the disk…
(Don’t forget to use the OVERRIDE switch if you’re removing recovery partitions or other protected partitions)
DISKPART> select partition 6
Partition 6 is now the selected partition.
DISKPART> delete partition override
DiskPart successfully deleted the selected partition.
Don’t forget to add the OVERRIDE switch to the DELETE PARTITION command, otherwise Windows won’t let you delete that precious recovery partition.
Time to confirm that it’s gone…
DISKPART> list partition
Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Recovery 1000 MB 1024 KB
Partition 2 System 260 MB 1001 MB
Partition 3 Reserved 128 MB 1261 MB
Partition 4 Primary 687 GB 1389 MB
Partition 5 Recovery 350 MB 688 GB
Yah! Mission accomplished. You have deleted your first dodgy recovery partitions! Rinse and repeat for remaining partitions and you’re in business.
And remember, all the partition extend/shrink stuff is now build into Windows 10, so there’s no need for third party tools to extend your disk. Right click on your primary partion in the Disk Manager, and click “Extend” to slurp up all that empty space.
Enjoy!