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Usually, you can easily delete a partition in Disk Management. But sometimes, you can't remove EFI system partition in Windows 10/8.1/8/7/XP/Vista because "Delete Volume" feature is grayed out.
And you may encounter a similar situation when you trying to delete OEM partition, recovery partitions, system reserved partition. This page will talk about what is an EFI system partition and how to remove, deleted or format EFI system partition in Windows 10/8.1/8/7/XP/Vista.
Usually, when you successfully install Windows OS on a GPT disk of your computer, an EFI system partition (ESP for short) will be created. But what is an EFI system partition?
According to Wikipedia, "EFI system partition (ESP) is a partition on a data storage device which is used computers. When a computer is booted, UEFI firmware loads files stored on the ESP(EFI system partition) to start installed the operating system and various utilities."
Deleting EFI system partition will cause installed systems unbootable. So, EFI system partition is usually protected and locked by the Windows operating systems to prevent and avoid accidental deletion of these partitions. That's why you can't delete EFI partition using the Disk Management tool.
But in some special situation, for example, you've installed two Windows systems on your PC, you might want to remove EFI system partition to free up some disk space and just keep one OS. At this moment, how can you delete EFI system partition? Actually, there are two ways to do this job.
If you just want to remove EFI system partition and install a new Windows OS, you can directly reinstall Windows OS and EFI system partition will be removed automatically. You don't have to any extra operation.
As a command line utility, DiskPart is a little bit harder for average users to understand due to its non-graphical interface. So please be very careful when you want to delete EFI partition with Diskpart command line:
Type the below command lines and hit Enter each time:
Type the below command lines and hit Enter each time:
Finally, type "exit" to close the windows when you receive the message says, 'DiskPart successfully deleted the selected partition'.
DiskPart does help you remove EFI partition in Windows, but is it the best choice? Of course not. As a command line utility, DiskPart is a little bit harder for average users to understand due to its non-graphical interface.
So we recommend you try EaseUS free partition manager. This program makes EFI partition deleting the job in Windows 10/8.1/8/7/XP/Vista as easy as 1-2-3. Now you can learn the detailed guide.
Before you take actions, create a bootable disk first.
Step 1: Install and launch EaseUS Partition Master on PC
On the main window, right-click on the hard drive partition which you want to delete and select "Delete".
Step 2: Confirm the deletion
Step 3: Execute to delete the partition
When you've successfully deleted EFI partition on your PC, you can create a new partition and use it as a data partition to save data again.