In general, there's a Recovery partition on system disk no matter you install Windows Server 2022 by yourself or buy the server from a manufacture. If the system disk is GPT, there's an additional EFI partition. If you right click either partition in inbuilt Disk Management, no delete, format, shrink, extend or other option. Sometimes you need to move Recovery/EFI partition in Windows 2022 server. For example: after shrinking or even deleting D drive, "Extend Volume" is grayed out for C drive. After moving these partitions on the right and make Unallocated space adjacent to C drive, then this problem can be solved. This article introduces how to move EFI/Recovery partition in Server 2022 without losing data.
Cannot move Recovery/EFI partition with native tools
When you right click a NTFS partition in Windows native Disk Management, there are several options to delete, format, shrink or extend volume, but there's no move volume option. This is because Disk Management cannot change the start postion of a partition. Therefore, this native tool can only shrink partition and make Unallocated space on the right or extend partition with adjacent Unallocated space on the right.
There's another inbuilt diskpart command tool, but the same with Disk Management, it cannot change the start postion of a volume. Thus, if you want to move partition in Server 2022, you must run third party disk partition software.
There are many software to help move Recovery/EFI partition for Windows 2022 server, but few are safe enough. When moving partition, the start and end position will be changed, all files in this partition will be moved to new locations, too. There's potential system damage and data loss risk to accomplish this task, so you'd better back up in advance and run safe partition software.
Better than other tools, NIUBI Partition Editor has Virtual Mode, Cancel-at-will, 1-Second Rollback and Hot Clone technology to protect your system and data.
How to move Recovery/EFI partition in Server 2022
It is very easy to move Recovery/EFI partition in Windows Server 2022. You just need to drag and drop on the disk map, and only several clicks are needed. For example: there are C, Recovery and D partitions on the system disk. Follow the steps below to move partition extend C drive without losing data.
How to move Recovery partition in Windows Server 2022 to extend C drive:
- Download NIUBI Partition Editor, right click the Recovery partition and select "Resize/Move Volume". In the pop-up window, drag the middle of this partition towards right.
- Right click C: drive and select "Resize/Move Volume", drag the right border towards right to combine the adjacent Unallocated space.
- Click Apply on top left to execute.
If you shrunk D drive with Disk Management and the Unallocated space is on the right of D. You should move D drive to the right and complete the steps above. Only when there's adjacent Unallocated space on either left or right, you can extend this partition.
Watch the video how to move Recovery partition in Server 2022:
How to move EFI partition in Windows Server 2022:
You can move EFI partition with adjacent Unallocated space and the method is the same with moving Recovery partition. You should know that no software can move a partition over another one. For example, when the EFI partition is in the middle of C and D drive, no software can move it to the left of C or the right of D drive. With disk partition, you can firstly shrink a partition to get Unallocated space, move the middle partition(s) and then merge Unallocated space to the adjacent partition.
Besides moving partition in Windows Server 2022, NIUBI Partition Editor helps you do many other disk partition management operations such as shrink, extend, clone, convert, defrag, hide, optimize, wipe partition and scan bad sectors.
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