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I want to know if I have the 100MB Reserved Partition in my installed Windows system, because I want to make a system backup (with Acronis True Image).

First, I will tell you how I setup the partitions when I installed Windows: I deleted the 100MB Reserved partition and the old main partition, I created a partition with all unallocated space and then I point the setup program to install windows on that partition.

This site states that...

"If you don’t want this partition on your drive, 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 consuming all the unallocated space with another disk-partitioning tool. Point the Windows installer at the partition you created and Windows will happily continue — it won’t attempt to resize your partition and create a System Reserved partition. The Windows installer will accept that there’s no room for System Reserved partition and install Windows onto a single partition."

Also, my Disk Management looks like this:

enter image description here

You can see that System Reserved partition is not there. If it exists then it wouldn't be disaplyed here ?

And when I try to make a backup with Acronis True Image (2011 and 2015) it shows me that is no System Reserved partition there...

And I also have a folder named Boot on my Windows partition containg bootmgr.mui and some files named BCD. These files shouldn't belong to that Reserved Partition ?

So these are enough to conclude that there is no System Reserved partition in my system ?

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    you don't have the 100MB partition. Your boot files are on C:\
    – magicandre1981
    Aug 5, 2015 at 4:10

3 Answers 3

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Disk Management might not necessarily show the partition since it is not assigned a drive letter. To check partitions, you can use diskpart.

Open a command prompt and type diskpart -> you will be prompted for administrative access.

Once granted, type list disks to show the available disks.

Type select disk {num} where {num} is the drive you wish to inspect.

Once selecting the disk, list partitions. The output of this command will show all partitions, their capacity, and their current usage, it is from here you will be able to determine if it exists or not.

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  • I disagree with this answer in the sense that Disk Management will show partitions that have no driveletters assigned. The only reason it would not show a partition, is because the partition is using a format that Disk Management does not support. Given that the partition in question is a windows partition, it would always show up in Disk Management if it were there.
    – LPChip
    Feb 16, 2016 at 8:36
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In your picture there the "System" which has OS boot stuff is on the C: drive, the "boot" which is the OS it booted to is on that C: drive. You will probably find that a folder called "boot" which is very hidden, will contain the BCD data. I call this the All-in-one , and it works out pretty good when cloning the partition you get all that. Any different disk and therefore disk ID (GUID) the clone or image of that system is pushed to, requires editing the BCD to repoint to the new disk ID.

An actual seperated system reserve partition , and repair/restore type partitions WILL usually show in the GUI of the disk manager. Searching google images of hundreds of disk managment screenshots , you can see that most people have them, and they are shown in thier pictures of the disk managment screen.

completely different thing
GPT specific disk there is some partition that is not shown in the GUI, using DiskPart in the CMDprompt will show that thing which is called "reserved" , but I do not think it refers to the same reserve. (not holding boot stuff) It is not a "system reserve" partition that is reffered to, but reserved space for the GPT.

enter image description here

as we see in the picture the GUI which is set to a view that would show small partitions, does NOT show this partition found in the GPT disk. This is discovered by running DiskPart , Select Disk # , and List Partitions. If a person believed there was something there , that is a different way to see things.

Other comment: If so much of the naming and tagging of it was not confusing, it would be easier to think of. One would think the wording "system" would refer to the operating system, In the GUI display there "system" is the OS boot stuff. One would think that the word "Boot" would refer to the Boot stuff, but it instead "boot" refers to the partition holding the operating system it booted to.

I use an All-In-One partition for the whole OS, I believe it is aquired by creating my own parititoning scheme prior to the install of the OS, and pointing the OS install to it. But I am also still using a legasy MBR (compatability boot)
How do you boot to a seperate drive that is cloned , for the purpose of a backup system partition? This here was a easy way I found to reset the BCD after cloning to a different location. That only applies to an All-In-One when doing image parititon clones to a different disk, and NOT having any software automatically doing the final fixes for booting.

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The answer is pretty simple.

If you would have it, it would show up there. Given that you don't see it, its simply not there.

It would both show up in the volume list as in the graphical display below for Disk 0.

Do note that windows 8 requires 350 mb for system reserved when you run the installer, but if you upgrade an older OS to windows 7 or 8 it doesn't need the system reserved partition. The only reason for this partition is because Windows stores the bootloader in it with system recovery tools. This means you can create a backup/clone with your current setup and restore that too.

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