How do you make a partition "protected"?

My Windows 7 laptop came with a D drive called HP_RECOVERY. The computer has 3 other hard drive partitions.

I recently booted up the computer using an Ubuntu Linux Live CD, which lets me run Linux without installing it on the hard drive. It has support for NTFS and FAT32, so it showed me my other 3 Windows partitions (C drive, SYSTEM partition, and HP_TOOLS partition). However, it didn't show me the HP_RECOVERY partition for some reason. I've heard that Ubuntu doesn't show protected partitions, so I guess that's why it's not showing the HP_RECOVERY partition.

I just want to know out of curiosity's sake - how do you protect a partition in Windows? I don't see any way to do that in the Disk Management console. And is it possible to unprotect a partition?

I also have Ubuntu on my SSD and it shows all partitions on the disk.
If your System or HP_TOOLS partition is bigger than 5G, your recover files are on it.
HP Support document - HP Support Center

My SYSTEM partition is 1 GB and my HP_TOOLS partition is 2 GB. The HP_RECOVERY partition is 19 GB and that does not show up in Ubuntu.

I believe Ubuntu is not showing the partition because it is not of a type it recognizes. As the recovery partition is used only by the HP recovery software it can be of any type chosen by HP. Changing the partition type would likely break it's functionality.

It's possible the partition type identifier in the partition table has been changed to a "hidden" type. This is a common way for OEMs to make it difficult for users to mess with their factory recovery partitions.

There's an easy way to check if this is the case. Start by downloading Roadkil's Sector Editor. This is a free "no install" utility you can run from within Windows to examine your MBR sector, then you can toss the utility when you're done using it.

Put the utility on your desktop, then right-click and "Run as administrator" to launch it. Select disk "Physical 0". The display should open with Sector 0 (see "Current" at bottom of window). The bottom four rows are your partition table, and the hex codes in the third column are your "partition type" ids.

Normal NTFS partitions will be type "07". Hidden NTFS partitions are typically "17", "27", "D7", et al. I don't examine a lot of HPs, but IIRC I've seen HP use "27" in the past.

Well I did run the "gparted" and "parted" programs under Ubuntu, and they said that partition is NTFS and it is not hidden. So they could see it, it's just that the file manager didn't display it for some reason.

I also ran the Roadkill Sector Editor, and the third column in the bottom four rows said 07, 07, 07, 0B. That sounds right, since 07 is NTFS and 0B is FAT32. My drive has 3 NTFS partitions (including the one that isn't showing up in the Ubuntu file manager) and one FAT32 partition.

delerious said:

the bottom four rows said 07, 07, 07, 0B.

Hmm, okay. Maybe it's been longer than I thought, and HP's use of "27" was perhaps back in the XP era.

delerious said:

"gparted" and "parted" programs under Ubuntu, and they said that partition is NTFS and it is not hidden. So they could see it, it's just that the file manager didn't display it for some reason.

Do you mean Ubuntu's file manager? What about in Windows? Does HP_RECOVERY have a drive letter? If so, what happens when you try to look at the partition in Windows Explorer?

I've seen HP's that show D: as the recovery partition, and when you try to look at the D: drive it displays "Recovery Partition, Warning!" So I'm curious if that's what you're seeing, or if instead you're not seeing anything at all.

Yes I meant Ubuntu's file manager doesn't show the partition. Windows Explorer shows HP_RECOVERY as the D drive and I can click around in all the directories and see all the files on that drive - no warnings are shown.