Can't view recovery D: drive

[PSRumbagh]

My physical hard drive in my Compaq Presario V2000 laptop is partitioned into
C: drive (34 GB, NTFS file system) and the “recovery†drive D: (6 GB, FAT32
file system), which contains the OS backup and backup of preloaded software.
For safety reasons, WinXP Home SP3 will not let me view the contents of the
recovery drive D: and only produces a warning about deleting the contents of
D:. How can WinXP be made to view the D: drive files?

 

[Paul]

My physical hard drive in my Compaq Presario V2000 laptop is partitioned into
C: drive (34 GB, NTFS file system) and the “recovery†drive D: (6 GB, FAT32
file system), which contains the OS backup and backup of preloaded software.
For safety reasons, WinXP Home SP3 will not let me view the contents of the
recovery drive D: and only produces a warning about deleting the contents of
D:. How can WinXP be made to view the D: drive files?

If you want to look at the partition information on the drive, there are a
couple tools you can download here.

ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/

PartInNT.zip
PTEDIT32.zip

Use only one tool at a time. One gives "numbers" and the other interprets
what it is seeing. Don't change anything!!! You're using these tools,
only for a look, to see what Compaq has done to set up the disk.

The partition type may determine the OS behavior towards the partition.
And when Windows actually tries to parse the partition itself, it may
find something it doesn't like. But you have to start somewhere, if
you want to have a look.

You can see some of the names of the partition types here. Similar
info is available in the Linux FDISK utility.

http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/partitions/partition_types-1.html

It is possible a Linux LiveCD, such as Knoppix, may be able to
let you look at the data on there. Knoppix is set up read-only
by default, so won't modify what it finds. Again, this is how
I'd start, to take a look and see if the information there is
accessible.

Also, use your search engine, to see if anyone has written a
description of how Compaq hidden partitions work. I did find
a nice site for Dell hidden partitions once, and it had a lot
of info about what to look for.

It could be, that the booting process is actually tied into
that partition somehow. So be careful about deleting anything,
because you could end up with a "brick", rather than a computer.
It may be, that the boot process starts with an access or check
on D, followed by a more normal boot on C. So be careful before
you change stuff. You really need a good tutorial about
the hidden partition, to know how best to deal with it.
These aren't always set up in a way to make life
easy for the user.

Good luck and be careful,
Paul

 

[Jamie Neve]

Is there a method to delete the backup partition? I know the risks, but to
save disk space.

 

[Paul]

Is there a method to delete the backup partition? I know the risks, but
to save disk space.

I would use Partition Magic for that, as I have a copy of an older
version here. You can do things like delete a partition (you can
do that in Disk Management as well). Then, Partition Magic can
extend the existing partition, to consume the space left by
the deleted partition.

<------ C -------> <---- D ----> before

<------ C -------> free space delete the partition

<------ C ---------------------> stretch the existing partition

There are some examples on this page, of free tools that claim
to be able to resize a partition. A little Googling should
tell you how trouble prone they are. (No matter how good
a tool may seem - remember that if the structures on the
disk are damaged in some subtle way, making changes can
"amplify" a structural error. Proper technique, would be
to verify the disk is good first, before doing stuff to
it. Same goes for defragmentation - you only want to
do that, if the disk is perfectly healthy. Chkdsk,
scanning the surface for bad sectors and the like,
are ways of proving everything is OK.)

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1321037

One of the first "rules of screwing around", is to make
a backup of the disk first. I buy, on average, a couple
spare hard drives a year, just for times like this. I
do a sector by sector copy of the hard drive, to my spare
drive, and if one of my experiments ends horribly, I
can copy it back. An example of a tool that copies
sector by sector, is "dd". The reason I suggest
a sector by sector copy, is it preserves any hidden or
foreign partition. To give an example, I copied one
80GB drive to a spare 80GB drive. The source drive
had two FAT32 partitions and two EXT2 (Linux) partitions.
"dd" was able to copy them, without knowing what kind
of partitions they were. One of the Linux partitions
was actually a swap partition (different partition number).
If the partitions were ordinary, then I might copy
them one partition at a time, with a different tool
(because that might happen to be a faster method).

Anyway, I think you should start by learning about
doing some backups, because it makes digging yourself
out of trouble so much easier. Buying one spare
hard drive these days, doesn't cost that much.

I use a Linux LiveCD, like Knoppix, as a way to boot
a computer without installing anything. You download
an ISO9660 file from knopper.net, and burn a CD with
it, using something like Nero. Then, boot the computer
with the CD. The OS runs from the CD. Recent versions
of Knoppix can mount FAT32 and NTFS partitions. You
can change access modes from read-only (the default),
to read/write, so you can move files around. I've
also prepared NTFS and FAT32 partitions while in Linux
(so I could go back to Windows and do stuff). And that
is about all I use Linux for, is for maintenance and
for emergencies. Linux has copies of things like "dd",
for making a snapshot of an entire disk. It may also
have a copy of "testdisk", which can be used to do
repairs to the partition table or put back the MBR.

There are an amazing number of free tools out there,
to help you maintain your system.

Paul