FZ: Reclaiming hidden partition with XP downgrade

Hi!
I'm going to be receiving my FZ later today and I'm planning to downgrade to XP. I'm just wondering how I should go about reclaiming the hidden partition. On my old Vaio, I burned the Recovery disks, then I tried to run them and it still left the partition hidden on my laptop afterwards.

I'm thinking this is the way I'd have to approach it on my new laptop:

1. Burn recovery disks
2. Run disks, format VAIO, and somehow get the hidden partition back.
3. Reformat again, and install XP.
4. Track down and install all the VAIO drivers
5. Finally enjoy my new laptop.

Does this seem like a logical progression or is there a quicker way to do things?

 

Step one is a good start. Then just remove the hidden partition with a partition manager like Acronis Disk Director, go to step 4 (or look around on this website where to get all of them), and then re-format and install XP and the Sony drivers&utilities.

 

Are you sure you won't need the recovery partition in the future?

 

I clean installed both Vista and XP and just left the recovery partition alone. In the SZ its some 6GB, it doesn't bother me.

 

If I remember correct, you could see the recovery partition from Vista partition manager...I assume you can just erase it then, although I haven't actually tried.

 

Nope, wont do. Vista Partition manager can be helpful creating additional partitions, but it can't touch the recovery partition.

 

You should be able to delete it from any 3rd party partition tool, such as GParted, Disk Director, Partition Magic, etc.

However I always recommend folks leave it alone. It's 8GB -- if you're down to needing that 8GB out of a >100GB notebook drive, then you could see about freeing it up then, but honestly at that point it's time for either a new drive or some housecleaning.

I created the restore DVD's to have as an offline backup, but I leave my restore partitions alone. It's just so much quicker & easier should you decide to factory restore. At the very least, do as I do and use something like Acronis True Image to image the restore partition to a backup drive or DVD, then you can restore it to the HDD should you ever need it. That came in handy when I factory de-RAIDed my AR670 into two separate drives. I restored C: and the Restore Partition to the first drive, and my D: partition to the second drive.

 

When I got my notebook, I created the recovery disks out of the partition and formatted C: to install XP. One of my discs has become heavily scratched and unusable. The partition wasn't deleted but is invisible in XP.

Is there anyway I can recreate the recovery discs from it again? Because I don't have the Vaio software that would have done that which was on the factory Vista install.

Or how can I activate the partition to work in the BIOS?

 

F10 at BIOS boot screen should launch the recovery process from the recovery partition.

It may have become marked inactive. GParted or a similar tool can be used to mark it active and make it visible to the OS, however without the VAIO Recovery Center utility, you can't do anything with it from Windows anyway.

 

Where can I download the "Vaio Recovery Center utility"? Thats what lets you create disks from the partition correct?

 

It's found on the Sony support page for your notebook. You'd probably have to register first, but it's no biggie. But they don't have full XP support for all of their notebooks. Have you tried F10 first like mentioned above?

 

From my experience, you can use the Recovery Discs to remove the hidden partition but you have to know what option to select.

This is the way I get rid of the hidden partition because it does not require ANY third party applications. This is the first thing I do when I get a VAIO computer. It requires a good amount of time but it's the most foolproof I've found and it also tests your Recovery Discs were burned properly. I forgot about one or two early questions they ask you in the beginning but just make sure you're doing a full VAIO Recovery and not restoring the system or some other options they give you.

1. Burn the VAIO Recovery Disks.
2. Restore the computer using the recovery disks by inserting Disc 1 of 2 and restarting the computer.
3. During the recovery process, select "VAIO Recovery"
4. Bullet "Skip" if asked "Try the following first" and click Next
5. When asked "Do you want to keep the VAIO Value-added Contents as part of the recovery drive?" bullet "No" and then click "Next"
6. When asked "Do you want to keep the factory default C drive size?" select Yes (selecting No and trying to allocate all the space to the C drive accomplishes the same thing from my experience).
7. Continue through the rest of the steps by following the on-screen instructions.

Your hidden partition will be gone and you will regain the space back into the C: Drive. From here, I do a clean installation (in your case, feel free to downgrade to XP).

Just to give an example: On my TZ150 which came with an advertised 100 GB, I reclaimed about 8GB of space back to my C: drive.

Also interesting note: If you use Sony's XP Downgrade Disks (don't know if they provide one for the FZ) you WILL lose your hidden partition automatically and won't have to do the above.