A Microsoft Reserved Partition (MSR) is a partition of a data storage device, which is created to reserve a portion of disk space for possible subsequent use by a Windowsoperating system installed on a separate partition. No meaningful data is stored within the MSR; though from the MSR, chunks may be taken for the creation of new partitions, which themselves may contain data structures.[1]
Mac OS X El Capitan offers a simple and precise way to partition Mac, delete partitions, as well as merge partitions via Disk Utility. Now the thumb rule is, if you need to merge two partitions. A Microsoft Reserved Partition (MSR) is a partition of a data storage device, which is created to reserve a portion of disk space for possible subsequent use by a Windows operating system installed on a separate partition. No meaningful data is stored within the MSR; though from the MSR, chunks may be taken for the creation of new partitions. Remove Windows from your Mac using Boot Camp You must use Boot Camp Assistant to remove Windows, or a partition that was created with Boot Camp Assistant, from your Intel-based Mac. WARNING: Do not use any other utilities to remove Windows or a partition that was created with Boot Camp. Start up your Mac in macOS.
The GUID Partition Table (GPT) label for this partition type is E3C9E316-0B5C-4DB8-817D-F92DF00215AE
.[2]
Formerly, on disks formatted using the master boot record (MBR) partition layout, certain software components used hidden sectors of the disk for data storage purposes. For example, the Logical Disk Manager (LDM), on dynamic disks, stores metadata in a 1 MB area at the end of the disk which is not allocated to any partition.[3]
The UEFI specification does not allow hidden sectors on GPT-formatted disks. Microsoft reserves a chunk of disk space using this MSR partition type, to provide an alternative data storage space for such software components which previously may have used hidden sectors on MBR formatted disks.[1]Such software components can create a small software-component specific partition from a portion of the space reserved in the MSR partition.[citation needed]
The starting size of an MSR depends on disk size and usually aligns with the following table. This size gets reduced as portions of the MSR are taken to be used, as described above.
Disk size | MSR size |
---|---|
Less than 16 GB | 32 MB (32 × 220 bytes) |
Greater than 16 GB | 128 MB |
Beginning in Windows 10, the minimum size of the MSR is 16 MB which the installer allocates by default.[4]
The MSR should be located after the EFI System Partition (ESP) and any OEM service partitions, but it must be located before any primary partitions of bootableWindowsoperating systems.[1] Microsoft expects an MSR to be present on every GPT disk, and recommends it to be created as the disk is initially partitioned.[5]
Summary: This article talks about how to delete or remove an APFS partition/volume/container from the Macintosh HD or an external hard drive on macOS Big Sur 11/Catalina 10.15/Mojave 10.14/High Sierra 10.13.
APFS, short for Apple File System, is a new file storage system for macOS, iOS, watchOS, tvOS, and Apple devices. Compare to the 30-year-old HFS+HFS+, APFS has many new features and benefits, such as improved storage, faster performance, enhanced data integrity, and encryption, etc. Once macOS 10.13 was released, Apple made APFS available to every Mac computer, iPhone and iPad owner, eventually APFS replaced HFS+. When and if you upgrade your system to macOS 10.13 High Sierra, 10.14 Mojave, or 10.15 Catalina, the system drive will be automatically converted HFS+ to APFS.
If you upgrade to macOS 10.13 High Sierra, 10.14 Mojave, or 10.15 Catalina, you might have spent some time experimenting with APFS (Apple File Stem). This is a completely different file system, which comes with some new concepts for formatting and managing your Mac drives. Therefore, many people don't know how to delete an APFS partition, container, volume. A people asked for help from a forum:
I got a 'Your disk is almost full' message. My MacBook became very slow. When checking storage, 'Other volumes in container' was taking up to 30gb, but it constantly changed. Sometimes it took a gig or two, and other times 30gb. I'm running a High Sierra 10.13. How to delete this APFS partition? Any suggestion will be appreciated!
