Disk Management always tells you that the EFI and Recovery partitions have 100% free space, which is incorrect. Disk Management cannot enumerate those two partitions because of the TypeID and attributes used for the EFI and Recovery partitions.
Find WinRE Partition’s Capacity and Free space
Let’s see how to determine the total size of the Recovery (WinRE) partition and the free disk space available on that partition. This article assumes the computer has Windows RE enabled.
Option 1: Using the System image backup tool
- Launch Control Panel and open the “Backup and Restore (Windows 7)” applet.
- Click “Create a system image” and select the external drive from the list.
- On the next screen, you’ll see the list of drives, their total capacity, and the used space. This dialog precisely displays the used space for all the volumes, including the EFI and the Recovery partitions.
- Click Cancel, Cancel, and close the Control Panel.
Option 2: Using the File System Utility (fsutil.exe)
Open a Command Prompt (Admin) window and type:
reagentc /info
In the output, note the Windows RE location. It might look something like below:
\\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk0\partition5\Recovery\WindowsRE
Now, type:
fsutil volume diskfree \\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk0\partition5
The output shows the “Total free bytes,” “Total bytes,” and “Total quota free bytes.” In the above example, the free disk space in the WinRE partition is 254.1 MB. The partition’s total size is 749 MB. That means the Winre.wim image and the configuration files occupy 494.9 MB.
Note
Alternatively, you can use the following methods. These methods can be beneficial when WinRE is disabled, but the winre.wim image stays in the Recovery partition itself instead of moving to the staging area — i.e., C:\Windows\System32\Recovery.
- You can also find the disk # and partition # using Disk Management. Hard disk #0 and Partition #5 translate to the following path:
\\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk0\partition5
- Or, you can use the syntax
fsutil volume diskfree \\?\Volume{insert_GUID_here}, where the volume GUID can be determined by running themountvolcommand.
Related articles
- Disk partition requirement for using Windows RE tools on a UEFI-based computer
- How to Backup your WinRE Image (Winre.wim)
- KB5034441 Update error 0x80070643
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