TX and Recovery Partition

I was just wondering if anybody knew of a legitimate site or another forum thread that explained the exact process to take out the recovery partition out of Sony Vaio Notebooks, specifically the TX series. Information including the necessary drivers and files to burn for the recovery disks would be great too.

Thanks.

 

Haven't found a legitimate site or detailed explanation as to how to take out the partition. You can read MilanoStyle's thread about him taking out the partition and all.

My guess would be to create Recovery Disks and then delete the partition. At least that's what I'm considering doing. I believe you can purchase Recovery Disks for your specific laptop (in this case the TX) from Sony. Also there's a startup program which hides the hidden partition. You can disable the process/program and you should be able to see the partition normally. If that's the case, you can create an image of the drive and store it on a disk or external HDD, etc. The program is: C:\WINDOWS\Sonysys\VAIO Recovery\PartSeal.exe . I have yet to try it out. I'm planning to check it out when I visit the Sony Store later next week. Can't wait till I get my tx650!

Hope this helps some. If you do decide to pursue this, you mind posting your results and etc? I'm quite interested in deleting that partition considering I'm planning to install a distro on my HDD.

 

Thanks for the tips.

Are the recovery disks equivalent to the entire partition?

I am just worried because I have read so many user comments about them deleting their recovery partition and when they attempted to re-install windows and get everything back working, they had trouble with some of the buttons not working, along with other problems. I just don't want to have to deal with these problems if I pursue this. So, I just want to basically follow a step-by-step procedure to do it correctly.

 

Completely understandable and all. I wouldn't want to mess up my laptop either if I'm not totally sure on the outcome of the procedure. However I have yet to find a step-by-step guide as to deleting the partition. I also heard that the Sony techs are not too keen on helping out with the partition bit.

The only thing I could think of that should "theoretically" work, would be disabling the program which hides the partition and making a duplicate copy of the partition on an external drive. That way you should have all the data and it should be as if it's the recovery partition itself. If you need to reinstall your OS, you should be able to transfer the ghost drive to your laptop and whatnot. Also creating recovery disks is a must of course. So you have a set of recovery disks as well as a ghost image of the recovery partition itself. That should suffice in my opinion. But this is all just theoretical and I'm just speculating and such some things.

As for the recovery disks being equivalent to the entire partition, I'm not too sure about that. I'm guess it isn't the entire partition but just the necessary drivers and such. However I heard that in the manual it said to make the recovery disks and you can delete the partition for extra HDD space. At least that's what I've heard, I haven't seen the manual itself, so I can't say for sure if it says that. Assuming that it does however, it would seem that the disks are equivalent to the entire partition since Sony says you are able to delete it. However you're going to have to check in the manual since I don't have my laptop yet.

Hope this helps some if anything. At least this should give you some idea as to how you may be able to deal with this problem. Good Luck and keep updating on your decisions and actions.

 

Well. This is what you do.

0. Purchase Revcovery DVD. Will cost like $13USD. The reason is that this DVD will last longer than the one's that you make.

1. Use partition magic and change recovery partition NTFS type to from 4 to 5(not so sure about this, but p. magic should tell you this). Type 4 NTFS is not recog. by Windows explore.

2. Browse recovery partition using Win. Explore. Back up Sony application that you want to CD-R or DVD-R if possible. Recovery DVD does not give you an option to install software that you want. It's other all or nothing.

3. If you have Windows XP pro CD, boot the TX with the CD. It will show you the partition information. If you take a look at the partition info carefully, there should be 3 partitions; 1 with 5 to 6GB, less than 1 GB; and one with large partition (the rest).

4. Format 6GB and the largest partiton. You are erasing the content of the recovery data and windows XP, but still maintaining partition.

5. Install Windows XP on a small partiton (6GB).

6. Once windows is installed, install Sony drivers.

7. Install all applications that you want.

8. Burn DVD of C:\ so when your system corrupts due to Spyware or ad ware, you will erase C:\ and copy everything from the DVD again. No mess No fuss.

This should do it. Sony website has all the drivers to get all the buttons to work. Since you are not deleting Linux partition, your InstantON applications will work as well.

 

I believe that everything on the recovery partition is available from Sony's support web site.

 

Only some of the primitive drivers and utilities are available. VAIO power managemet is not on the site for example. All the SONY software are not available online either.

 

Say MilanoStyle, were you able to order the Recovery Disks from Sony? If so, where were you able to purchase them. I wasn't able to find it at their online warehouse store or what not.