Hide the system reserved partition?

[Hi Ho]

I just reinstalled Windows 7 on my new SSD and everything is working great. There is a 100MB "System Reserved Partition". I don't care that it exists. I just want to hide it in Explorer. Is this save to do? When I go into disk management and try to remove the drive letter it gives me a warning that programs may not run properly if I do this.

I just want to be sure this will not screw anything up.

[EzyStvy]

I Googled->windows 7 system reserved partition

First hit shows:
Hack to Remove 100 MB System Reserved Partition When Installing Windows 7 » My Digital Life

[Hi Ho]

I found the articles explaining how to prevent it from being created during install but it's too late for that. I have everything setup now and I don't want to start over. I think I will just leave it alone. Some people in the comments seem to have had trouble after removing it using disk management. Thanks for the reply.

[Bearded Dan]

I have sucessfully removed the drive from view with Acronis Disk Director. Change the partition to hidden, but do not change the active status. My machine has no problems booting with this configuration

[rwest]

So what does it actually do? it's not part of the OS is it?. Even with my 640 gig drive, I didn't sweat the 100gigs anyway.

[glc]

It's not 100 gigs - it's 100 megs. Insignificant these days.

[rwest]

Ooops. Even if it was a hundred gigs, with the size of drives these days, who cares?

[Nuclear Krusader]

We'd still want to know what it does…

[Bearded Dan]

The following is a quote from Microsoft TechNet explaining the existence of the "System Reserved" partition:

"Then, after installation, when you inspect the disk configuration in Disk Management, you see this partition named System Reserved. It’s 100MB in size and it doesn’t have a drive letter. This 100MB partition is where the Windows boot loader resides. This is needed if you’re going to implement Bitlocker. Installation now by default, prepares the installation for Bitlocker. This has changed from the Windows Vista / Server 2008 configuration where you have to prepare a drive to support Bitlocker. The installation does not install Bitlocker, it just configures the server in the event you want to enable Bitlocker. This is a much better plan than before. The guidance for Vista, Windows Server 2008 was to create a 1.5GB drive to support the boot loader. In Windows 7 and R2, this drive now only needs to be 100MB. Please do not mess with this partition unless you know what your doing (really). Messing this up will render your OS unbootable. The good news is that the repair tools in the install media can usually detect when the System Reserved partition has been damaged and will repair it. If you’re not going to use Bitlocker, don’t worry, it’s only 100MB, and it is still beneficial in separating the boot loader from the OS."

Okay, I know it says it is not supposed to have a drive letter, but I have personally worked on a good number of systems that, for whatever reason, have a drive letter applied. I have encountered no problems removing the drive letter and hiding the partition as long as it is left as the active partition.