FZ18L How to remove the 10GB Recovery Partition

This is something that really annoys me... I buy a brand new laptop with 160GB hard drive only to find 10GB of is kept as a recovery partition.

Even when I burn recovery DVDs there is still no way to get rid of this partition and make my C drive bigger...

But whilst messing around trying to install XP i found a way....

It i best to do this as soon as you get your new laptop out of the box before you have any data or files or programs on it! or your gonna loose the lot, so if you have stuff on there you want make sure you back it up and check you can read the backup as well!!!!!!!

Here's how to get rid of the partition

1) Make sure you have created your recovery DVDs

2) At this point I completely deleted all of the partitions on the hard drive and created a new single full size partition and then formatted it using a windows xp disc. However you may not need to do this. I haven't tried it without so i don't know how the following steps would work out if you didn't do this.

3)If doing step 2 stop the install after format completes.

4)Insert the 1st recovery dvd as made in step 1 and restart the pc

5)ignore the bit about the missing recovery partition and select Sony Vaio recovery from the list of options.

6)when given the choice DO NOT select to restore original factory state chose the other option whose name escapes me.

7)one of the following screens will give you the option to assign all of the space to the C select this (of course if you didn't do step 2 I don't know if it will include that 10GB)

8) now follow on screen instructions.

9) when finished check in 'Computer' your hard drive should show as 149GB which is what 160GB will format up as!

 

An easy way. Lauch recovery center (open launcher.exe) from within windows. Click to reinstall progs/drivers. Now open My computer, you will see the recovery partition drive there. Right click the drive > format. You are done.

 

That didnt work for me... all it let me do was format it i couldnt delete the partition and merge it with the main C drive partition. This i belive is because of the main c drive partition being offset.

 

Deleting a partition is easy, you don't have to go through a restoration just to delete it. However growing/merging partitions non-destructively requires a 3rd party tool, such as Partition Magic, Acronis Disk Director, or (for free) GParted.

Again, I have to say that I personally consider it ill-advised to delete recovery partitions. You have a 160GB drive -- is it full already? If so and there's nothing you can delete to free up space, then fine, but I'd recommend a HDD upgrade at that point. If you're full at 150GB (thereabouts), then another 10GB isn't likely to help you for long, and now you've lost a very useful recovery option. DVD media may not be with you when you need it, and it can also become damage, decay due to dye rot, etc. Just my $0.02...

 

simple... just pop in Windows XP installatioin disc and you can delete hidden recovery partition from their menu.

 

i use the laptop for live recording of music (usually anywhere between 2 and 16 simultaneous audio tracks at 48 or 96KHz 24 Bit) so I regularly fill the hard drive up before dumping it off onto my desktop. 10GB makes a lot of difference and i don't want to be using external discs.

I consider it a waste of HD space to have recovery partition especially since the only times I have ever needed to recovery have been because the hard drive failed and had to be replaced.

The partition Sony use for the recovery partition is not a standard partition. I tried all the tools including partition magic and all though i could delete it and format it I couldn't not merge it with the main partition. This appeared to be because the recovery partition was at offset 0 and the main partition followed it making it impossible to merge with deleting both partitions

 

I have used BootIT NG to delete a partition and slide one down before. HOWEVER, I have not tried it with Vista, so I can't say if the Boot INI file will still be able to find the OS or not after doing so. But if you have a way to image the entire drive first you might want to give BootIT NG a try.

It is primarily a boot manager app, but it also contains a very good partition management app as well. If you boot from its installation media it will attempt to install its boot manager, but if you decline that, it will enter its partition management phase. One really nice feature is you can stack up a bunch of tasks for it to do, like delete a partition, slide one then expand it, and then execute ALL of the tasks at one time.

It's a little cryptic, but if you understand partitions it is VERY powerful.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html

Gary