AOMEI Partition Assistant
How to Merge Recovery Partitions on Windows 10 and 11?
How to merge recovery partitions on Windows 10? When you find your partitions lack storage space, you might as well consider combining it with a recovery partition. In the following post, you’ll learn how to do it in 2 different ways.
By Michael / Updated on May 12, 2023
What’s a recovery partition and is it necessary for the OS?
A recovery partition is a special partition on the boot disk that’s used to restore the OS to factory settings when there’s a system issue such as crashes and a black screen. To protect the recovery partition from being accidentally changed or deleted, the recovery partition usually doesn’t have a drive letter and only a Help option is provided in Disk Management.
The size of a recovery partition varies by the version of Windows. For example, the Windows 10 recovery partition is usually about 450MB or 500MB while the Windows 8/8.1 recovery partition is usually 200MB. Although the recovery partition is critical for system restoration, it’s not necessary for your current OS to run normally which means you can delete it after making a backup of it.
Why merge recovery partitions on Windows 10/11 with other partitions?
Over time, you may notice your computer is becoming more and more sluggish. Then, you run Disk Management and find that the C drive – the system partition – is almost full. You try uninstalling some apps that you don’t often use and clearing cookies and cache files in order to free up some storage space. It helps a little but not enough.
As both Windows update and software installation ask for sufficient storage, another way to fix the C drive full issue is to directly extend the partition. But where can you find extra storage space for the extension? Now, the recovery partition seems to be a good choice. As it usually occupies a decent amount of space, it becomes pretty helpful in partition extension.
2 ways to merge a recovery partition with another partition
How to merge a recovery partition with another partition on Windows 10? Here, both a Windows built-in tool and a third-party utility are provided. Walk through the tutorials and decide which one to choose according to your own requirements.
Way 1. Use DiskPart
DiskPart, as the successor to fdisk, is a command-line-based utility that helps manage hard disks along with their partitions. With DiskPart, you can perform different operations including volume deletion, MBR to GPT conversion, and partition extension. To merge a recovery partition with another partition, you must first delete the recovery partition and combine the created unallocated space with the target partition.
Note: With DiskPart, you can extend a partition only when the location of the unallocated space is right behind it.
1. Type "CMD" in the search box from the lower left of the desktop and hit "ENTER" to launch Command Prompt
2. Type "diskpart" and hit “ENTER”.
3. Type “list disk” to make all hard disks appear.
4. Then, type "select disk *" (* represents the sequence number of the disk) and hit “ENTER” to select it.
5. Type "list partition" and hit enter to show all partitions on the selected hard drive.
6. Type "select partition *" (* represents the sequence number of the recovery partition) and hit “ENTER”.
7. Type "delete partition override" and hit ENTER to delete the recovery partition.
8. Type "list partition" again and hit “ENTER” to list all partitions on the disk.
9. Type "select partition *" (* represents the partition you want to extend) and hit “ENTER”.
10. Type "extend" and hit "ENTER" to execute the partition extension.
Now, open Disk Management and you’ll see the recovery partition has been successfully merged with another partition.
Way 2. Try the best third-party disk manager
As DiskPart is a command-line utility in disk management, it can be a little complex for non-professional users. Meanwhile, it takes too many steps to merge partitions. Is there an easier alternative? The answer is affirmative. AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional is an excellent all-in-one disk manager that helps merge partitions and unallocated space in only a few clicks regardless of their positions. It takes less time than the traditional way and meanwhile, unlike many other third-party apps, the AOMEI product contains no adverse advertisements.
How do I merge a recovery partition? It’s time to download the demo of the most powerful disk management program and have a try.
Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. Wait until all your hard disks and their partitions appear.
Step 2. Then, right-click on the recovery partition and select "Delete Partition > Delete Partition Quickly".
Step 3. Now, the recovery partition has become a piece of unallocated space.
Step 4. Right-click on the unallocated space, and select "Advanced" > "Merge Partitions". Tick the partition you want to merge and hit "OK".
Step 5. Click on "Apply > Proceed" to finish the job.
Optional: another way to extend partition capacity
Apart from merging recovery partitions on Windows 10 with other partitions, another more straightforward feature – free space allocation – is also included by the AOMEI product. With it, you can easily allocate free space from one partition to another without data loss.
Conclusion
What’s the best way to merge the recovery partition on Windows 10? When one of your partitions is out of storage space, you can combine it with a recovery partition. Here, the most easy-to-use third-party disk manager – AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional – is introduced to help get it done in only a few clicks. This software perfectly supports Windows 7/8/8.1/10/11 and if you want to run it on Servers, you can try the Server edition.
