hiding a "recovery" partition

[regnad]

i have created a "recovery" partition on my single disk in my new system. there i have a recovery image. i would like to hide it so i dont see it in explorer but i dont want whatever means i use to hide it to keep me from:
1- unhiding it
2- booting from windows disk and seeing the recovery image in said hidden drive.

suggestions?

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Hello regnad.



If you fool with hiding that partition, 1 & 2 may come back to bite you hard.

 

[zigzag3143]

i have created a "recovery" partition on my single disk in my new system. there i have a recovery image. i would like to hide it so i dont see it in explorer but i dont want whatever means i use to hide it to keep me from:
1- unhiding it
2- booting from windows disk and seeing the recovery image in said hidden drive.

suggestions?

Bare foot kid is correct. Anything you do to that recovery partition that windows is unfamiliar with may bite you. If you intend to do that I would at least use a 3rd party app for back up (Acronis) and move a copy of the back up off just in case.

Ken J

 

[Dilbert8056]

Hi Regnad,

They are both wrong - sorry boys.

It is quite possible to hide the partition with ease and there are many free partitioning tools to allow you to do it. All I would advise, is that you make it a different size from your OS partition as if you boot from a Windows CD, it will be visible (as unallocated space IIRC) and you should be able to identify it to avoid it.

Several of my hard discs have more than 4 primary partitions and I am well versed in hiding partitions from each other and other OSs. Back up before you play. I would recommend the free version of Macrium Reflect - I use the paid-for version and actually like backing up up now.

Dil

PS Don't forget to back up.

 

[regnad]

my c drive is 250 and "recovery" partition is 25. if when i boot from windows disk the 25 gig partition looks like un alocated drive how would i restore from it?

 

[tapuz]

it looks like you got your answers, i used to have a small tool to do it, could not find it now, used it on many computers and never had a problem.
here are two links that might help, one from microsoft, and the second from a different site.
Using Group Policy Objects to hide specified drives
Software Download: Hide Drives
i think the first one on the second site is what i had, but use it with caution.

sorry this is what i meant:
How To Hide Drives In Windows 7

 

[Dilbert8056]

First, I do not know how you have made your recovery partition or what it contains so cannot answer.

Second, with all due respect, if you have to ask these questions, you are not ready to mess with hiding and unhiding partitions, especially in a recovery situation! Please do a lot more reading and check out the documentation of the programs and utils designed just for this job. Google is THE starting point.

Dil

 

[regnad]

wow, i never heard of google. i thought this was a place to use as a resource. thanks for the attempt dil but i dont see your effort as being constructive at all.

 

[fireberd]

Never have your "backup" on the same physical hard drive. If the hard drive were to fail (and Murphy's Law says it will) whatever you have backed up is lost.

 

[marsmimar]

Never have your "backup" on the same physical hard drive. If the hard drive were to fail (and Murphy's Law says it will) whatever you have backed up is lost.

To echo fireberd, make a system image and save it to an external USB hard drive. Also make a companion system repair disk. The image will restore everything on your computer to exactly the same condition it was in at the time the image was made (OS, personal settings, files, folders, data, etc.) Once your system is imaged feel free to play around with your computer to practice creating, hiding, unhiding partitions or anything else you want to try. Windows 7 has a built in imaging tool.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/663-backup-complete-computer-create-image-backup.html

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/675-system-image-recovery.html

Or you could use a free product recommended by many people on the forum called Macrium Reflect. One of the forum mebers made a nice tutorial (thanks whs.)

 

[Victek]

my c drive is 250 and "recovery" partition is 25. if when i boot from windows disk the 25 gig partition looks like un alocated drive how would i restore from it?

You would want to have a bootable rescue CD with the utility that you used to hide the partition on it. That way you can unhide if/when the time comes to access it. Computers with recovery partitions usually also come with a utility for creating a set of recovery DVDs. Recovery partitions are quite vulnerable - if the disk crashes and corrupts the partitions or becomes unbootable the recovery partition becomes useless. It's better to create the DVDs (make 2 copies) and put them is a safe place where you will actually be able to find them.

