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    Properly deleting Sony VAIO recovery partition

    Discussion in 'VAIO / Sony' started by QZTT, May 6, 2012.

  1. QZTT

    QZTT Notebook Enthusiast

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    Hello Sonystylers/VAIOers,

    I am trying to encrypt my ENTIRE drive and the program cannot encrypt the entire drive because of irregular partitions of the HDD (Sony Recovery partition). I already created backup/recovery CDs and I have no use for the Recovery partition anymore and I would like that space to be available to me.

    I have already scoured the internet for answers using Google and a slew of other search engines and to no avail, I have failed to find anything useful or of up to date.

    Also as I was using Windows Defragmenter, I noticed there is a "System Reserved" partition in addition to the "Recovery Partition." What is that used for? Is it part of the Recovery partition?
     
  2. namaiki

    namaiki "basically rocks" Super Moderator

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    The 100MB system reserved partition is something to do with Windows startup. I don't think that you can delete it.
     
  3. baii

    baii Sone

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    You can try use EasyBCD or other MBR software and write your MBR on your OS drive then you can remove "system reserved".
    For the recovery partition,
    you can either
    make recovery disc if the software allows
    clone it as a image or clone it on to a usb or
    you think if you will never need it, you can just format it and call it a day

    some googlefu will let do any of the option
     
  4. QZTT

    QZTT Notebook Enthusiast

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    I found a solution today! You have to use the Diskpart CMD using the "delete partition override command" instead of the standard "delete partition."

    However I have one more question.

    I created Recovery Disks using VAIO Care. If I do need a recovery, are the recovery partition and recovery disks I created INTERDEPENDENT on each other? In other words, are the recovery disks useless without the parition and vice-versa?
     
  5. baii

    baii Sone

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    nope, should work just by itself.
     
  6. baii

    baii Sone

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    Nope, disc should work all my itself,other vaio owner should be able to confirm.
     
  7. beaups

    beaups New Jack Hustler

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    Don't delete it. Your recovery discs go bad all the time - I'd say they've worked 20% of the time for me. You're gonna regret deleting that partition.
     
  8. namaiki

    namaiki "basically rocks" Super Moderator

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    Haha.. Yeah, funny that yesterday when I tried to restore my system that disc 2 had gone funny, but I managed to make another copy that works; took an hour trying to read the disc in Nero.


    But in theory, if the discs haven't gone bad, they will work independent of the recovery partition on the hard disk and also by default will restore the recovery partition when you reimage the computer from them.
     
  9. QZTT

    QZTT Notebook Enthusiast

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    Just finished deleting the recovery partition and gained an extra 10 gigabytes! I will now be able to encrypt my ENTIRE HARDDRIVE without any warnings or compromise.

    I will post the process I used to recover those precious gigabytes later on because I am confident that I am not the only one that was curious on how to delete the partition.
     
  10. pizzigri

    pizzigri Newbie

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    Hey there QZTT... you never did actually tell us how you erased that partition.
     
  11. next4nextel

    next4nextel Notebook Consultant

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    You can simply use a software program such as Paragon Partition manager or Mini tool partition wizard (they have free versions by the way) which will show you hidden recovery partitions and will move the partitions around so you can manage the free spaces on your drive.