Hidden Recovery Partition Removal

Okay, after three days of trying to make Recovery Disks on my new UX390N I got totally frustrated and just ordered them from Sony Parts for $18.00 + $7.00 shipping. Definitely worth it, so stop wasting your time...
Now the battle over getting back my 6.78 GB stolen by the "Hidden Recovery Partition". I tried every possible combination of trying to load from disc, making disc, blah, blah... NOTHING WORKED! NOT EVEN PARTITION MAGIC! (I have PM 8 which is not compatible with Vista! ) When I would try to delete the partition in MS Disk Management I was complete locked out from this command. I did not want to clean sweep the HD and then have to sit there and re-install all the drivers and Sony crap, so I happen to come across this posting ( http://vaioz.com/removepartition.html) and with slight modification was I able to finally wipe out the partition and reassign it as a new volume with a drive letter. In all honesty, it's incredibly easy if you know a few key steps and commands. I like a separate data drive from my operating system, so I labeled this partition D. Here is the way to do this.
1. Read the link above.
2. MAKE A COMPLETE BACK-UP OF YOUR C: DRIVE! Use the Sony Back-up tool. Back up to either an external HD connected to USB or DVD. The back-up will take about 16 GBs.
3. Go to the Command Prompt and type "diskpart"
4. At the prompt type: "List Volume" Note which volume is your C: drive, mine was Volume 1...
5. At the prompt type: "Select Volume 1"
6. At the prompt type: "List Partition"
7. At the prompt type: "Select Partition 1" (Note there are two partitions, one is 23 GB and the other is about 7 GB. Make sure you select the smaller parition which is labeled OEM.)
8. At the prompt type: "Delete Partition Override" - You have now deleted the partition which you selected above - it is now free to be allocated to other use. Without the "Override" sub-command the partition cannot be deleted as it is protected. That is why you do not have access in Disk Management.
9. Exit the Command Prompt window.
10. Open Disk Management (Start>Right Click Computer>Manage, Click on Disk Management)
11. Right Click on the now unallocated partition, assign it a drive letter, label and format it in the fashion you assign. The other option is to select the C: drive and expand it into the now unallocated space to make one large HD.

Congratulations! You did it! Restart your computer to ensure everything is okay.
- NOTE: I do not claim to be an authority, these steps happen to work for me. You do this at your own risk and demise. I cannot be responsible if you wipe out your entire system. Make sure to create a back-up first! Better yet, make sure you have recovery disc in your possession. Good Luck!

 

This is one of the BEST post I have ever come across. Extremely useful and it worked like a charm for me!

 

Hi, I follow the above steps. However, I cannot expand the C drive to include the 7GB space. I can only format and create the partition on 7GB space. Anyidea how to expand the C drive?

 

Thank you so much....this should be a sticky.

 

I booted from a Linux Live CD and formated the harddrive.

 

i prefer not to format the recovery partition you never know what could happend to the recovery DVD's and if u delete this partition the F10 recovery command on the bios screen will not work... im my hard disk is safer. recovery partition are only 7GB not that much... i still have 70GB free of my 160GB HD, i save all my documents, movies, music, games, etc on a external 500GB HD.

 

But you can put everything back by using the recovery-disks.
After using it your laptop,or better your Windows/ Harddrive looks like it has never been touched.

That's what the partitionis for: so it can be burned on DVD. My 2 cts

 

I agree with TinyRK. I'd just back everything up, put the recovery disks in a safe place and use DBAN to completely wipe the hard drive. Then do a clean Vista or XP install.

 

i lost my recovery dvd..

i do however still have that partition intact..

how do i use this partition to restore my os?

 

As I bought a japanses FZ with japanese vista that I didn't want to use, the hidden partition was useless in my case, and with the help of this post I managed to completely remove it.

 

If you want to remove the hidden partition and do a fresh install of Windows, all you need is this thing called the Ultimate Boot CD. In the CD, there are a couple of utilities that completely wipe your hard drive. One of them is called "Darik's Boot and Nuke". This is something we use alot in our department to wipe hard drives. It simply overwrites the entire hard drive with zeros or with a number of different methods. Once it is done, the hard drive is completely empty.

