Recovery Partition Cannot Be Deleted Win 10/11 or Server 2022 2019 2016

Scenario: Unable to delete healthy recovery partition in Windows 11/10 or Server 2022/2019/2016

Causes: The Recovery partition is protected by Windows that has WINRE so Microsoft does not want users to delete it. Disk Management disabled the function of delete volume on recovery partition.

The key: Backup OS and recovery partition before deletion of the recovery partition using free tool Partition Resizer.

Disk Map: The recovery partition is right after the c drive

The problem: Delete volume option does not show up in Disk Management for recovery partition, Extend volume greyed out or disabled for c drive even when there are unallcoated space on the disk.

Fixes: Delete recovery partition using diskpart or Partition Resizer (free tool)

	Disk Management	Diskpart (No UI)	Partition Resizer (Easy UI)
Delete Recovery Partition	NO
Move partition/unallocated space	NO	NO
Extend fat32 partition	YES when unallocated space at right side
Extend fat32 C drive	NO	NO
Backup disk/partition	NO	NO
Migrate OS	NO	NO
Extend ntfs drive
Price	FREE	Free	FREE
			Download Windows 11-7 (Free) Download Windows Server (Trial)

Prepartions: We would highly recommend you backup the current OS and its recovery partition to another disk with free tool Partition Resizer in case anything goes wrong with your current OS.

Option: Backup disk and recovery partition with free tool Partition Resizer

Note: You may ignore this backup part and directly jump to the Delete recovery partition part if you don't mind the future data loss or OS booting problem.

Setp1. Prepare an empty disk (You may use the free tool Partition Resizer to remove all partitions on the disk if it's an used one)

Setp2. Download and install Partition Resizer, click Tools -> Migrate OS Wizard, and then select the target disk, and choose both the OS c drive and the recovery partition as backup item to the backup disk.

Also read: how to clone c drive

Part1: Delete recovery partition using diskpart

The key: delete partition override (This is the cmd to force delete the recovery partition using Diskpart in Windows 11/10/Server 2022 2019, there is a photo in the following part to illustrate the steps.)

Guide: How to remove healthy recovery partition using diskpart.

How to start the cmd window?->Right click Start icon, and click Run in the available options.

diskpart
list disk
select disk #（if there are over 2 disks, you need to select the disk that contains your OS）
list partition（is to list all the volumes on this disk to see which one is the recovery partition）
select partition #
delete partition override

Failed? Or Difficult to follow? Try the following free tool Partition Resizer.

Part2: Delete recovery partition using Partition Resizer

Partition Resizer, the free disk tool can do more than deleting the recovery partition:

• Delete recovery partition
• Move partition location
• Produce unallocated space
• Extend fat32 c drive as well as ntfs c drive
• Shrink fat32 partition
• Migrate os from old disk to new disk
• Backup disk
• Convert disk mbr gpt...

Here are the steps to delete the recovery partition with Partition Resizer.

Setp1. Download, and install the tool on your computer

Setp2. Open the Partition Resizer and wait it to load all disk map in the software, right click the Recovery Partition, and go to "Delete Partition" option, confirm the deletion.

Setp3. Click APPY CHANGES button to apply the above changes.

Video: how to move recovery partition server 2022 2019

Video: how to resize partition and move recovery partition to expand c drive

Download Partition Resizer Server