Keep in mind when you use "System Recovery" you have a lot of work to do afterward. Everything you've done to the computer since the day you bought it has to be recreated. That's kind of a disaster unto itself :shock: What I do is create image backups at regular intervals and save them to an external drive (which I turn off afterward). That way if I ever need to recover the system I only lose a few weeks of changes. I backup data separately using Windows Live Mesh (5 gigs free). I know this is a lot more than you asked for, but hey there's no charge

 

[regnad]

well after all the bashing over the single drive (which i am quite aware of the draw backs) i have dug up an old sata drive to store my image. can the image i created originally simply be copied over to the secondary drive now? im unsure about setting my jumpers. do i need to have any? its a WD800jd drive.

 

[mjf]

well after all the bashing over the single drive (which i am quite aware of the draw backs) i have dug up an old sata drive to store my image. can the image i created originally simply be copied over to the secondary drive now? im unsure about setting my jumpers. do i need to have any? its a WD800jd drive.

It can be copied but there may be some risk with recovery.
Safer & probably faster to make a new image.

 

[Victek]

well after all the bashing over the single drive (which i am quite aware of the draw backs) i have dug up an old sata drive to store my image. can the image i created originally simply be copied over to the secondary drive now? im unsure about setting my jumpers. do i need to have any? its a WD800jd drive.

SATA drives don't require setting jumpers in my experience. It should just work. Regarding copying an existing image to it, I don't see why not. I would suggest you make a new image in addition - redundancy is your friend. If you need imaging software there are a number of very good free products. I like Paragon Backup & Recovery 10. Another popular product is Macrium.

 

[regnad]

ok, my plans may be changing a bit. i'm now considering a ssd drive for my OS and using the 1T for everything else. my concern would be filling up the ssd with games and such. i know during an installation you can point the install somewhere other than default. is there any performance restraints doing this? also, theres allot of ssd's out there. which one would be the best choice for say 150 bucks?

 

[Marrell]

The right answer

I am replying to an old post. But I felt it necessary to answer the question since all other replies were incorrect and when searching google, the first response is this page. The question was how to hide a partition in windows but still have access to it when doing things like image restores.
The answer is very simple and easy. Plus it doesn't cause windows any problems. You don't have to download some stupid program, it's built right into windows already. (of course you wouldn't know it by previous responses).

Click on start - Right click on computer, Click on manage, Click on Disk Management.

Now find the drive or partition you wish to hide from windows. depending on your drive setup, use either the top section or the bottom graphical section. In this case you would use the bottom graphical section, right click in the partition you want to hide, and click.........

click on "Change drive letter and paths. You should see the drive letter that is applied to that partition. click on it to highlight and then click on "REMOVE"
done. If you don't have a drive letter assigned to the partition, windows will not display it. Yes, it's that easy.

 

[Cameo Jones]

I know this is an old post and probably no one will ever read it, and that's ok. I just want to vent a little, and also say thanks to Marrell.

I wish there were more people like you around. You answered the question exactly as it should've been answered, with something so simple and easy. I'm not sure why so many people have to over-complicate things. Some people read too much into a question and just go way off track, or worse, read it and still give bad responses that make things even worse.

I'm actually surprised there wasn't at least one person who said "reinstall the operating system" or "you have to reformat". Those seem to be the dumbest responses. Yes, sometimes those are legit options, but 99% of the time they are not the "easy" way out, they are the lazy way out and usually result in more work.

I just had a problem with my W8.1 not booting up. I was adding a partition and changing drive letters. W8.1 didn't like the way my program (EASEUS) wanted to do things. So it didn't boot. GPT issues which I had to reset. In the end not a big deal. But during the problem, the things people suggested makes me wonder how anyone can call themselves "experts".

The crazy things people suggested!!! OMG! It was unbelievable. There were many "reinstall" and "reformat" people, a few "restore" people, and only one person who offered the easiest solution. She actually read the post and gave the best answer.

Anyway, a little off topic.

Thanks again Marrell.