How can I reinstall the Vaio Recovery Partition?

Sony (chat support) says I have to send the computer in to have the hard drive reimaged to include the recovery partition; I don't believe that is the only option, but can't find what I'm looking for.

I COMPLETELY formatted my hard drive, and reinstalled Vista with a plain Vista 32 bit disc. I've been installing as little Vaio software from the recovery discs I made as possible.

I'm thinking that there must be some way to shrink the C: drive and create a ~7.5GB partition and copy the Vaio Recovery discs to it some way, but am not sure how. It seems like there must be a way. How would they do it at the service place?

 

If you want/need to use the existing Vista install you are going to run into a bit of a problem. Moving it will screw up the boot loader such that it won't find Vista and refuse to boot. But that is fixable. Problem #2 is that I don't know of ANYONE who has manually restored the hidden partition. It is not a standard partition type (for those who understand what that means it is a 27h type). And it must be located starting at EXACTLY the right cylinder, and track to get the BIOS F10 key code to find it. I know this because I just swapped the drives between an FZ190 and a FZ420 and wanted to put the hidden partitions on both. Moving them didn't work, because I had no way to get them in EXACTLY the right spot (the cylinder and track thing I mentioned above).

But in the end I was able to accomplish the task. Here's how:

1. If you MUST keep the existing Vista install, make an image of it. Use something like Acronis, or Ghost. (I use an old copy of Ghost.) You will need a BOOTABLE copy of whatever application you use to do this.

1a. If you have other partitions image them too.

2. Use the recovery DVD to restore the ENTIRE hard drive. There are two options in the recovery DVD. One option just restores your C: partition and the other option restores the ENTIRE drive including the hidden partition.

3. If you imaged your Vista install in step one restore it. (Don't expect it to boot yet. See step 4.) Also restore your other partitions if you had them. If you didn't keep the Vista install in step one, reinstall Vista (and you extra partitions if any) and you're done.

4. Now one last step if you did restore your original Vista partition. We need to repair the boot loader, so it can find Vista's new position. I'll link you to another page with the details. http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/using-gparted-to-resize-your-windows-vista-partition/ Scroll down past all the GPARTED stuff to the white on black screenshot of the error and follow along from there.

Voilà' you have the hidden partition back and a running Vista system.

Gary

 

If you had managed to clean install Vista (assuming that you have the Vista install DVD), why do you even need the useless recovery partition?
I deleted mine for good.