Similar to the example above, lots of Mac users have noticed some weird stuffs called 'Other Volumes in Container' in Disk Utility. It's impossible to ignore them as these volumes always take hundreds of gigabytes of your Mac hard drive space and their size keep growing. In this case, you may wonder what is other volumes in container and how to get rid of them on Mac to free up space. No matter what the reason you decide to delete an APFS partition, just follow the step-by-step tutorial.
1. When deleting an APFS partition, all data stored on the partition will be erased. Therefore, before you proceed, please make sure you have made a complete backup of your important data. You can manually take a backup of your files on any external drives. Alternatively, you can also turn on Time Machine, take advantage of iCloud or Google Drive.
2. Please note that under APFS, there is a new concept: container. A Container is the basic storage unit for APFS. Every APFS container contains one or more volumes. And a physical drive can be divided into several containers. The volumes are the actual 'drives' you see in Finder but the containers can only be viewed in Disk Utility. First of all, you should make it clear which one you want to delete.
It's totally different to delete an APFS volume and an APFS partition, container. Considering many users are so confused about the meaning of APFS partition, APFS container or APFS volume, we will show you methods to delete an APFS partition, container, and an APFS volume.
Let's start with the easier one. An APFS volume can be deleted with simple steps, whether it on the Macintosh HD or an external drive. You can use Disk Utility to remove an APFS volume the right way:
Different from deleting an APFS volume, if you right-click the APFS partition or container in Disk Utility, you will notice there is no delete option you can choose. Actually, deleting an APFS partition or container is not as easy as you think. Here are different methods depending on whether you are deleting an APFS partition on the Macintosh HD or an external drive.
Note: an APFS partition or container on the Macintosh HD includes system files, if you delete any of them, you will make the Mac computer not bootable.
• How to Boot into & Use M1 Mac Recovery Mode
If you have an >APFS external hard drive and you want to merge one of APFS partitions on it, you can follow the steps below.
The real deletion varies greatly and may make us getting into data loss problems. Here are two methods to avoid data loss when needing to delete APFS partition, volume.
Apple's Time Machine software is a built-in backup utility in macOS or Mac OS X which can help you recover recently deleted files or photos, recover your Mac from an old Time Machine backup.
1. Restore files from Time Machine backup
2. Restore an APFS partition from Time Machine backup
Unable to restore files from Time Machine Backup? A professional APFS data recovery tool can help you recover Time Machine Backups from APFS disks.
It is recommended to back up files on other drives before deletion if those files are important for us. But if we forget to make back up, or realize there are still useful files on the deleted APFS volume after deletion, only Method 2 can help us to get lost files back. As the best APFS data recovery is quite complex, there are only a few Mac data recovery software can support it. Fortunately,iBoysoft Data Recovery Software for Mac is one of a few Mac data recovery software that can recover deleted/lost files from APFS volumes.
iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac is a professional & free Mac data recovery software that can recover lost data from deleted APFS partition/container,recover lost data from formatted APFS drive, recover lost data from unmountable APFS drive, recover lost data from inaccessible APFS drive, recover lost data from corrupted APFS drive, etc.
Aside from data recovery from APFS drive, iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac can also recover lost data from as HFS drives, HFS+ drives, exFAT drives, FAT32 drives, recover lost data from formatted, unmountable, inaccessible, corrupted hard drive, external hard drive, SD card, USB drive, pen drive, etc. on macOS Big Sur 11/10.15/10.14/10.13/10.12/10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8/10.7.
Tutorial to recover deleted APFS volume with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac
Note: If lost files are not found in quick scan mode, please check the 'File types' option in the Preferences panel, check deep scan option and try again.
Conclusion:
This post shows you step-by-step tutorials to delete or remove an APFS partition, container or volume on the Macintosh HD and an external drive. In case you may lose important data after deletion, you can download the best APFS data recovery software - iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac to help you recover lost data from deleted APFS volumes and from recover lost data from corrupted APFS partitions as well.
Hope one of these solutions will be helpful. If you have any question or suggestion, please let us know.