After installing Windows Server 2008 R2, it's only natural that an IT manager might poke around in Disk Management to check the partitions and whatnot. And that may lead to the discovery of a new, mysterious "System Reserved" partition. How did it get there, and what is it for?

The Rob's Ragg blog has the answers in What is the Windows Server 2008 R2 / Windows 7 System Reserved Partition? Here's an enlightening excerpt:

This 100MB partition is where the Windows bootloader resides. This is needed if you're going to implement Bitlocker. Installation now, by default, prepares the [system] for Bitlocker. This has changed from the Windows Vista / Server 2008 configuration where you had to prepare a drive to support Bitlocker. The installation does not install Bitlocker, it just configures the server in the event you want to enable Bitlocker. This is a much better plan than before.

There's more to the story, including a warning about messing with the partition (hint: don't do it), so be sure to read the whole thing. (It's only a few paragraphs longer than what's posted here.)

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