Recommended settings for modern hard drives when using DBAN:
PRNG: Mersenne Twister
Method: PRNG Stream
Verify: All Passes
Rounds: Your choice. The more rounds, the more secure the wipe.

You can get the Ultimate Boot CD here:
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

 

Power off the machine. Then during the reboot hit the F10 key. This will boot the machine from the hidden partition.

Gary

 

thanks. i didn't know that.

i was wondering about a "worst case scenario" and pondering how i might be able to recover my laptop.

 

Guys, isn't this way easier with Partition magic?

thats what i would think

 

Acronis Disk Director Suite works well for this.

 

So does BootIt NG.

Gary

 

if i create the recovery disk, will it be something like a copy of the hidden partition or what? when you insert the recovery disk, having the hidden partition removed, how will it launch ?

 

What if I upgrade my HD? Where would that partition go? :S

 

x2

i thought the recovery partition is needed no matter what if you want to recover your system to the out of the box factory state

 

Once you create the recovery DVD set you do not NEED the hidden partition(at least on the FZ series, that is the ONLY one I can vouch for). That's the TECHNICAL answer. The logical answer is why bother to delete it??? What happens if you loose the DVD set? What happens if the DVD set is damaged? Do you REALLY need that extra 7 gig of disk space?

If you upgrade your HD, the partition goes where ever you take your old hard drive... grin... Seriously, with an upgraded HD there is no way that I know of to create a new hidden partition on the drive. You might be able to use some imaging software to copy it to the new drive, but I am not sure if the F10 bootloader would recognize it. I suspect it would have to start at the same sector on the new drive as it did on the old.

Gary

 

I really need those 5.5 gb of space in my tz191. i only have 32gbssd drive.

i cant seem to delete the hidden partition. it wont give me the option to delete it. i dont know why. i cant make the dvd recovery disk because i only have 11.5 gb left of space

 

You can't delete it because it is hidden! You need to drop down to a DOS app like diskpart or a third party tool like Partition Magic, Acronis or BootIT NG. Look around here or the WINDOWS forum on this website and search for diskpart. BUT BE DAMNED CAREFUL!!!!! Make sure you have a complete backup of EVERYTHING on your hard drive. Use of diskpart can be tricky and one slip and you can delete the wrong partition.

Gary

 

it Works! thanks a lot LJUII for the simple n clear steps for doing away with the recovery partition!

 

I know because last week i tried to format a USB key. I accidently formatted my 250GB USB harddrive . I used a datarecovey program to get back some files.

 

help - i followed the steps, i got my 7.5BG back, unallocated but then i can't expand C: to use this new available space ? did i miss a step ? do i need to format these 7.5GB first ?

thx

 

alternatively, if you have a windows 98 second edition bootable installation cd (one of the most useful hacking tool ), you can use it to boot into command line, and start fdisk to remove the recovery partition. quick and easy.

 

Easy question for anyone with a recent Sony:

What drive letter should the recovery partition be?

Background...
I have a TZ17 with Vista.

I have messed around with extra partitions, dual booting Ubuntu etc. etc. and now I want to reclaim the famous recovery partition. Lo and behold, I try running Vaio Recovery tool but it tells me there's no recovery partition. Well, yes there bloody is and it's taking up 6Gb of space! It's currently lettered H:, and I wonder whether that's from me mucking around with partitioning, hence my question.

 

I'm also having trouble reclaiming the now deleted partition / unallocated space. right clicking the primary drive - C:, the expand option is greyed out.

i've yet to come across a tutotrial that seems to get rid of these partitions and get the space back to one drive - which is important for those of us with 32 SSD. for me, reclaiming that space would mean roughly 110% increase in available storage.

 

I'm currently grappling with removing my hidden Acronis partition, which Dynamism now puts on its TZs. Because Vista SP1 needs 4GB free space to perform an update, I can't do anything without removing it.

Of course, after asking Dynamism about it a few days ago, I still have to hear back from my tech support guy.