Windows 10 April update (1803) creates new partitions

by Jane / Tue May 29 2018 / UPDATED in WINDOWS ERROR

You may have found that Windows 10 creates new partitions on the April update (1803), always called recovery partitions or OEM partition ( Original Equipment Manufacturer), although they’re not doing any harm to your system, they’re running out of disk space and causing low disk space problem, they’re not recommended to remove, delete, or format, the Microsoft team is right now working on this, we can hide them instead, if you don’t want to see them in File Explorer

Hide partitions using command prompt diskpart

The official method to hide these volumes is to use diskpart command in the command prompt tool, steps are as followed:

  1. Type cmd in the search bar or Cortana
  2. Right-click on Command Prompt and Run as administrator
  3. In the command line tool type the following commands and press enter on each of them:
    1. diskpart
    2. list volume
    3. select volume E (or other drive letter you want to hide)
    4. remove letter=E (the drive letter you selected)
    5. exit (or close the window)

Those are the steps from the Microsoft Forum, easy to operate and hide, but if you don’t like the command line method, you can use the graphically designed partition manager Partition Expert instead

Hide partition in Partition Expert

It’s an alternative to Windows default disk managing tool like diskpart and Disk Management, it has more powerful and advanced features than them, here’s how it hides partitions:

  1. Download this program, install or directly run this software from the portable package
  2. In the main interface, click on the target partition and choose Hide Volume
  3. Click Yes to the confirm window and click Commit to run perform

You can unhide them easily too if someday day you want to show them in File Explorer, the unhide function will be listed in the function column when you click on the hidden partition

Here’s the video guide on how to hide partitions:

Can’t delete or format?

Reddit user found it is impossible to remove the E Drive created by this update, but it’s running out of disk space, low disk space alert is also showing, can’t we really delete or format them for more space?

Did you try fiddling about with the drive space using a third-party tool? I used this one to sort out some moving and merging after doing a disk clone recently: https://macrorit.com/partition-magic-manager/free-edition.html

We can remove them in Partition Expert, basic functions like Delete volume, Format volume and Advanced function like Wipe volume are built-in for this kind of task,

However, we do not recommend to do so. Like Microsoft said, it’s for recovery purpose and will soon be fixed in a future update.

We can extend the low disk space volume with free space from other partition, use the Resize/Move volume and Merge volume methods

You can know Partition Expert more:

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