Increase the size of EFI System Partition, Reserved Partition and Recovery Partition in the GPT Disk with Windows 10 OS

If Windows 10 OS has already been installed on a Disk and the user wants to change the size of EFI System Partition, Reserved Partition, and Recovery Partition without making any alteration to the Windows 10 OS partition then it requires Partition Managers Software to do such tasks. Here I will use Minitools Partition Wizard Free version.

If the user installs Windows 10 OS on a disk that does not have any existing partitions or you did not create any custom partitions manually then the Windows setup will automatically create certain partitions in the disk before installing Windows 10 OS on the disk. The default layout and size of the GPT Disk are as follows:

1. EFI System Partition of size 100 MB.
2. Microsoft Reserved Partition of size 16 MB.
3. Windows 10 OS Data Partition.
4. Recovery Partition of size around 600 MB.

In your case, if the layout of the GPT disk in which Windows 10 OS is installed is the same ( the size of partitions may differ) as shown here then you may proceed to resize these partitions.

The problem with this default partition layout is that the size allocated for the EFI System partition and the Recovery partition is minimum and is not adequate for future requirements.

Here I will show how to use Mini tools Partition Wizard in order to increase the size of the EFI System partition and Recovery partition. 

• In my case, Windows 10 OS is installed on Disk 2. The disk number may differ in your case.
• Make sure that the partition in which Windows 10 OS is installed has more than 10 GB of free space(unused space). This will make sure that resize operation goes on smoothly and error-free.
• Make sure that the computer does not lose power supply during this operation otherwise, the partition may become unstable.

Minitools Partition Wizard Free Official Link

How to check free space in the Windows 10 OS partition

• Select and right-click on the Windows 10 OS partition as shown below.
• Select Properties.

• The Free Space is shown in Usage TAb labeled Unused.

Increase the size of the EFI System Partition, Reserved Partition and Recovery Partition 

1. Delete the MSR Partition

Microsoft Reserved Partition (MSR) cannot be moved or resized by the Partition manager software. So it must be deleted. Later on, it can be recreated by the Diskpart command line tool.

• Right Click on the Microsoft Reserved Partition and select the option Delete.

• Reserved Partition deletion leaves 16 MB of Unallocated space.

2. Resize the Windows 10 OS partition

We need to lower the size of the Windows 10 OS partition by about 2.2 GB which will provide unallocated space and will be used to increase the size of

• Right-click on the Windows 10 OS partition (data partition) and select Move/resize.

• In this case, the size of the Windows 10 OS partition is 237.83 GB. It needs to be lowered by 2.2 GB. So its final size will be 235.63 GB.

• In my case, I enter 235.63 GB next to the label Partition Size.
• This will set the Unallocated Space After to 2.20 GB.

• Set the Unallocated Space After to 1.5 GB.
• This will increase the Unallocated Space Before by 0.7 GB. 
• Click on the OK button.

• After this operation, the GPT Disk partition layout will look like this.

3. Increase the size of EFI Partition

• Now the user needs to increase the size of the EFI System partition.

• Right-click on the EFI System partition and select the option Move/Resize.

• Set the Partition Size to 650 MB.
• Click on the OK button.

• Finally, the size of the EFI System Partition of 650 MB.

4. Increase the size of the Recovery Partition

• Now the user needs to increase the size of the Recovery Partition.

• Right-click on the Recovery Partition and select the option Move/Resize.

• In this case, the Recovery Partition size is 0.53 GB and the Unallocated Space Before is 1.50 GB.

• To increase the size of the Recovery Partition, set the Partition size to 2.03 GB.

• The Final size of the recovery partition is approx 2 GB.

5. Execute the Operation in Minitools Partition Wizard

• Click on Apply button to execute the operation.

• When asked for "Apply Pending Changes", click on the Yes button.

• When asked as shown in the image below, select Restart Now.

6. Create Microsoft Reserved Partition

• In my case, there is 187 MB of Unallocated space available. the size may differ in your case.
• This Unallocated space will be used to create an MSR partition.
• The command line tool used to create MSR partition is called Diskpart.
• Note down the size of the Disk in which the MSR partition needs to create. In this case it 238.47 GB.

• Select Start Menu > Windows PowerShell > More > Run as administrator.

• In Powershell, run the Diskpart tool by typing Diskpart.

To show the list of disks in the computer, run the following command:

• list disk

Note the disk in which the MSR partition will be created. In this case, it is Disk 1 of size 238 GB. In your case, the disk number may differ.

To select disk 1 run the following command:

• select disk 1

To show the list of partitions in the disk, run the following command:

• list partition

To create MSR partition, run the following command:

• create partition msr size=128

To show the final list of partitions in the disk, run the following command:

• list partition

• Close the Powershell tool.