Windows Upgrade from 1909 to 2009 failed due to "Warning: Found Insufficient System Partition Disk Free Space Hard Block."

Question

Windows Upgrade from 1909 to 2009 failed due to "Warning: Found Insufficient System Partition Disk Free Space Hard Block."

Furkan Cevik 96

Hey,

currently we are starting the Upgrade from Build 1909 to 2009.

In the early test we already found out some errors we could fix (temporarily). One main issue which occurred a lot is this:

Warning: Found Insufficient System Partition Disk Free Space Hard Block.
More information is available here:
"https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3086249/-we-couldn-t-update-system-reserved-partition-error-installing-windows"
The system you are attempting to update is running low on disk space on the System Reserved Partition.
Free up space on the System Reserved Partition and try the update again.

After following the workaround given in the article, we could fix this problem.

But now, we have a device where this problem occurs again, but is not fixable:

All of your company devices have the EFI-systempartition of a size of 100MB. The fix implies that at least 13MB is needed to update Windows 10.

This was the case on the HP Elitebook 840 G5 - Windows 10 Pro 1909:

As you see, on the 100MB EFI partition, 15.572.992 Bytes (15.57 MB) are free. This should be fully enough for Windows to do the upgrade, but Windows is not able to do the Upgrade, since it fails aready on the Compatibility Scan:

(Its in German, translated it means: "We couldn’t update system reserved partition [...]"

We were able to do the upgrade from the same model with other notebooks, so im excluding the option this do be hardware related.

One thing to be said is that we also have McAfee Drive Encryption running on our Notebooks. And I found out, that it is also has his own files on the EFI-Partition. But this size only allocates around ~2-3MB.

Like I said before, this problem doesnt occur at every notebook. This is the first notebook we got where it is not possible to do the given fix by Microsoft.

Any help is appreciated.

Regards,

Furkan

3 answers

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Answer 1

Joy Qiao 5,792 Microsoft Employee Moderator

Hi,

Thank you for your detailed information.

As Windows 10 upgrade need at least 15MB space to upgrade, the existing free space on that devices is 15.57MB which almost the edge of necessary space. I am not sure if upper system version such as Windows 10 20H1 or Windows 10 20H2 needs a little more space than previous system version. But I would recommend to free up system volume to more space to narrow down the issue.

Also I recommend to disable antivirus software temporarily, and boot computer into clean boot to avoid third party software to write data into system volume when upgrade system.

Bests,
Joy.

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Furkan Cevik 96 Reputation points

2021-02-02T07:34:10.087+00:00
Hey,

thanks for the fast reply!

Isnt 13MB enough to update Windows 10? According to Microsoft:

To upgrade your device, you'll need to free up 15MB of space on the SRP using the appropriate method below, and then try the upgrade again. If you're updating Windows 10, you need to free up 13MB.

-> Since we are updating Windows here, it only needs 13MB of empty space.

But lets say the 15.57MB free space on the EFI Partition is not enough, what can I clean more the partition next to the fonts we deleted? I couldnt find anything else possible to delete on that drive.

Thanks!

Furkan

Answer 2

Joy Qiao 5,792 Microsoft Employee Moderator

Hi Furkan,

On Windows 10, features updates are technically new versions of the OS, which are available twice a year, during spring and fall time frame. They will bring new features and functions to your system which is different with system update. Support time is based on feature update released time and will maintain 18 month for it. If it is out of support, we should upgrade it to new system version of Windows which is bring by another feature update. Also the feature update installation process is consists of 4 processes which is same with upgrade but different with quality or rollup update.

Did you refer to resolution part of We couldn’t update system reserved partition” error installing Windows 10.

"All of your company devices have the EFI-system partition of a size of 100MB"
As I know, the default SRP size on Windows 10 should be 500MB. If it is not able to free up SRP with the upper steps, we could consider to expand SRP size.

Bests,

Furkan Cevik 96 Reputation points

2021-02-02T08:10:55.963+00:00

Hey,

thanks for the info.

We are using a custom "WinPE" which is creating EFI partitions of 100MB. We changed this now to 500MB, so all new devices will be 500MB.

If it is not able to free up SRP with the upper steps, we could consider to expand SRP size.

Is it even possible to expand the EFI-partition (SRP) on a running system? If not, what ways are given to do this? Thanks!

Furkan
Joy Qiao 5,792 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2021-02-02T08:20:56.247+00:00

Hi Furkan,

It is not available to expand it in disk management console. If we want to keep the existing system version, third party software is necessary to do it.
Please refer to the following link for details about third party tool measure.
Error: We couldn’t update the system reserved partition

But as you know, Microsoft will always not recommend to use 3rd party tool on your device to avoid system potential risk. So we recommend to perform sysprep, and deploy image to old device.

Bests,

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Furkan Cevik 96 Reputation points

2021-02-02T08:41:10.39+00:00

Hey, I think I found something else.

Is it possible that you guys meant 15 MiB of free space on SRP and NOT 15MB?

Because after another check on the device with the problem, we found out it only has 14MB free (technically this is MiB, but Windows shows it as MB).

15572992 Bytes is as you know 15.57MB and 14,85 MiB.

My guess is that Windows wants the 15 in MiB, not in MB.

Can you confirm this?

Regards,

Furkan

Answer 3

Furkan Cevik 96

Update: This is the reason.

To upgrade Windows 10, you need actual 15 MiB and not 15MB!

In other words:

You need atleast 15728640 Byte and not 15000000 Byte!

This should be clarified in this post We couldn’t update system reserved partition” error installing Windows 10., that you need 15 MiB.

Anyways, thanks for helping, im closing this thread.

Joy Qiao 5,792 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2021-02-03T01:35:44.56+00:00

Hi,

Thank you for your feedback.

Yes, we all missed the actual byte of 15MB， it should be 15728640 byte as your said.
Please feedback this issue through Feedback Hub application.

So did you resolved it by free up space or extend size or others?

Bests,
Furkan Cevik 96 Reputation points

2021-02-03T07:19:32.443+00:00

Since we have McAfee on our devices, and McAfee has also his own part at the EFI partition, I was able to find an old log file of McAfee ~1MB which is safe deletable.

When i deleted this, i hit >15728640 Bytes of free space, making the upgrade possible.

Furkan
Joy Qiao 5,792 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2021-02-24T02:41:37.89+00:00

Hi Furkan,

Thanks for your update.

To help other customers who encounter same issue with you, would you mark any useful reply as answer so that they could noticed this issue.

Bests,
Joy.

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Windows Upgrade from 1909 to 2009 failed due to "Warning: Found Insufficient System Partition Disk Free Space Hard Block."

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