How to Fix Recovery Drive is full on Windows 11

Users notified that they received the error message “The recovery drive is full” on windows 11. This message should not be confused by the low disk space message. The first message refers to your specific recovery drive. The second message concerns the general space available on your computer’s hard drive.

If your computer becomes unresponsive, the recovery drive is a separate partition on your hard disk that stores all files necessary to restore it.

This post will discuss the best ways to address this problem. To avoid any further issues, please follow these steps:

Manually move files from the recovery drive

• Press Windows key + I on your keyboard.
• Select System and scroll down, click on About.
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• Scroll down and click on System protection.
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• Select the Drive and click on Configure.
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• Select Disable system protection and click on Apply.
• A confirmation dialog pop up, Click on YES.
• Then select OK.
• Open File Explorer and select View tab.
• Click on option, then click on Change folder and search option.
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• In view tab, untick the box Hide protected operating system files and click on OK.
• Open the Recovery drive and select the folders you want to move.
• Copy them to another drive.
• Press Shift + Delete key to delete unnecessary and copied folders.
• Note: you should not delete these files $RECYCLE.BIN, boot, hp, EFI, Factory Update, preload, Recovery, RM_Reserve, system.sav, bootmgr, RMCStatus.bin, BT_HP.FLG, CSP.DAT, DeployRp, HP_WSD.dat, HPSF_Rep, language, or RPCONFIG.

Run Disk Cleanup

• Press Windows key + R, type cleanmgr, and hit Enter key.
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• Choose the Recovery drive and select OK.
• It will take time to calculate the amount of space you can free up.
• Choose the files you want to delete by clicking on boxes.
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• Click on OK to let the process finish.
• If asked click on Delete Files.
• We have provided quick tips to ensure that you never again get the Recovery Drive is full error.
• To avoid losing any important backup files on your Recovery drive, make sure you follow the steps in this article.

We’d like to hear if you found this post helpful.

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