Many users currently experience a failure while updating their Windows 10 and 11 systems with error 0x80070643. The main cause for this error is that there isn't enough space in the Windows Recovery partition. Once this partition is extended, this error no longer appears.

Such an extension doesn't require much space - 250MB of additional space is said to be enough to fix this problem.

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A standard size of the recovery partition is approx. 500MB.

When looking at a standard single-drive layout such an extension seems to be an easy task: shrinking the Windows system partition a little bit and then extending the recovery one. In practice such an operation is not always easy.

Shrinking the system partition is quite simple.

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Right-click the partition and select Shrink Volume.

Extending the recovery partition however cannot be done the same way.

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Only one item appears after right-clicking the partition: Help. You cannot use this easy-to-use graphical Computer Management utility to extend the recovery partition.

Microsoft provides its solution to this problem (KB5028997: Instructions to manually resize your partition to install the WinRE update - Microsoft Support) but it requires executing a lot of commands in the Windows console, which may be confusing for inexperienced users.

R-Drive Image, being a full-scale GUI partition manager, can solve this problem easily. All you need to do is to drag the borders of the partitions to change their size. This article will provide a detailed explanation.

1. Backup all of your important files. This is good practice for any serious disk operation. Turn off BitLocker if it is on. Download and install R-Drive Image. You don't have to purchase it immediately, you may use it with all features for free during its 1 month demo period. Backup the entire hard drive if you have enough free space on your storage devices using R-Drive Image. You'll need a startup R-Drive Image version to recover the drive if something goes wrong, so creating a USB stick with the startup version in advance will be a good idea.

2. Start R-Drive Image and click the Partition Manager button.

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3. Select the system partition

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4. Right click the selected partition and choose Modify partition on the menu.

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5. Enter 0.5GB in the Free space after field and click the OK button.

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Although they say that 0.25GB is enough, specify 0.5GB on the safe side.

6. Hold and drag the left border of the recovery partition to the leftmost position.

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7. Verify that the new size of the recovery partition is around 1GB and click the Next button.

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8. Verify all of the parameters are correct and click the Start button.

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R-Drive Image will start performing the task and show when it's over.

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You may go to the Computer Management utility to verify that the Windows recovery partition has been extended.

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Then verify that the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) is enabled. Start: Windows System -> Command Prompt -> Right-click -> More -> Run as administrator

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If it's disabled, enter
reagentc.exe /enable
to enable it.

You may now start updating your Windows system without this error.