Removing Hidden Partition

I have TI 9 installed on a two-year old vaio laptop. Computer has a hidden recovery partition. It occurs to me this partition is not of any value - when I have (infrequently) had a problem, I have successfully restored the partition using TI. (And now, the last thing I want to do is restore computer to its original state from August 2006!)

So, can I remove the hidden partition? If yes, how would I do that? Or would you advise that I leave well enough alone?

Thanks,
Len

 

I use Acronis DiskDirector 10 for hide/unhide partitions.

I think the trial-version of DD10 can do it also.
The trial you can download on Acronis website.

 

Or you can use the free partition editor program, gparted

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

 

Thank you for your recommendations - I will look at both of them.

I've been doing some reading - always a dangerous thing for me . The computer in question has XP home. If it were Vista, it seems I could delete the partition and reallocate space using disk management. Is that correct?

 

I have recently downloaded DD10 trial to enable me to merge two partitions, both the rescue CD and Windows install after committing the changes throw up a screen that basically says you can't do anything in the trial

 

gparted is available under the General Public License and does not have such restrictions.

 

Hm,... I didn't know that DD10-trial has so less functions...

Try gparted like shieber suggest.

 

Thanks shieber, I have done what I wanted now by using disk management, I have an old copy of Partition Magic on floppies, but have recently bought a new computer which has Vista, unfortunately Partition Magic appears not to work on Vista.

Will have a look at gparted for any future requirements.

 

You CAN remove the hidden partition by whatever means, as other posters have suggested. But SHOULD you perhaps should be determined. I have removed my recovery partition from my Dell Laptop, after burning a copy of it to a DVD and after reading extensively on the consequences, which are no problem for me and there is at least one website a person has devoted almost exclusively to that for Dell systems. HOWEVER, you might want to address the implications of that for your Vaio, which I couldn't tell you definitively about. Maybe a member here can answer that from experience specifically with a Vaio or you can find something specifically at HP or some devoted website.

 

Crofttk -

Good point as to whether or not I SHOULD attempt this - especially given my limited technical expertise.

I remembered that my trusty eight year old Dell backup (and guinea pig)computer has a small hidden drive (30meg on a 38gig hard drive). I deleted it using gparted (nice free program!) and the machine was unbootable. I tried fixmbr and fixboot, neither of which helped. So I restored from acronis and ended that experiment.

Sooooooooo, I think I will leave the vaio alone - shame that I can't reclaim the disk space (15gig), but I can't afford to have any problems on tha machine. Murphy's law tells me the deletion won't work and then I'll have a problem with the Acronis restore

Thank you everyone for your comments - and I did learn about this nice tool gparted.

 

Ah, well, that small partition in all likelihood was the Dell diagnostics partition, something different from the recovery/restore partition which was 5 or 6 GB for me. I've left my diagnostics partitions alone since they take up such little space and come in handy if you have hardware weirdness happening.

Taking out your recovery partition, i.e., the one for restoring to your "out-of-the-box" condition, is probably less risky BUT still risky enough that you do want to know exactly what you're doing. You may be able to find a go by or clear enough explanation for the Vaio but, yeah, you want to be real comfortable with it and have a reliable restore prepared.

 

LenC, if you ever decide to sell the laptop, you might want to restore it to factory specs, which that hidden partition does. However, there should be a way to create your own factory restore cds from that partition. Have you created these factory restore cds?

 

Yes - I do have the DVDs tucked away for possible future use.

I sent Sony an email and their reply indicates I can remove the hidden partition by restoring the computer to its original state (and indicating I do not want to keep the hidden partition as part of the restore).

http://www.kb.sony.com/selfservice/documentLink.do?externalId=C395907

I plan to send them a follow up question - is there a way to remove it without restoring entire system.

I would experiment knowing I have Acronis images to fall back on - but this is my son's computer and he leaves to go back to school in a few days. I can't take a chance of screwing it up - I dont trust myself to be able to fix it promptly if something goes very wrong.

BTW, I was very impressed with Sony's response - quick and not boilerplate.

 

Sounds like a prudent and level headed approach to me.

 

I heard back from Sony again. They have told me there is no other way to recapture the space from the hidden partition than to perform the complete system restore.

Acronis could sure take a lesson from Sony as to how to provide customer support . Impressive responsiveness .