Unhide hidden partition on laptop?

[Exodia]

Thanks jack!

[syrynxx]

That registry mod is barking up the wrong tree. That prevents drive letters from being displayed in Windows Explorer only - which does nothing to address the original question, which was about unhiding an IBM utility partition.

Similarly, the Disk Management Console snap-in or the DISKPART command-line utility can be used to remove drive-letter assignments to existing visible partitions, but this isn't the case with your IBM partition either.

A truly hidden data partition is partition type 0x16 (hidden FAT16), partition type 0x17 (hidden NTFS), or 0x1C (hidden FAT32). These partitions will NOT be assigned a drive letter by Windows XP - they are totally inaccessible from within the OS. Here's an edited snippet from the partition type listing from AEFDISK:

01h DOS 12-bit FAT

04h DOS 16-bit FAT (up to 32M)

06h DOS 3.31+ Large File System (16-bit FAT, over 32M)

07h Windows NT NTFS

0Ah OS/2 Boot Manager

0Bh Windows 95 OSR2 with 32-bit FAT

0Ch Windows 95 OSR2 with 32-bit FAT (LBA-mode INT 13 extensions)

0Eh LBA VFAT (same as 06h but using LBA-mode INT 13)

0Fh LBA VFAT (same as 05h but using LBA-mode INT 13)

11h Hidden 12-bit FAT partition, OS/2 FAT12

12h Compaq/HP Diagnostics partition (FAT compatible)

14h Hidden sub-32M 16-bit FAT partition

16h Hidden over-32M 16-bit FAT partition

17h Hidden HPFS partition

1Bh Hidden Windows 95 with 32-bit FAT

1Ch Hidden Windows 95 with 32-bit LBA FAT

1Eh Hidden Windows 95 with LBA BIGDOS

I just spoke with a Dell engineer who says their utility partition is hidden FAT12 (floppy). The hidden IBM partition in the original question may be similar (looks like type 0x12).

Anyway, the real issue is that you need to modify the partition table to change the partition type from a hidden variety to normal. DISKPART, the native command-line tool, CANNOT change a partition type - for example, change hidden fat16 (type 0x16) to unhidden fat16 (type 0x06). Your only recourse is to use a 3rd-party tool like Partition Magic (PMAGICNT) or its ilk to edit the partition table. If the utility partition is type 0x12, it may not be "convertible" - you may have to delete it and recreate a normal partition, which may screw up your XP drive letters. Outside of XP, check out AEFDISK by Nagy Daniel - a powerful shareware tool for working with partitions. Not merely "FDISK on steroids", but FDISK on crystal meth, X, and roids combined. Not that I advocate such things.

I'm currently on the prowl for a freeware tool to do this myself (googled over this post), so I thought I'd share my experience on the subject.

-syrynxx