Delete the OEM Recovery Partition to Save Space

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This is a somewhat controversial recommendation so consider your options. Most laptops and pre built desktops come with a recovery partition that eats up at least 20GB of disk space. The point of these recovery partitions is to enable you to get back to a factory state if your computer becomes unbootable, perhaps even stuck on a blue screen of death. This factory state is not just a clean Windows 11, but one with all the drivers and preloaded software the computer came with. Usually, you can invoke these from some kind of emergency menu before boot.

However, there are many other ways to restore a crashed computer without sacrificing this disk space. First of all, you can always use an existing restore point or full system backup to get back to where you were right before the crash. If you don’t have a backup and need to start from scratch, you can create a Windows 11 or 10 install USB by downloading and using Microsoft’s own installation media tool. If you have a laptop or even most OEM desktops, your original Windows key will already be recorded in your BIOS. And, if you don’t have a key, you can always get Windows 10/11 for Free or Cheap.

Note: There is also a non-OEM recovery partition that is usually 1GB or less that makes Windows' own factory reset feature function better and that’s probably worth leaving in place.

So, if you’re a reasonably tech-savvy user, you can safely delete the OEM recovery partition and save some GB. Unfortunately, you can’t do it by just using the standard partition manager. To remove the OEM restore partition, first see if you have one by looking at the partition manager (enter “partition” in the search box and click the first option). The name of the partition should have “OEM” or the name of the OEM (ex: HP, Dell, Lenovo) in it and “Recovery.” If you only have a non-OEM recovery partition, stop here.

To delete the partition, open a command prompt as admin by typing “cmd” into the search box and right clicking the right result and selecting “Run as administrator.” Then enter “diskpart” at the command prompt. Type “select disk 0” to choose your boot drive and then “list partition” to show all your partitions and then “select partition [NUMBER]” where the number is the recovery partition’s number. Finally, type “delete partition” and it should be gone. If you get an error, try entering “gpt attributes=0x8000000000000000” and then do it again.