Acer Laptop Hidden Partition......Recoverable?

[adrian2055]

Hi everyone

Got a new Acer Laptop last night and after I made my backups and downgraded to vista I noticed that there is a 12GB partition can't be accessed. I read online to use an xp cd to delete it, but when I run it I get the BSOD everytime. Is there another way to access this space? I have all the restore cds and the acer napp cd needed to return it to factory state if I need to send it back to acer or use windows 7, but I don't plan on doing that anytime soon.

Edited February 12, 2010 by adrian2055

[Ponch]

If by recoverable, you mean deletable, yes, easily. What's preventing you to delete it ? Moving your first partition to reclaim that space involves 3rd party softwares, be it "offline" imaging (Ghost and others) and/or repartitionning (Partition Magic, GPartEd or others)./!\All must be compatible with Vista to avoid major problem booting after the operation and you might have to manually edit files to reflect the fact you're 2nd partition becomes the 1st. One thing to be sure is thus that you can access your system from an external way, I mean modify your files even if your portable doesn't boot.

Be aware after that partition is gone or even tempered with, getting it "back to factory state" is easier to say than to do, read this oversized thread about recovering your partition as in really "recovering" it if you're interrested. But it might be too late already depending on what Vista did. But why Vista... we hope you know.

I'm now waiting for some member to point all the errors in my post.

Edited February 12, 2010 by Ponch

[adrian2055]

If by recoverable, you mean deletable, yes, easily. What's preventing you to delete it ? Moving your first partition to reclaim that space involves 3rd party softwares, be it "offline" imaging (Ghost and others) and/or repartitionning (Partition Magic, GPartEd or others).

Be aware after that partition is gone or tempered with, getting it "back to factory state" is easier to say than to do, read this oversized thread about recovering your partition as in really "recovering" it if you're interrested. But it might be too late already depending on what Vista did. But why Vista... we hope you know.

I'm now waiting for some member to point all the errors in my post.

Thanks for the link to the thread. I will look through it. I have Acronis True Image 2009. I'll see if that will help me delete it .The hidden partition is before the C:\ drive so vista didn't do anything to it. Itr wasn't visible when I installed the os. It still has some files on it. As to why I downgraded to vista...I'm actually one of the few people on earth that like vista. All my software works (unlike windows 7) and it seems faster to me than 7 does. Don't know why, but it does.

[jaclaz]

The hidden partition is before the C:\ drive so vista didn't do anything to it.

That's exactly what you think, which can (or cannot) be accurate .

As long as you don't want the partition anymore and you are sure about it, you don't need to read the given thread (which theme is actually the opposite, how to recover a recovery partition after the user had botched the original MBR with PM or Acronis).

If you trust Acronis, go on and remove the recovery partition.

jaclaz