Remove Recovery Partition from an External Hard Drive

[Ronnie]

I have a hard drive that I took out of a note book computer with a bad mother board. I have placed that hard drive in a USB encloser. It is working fine except that I cannot remove or other wise use the 5 GB partion that is the system recovery if the orginal compter. The Computer Management/Disk Management utility will not let me do anything to this partition. Does anyone know how I can remove this partition?

[Chuck Engels]

Can't you format the drive? That will remove everything, including any partitions.

[Ronnie]

I would think so, but my attempts have failed. The useable partition is the only thing that shows up under My Computer, and reformatting that did not remove the partition. In Disk Management, the only command I get when I right click on the recovery partition is Help.

[Paul LS]

When you fully format a hard drive dont you get the option to delete partitions? I do not recall now. Now I use a Partition Manager software which enables me to delete, create and in general manage all partitions.

[Ron]

I would re-format it out of the Windows environment. Apparently, Windows has a hold of it because it thinks it's actual system files for the current computer. Just a guess.

[Ronnie]

I brought up the DOS prompt and used the format e: commad. I do not know if this really constitutes formatting outside of Windows since Windows (XP) is still running, but I gave it a try any way. It formatted the 33 GB partition but it left the 5 GB recovery partition un-touched.

[Chuck Engels]

Have you tried this with Windows Disk Mangement?

How to delete a partition or a logical drive
To delete a partition or logical drive:
1. In the Disk Management window, right-click the partition or logical drive that you want to delete, and then click Delete Partition or Delete Logical Drive.
2. Click Yes when you are prompted to delete the partition or logical drive. The partition or logical drive is deleted.
Important
? When you delete a partition or a logical drive, all the data on that partition or logical drive, and the partition or the logical drive, are deleted.
? You cannot delete the system partition, boot partition, or a partition that contains the active paging (swap) file.
? You cannot delete an extended partition unless the extended partition is empty. All logical drives in the extended partition must be deleted before you can delete the extended partition.

[RichardB]

In preparing to install an external HD, I came across this at MS which may allow you to get rid of the pesky 5 MB boot partition. Although this covers coverting from FAT32 to NTFS, it does wipe the drive clean.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314097/EN-US/

Look towards the bottom and look for this phrase:

"If you attempt to convert the partition from which the operating system is running.

It is not possible to convert the boot partition while the operating system is running. To convert the boot partition, it is always necessary to run the CONVERT command, click Yes in the error message, and then restart the computer. The partition is converted the next time the computer is restarted. As an alternative, you can start the computer in an installation of Windows XP that is on a different partition, and convert the boot partition from that installation of Windows XP."

I hope this will do the job.

Richard

[Ronnie]

Chuck, the method you describe works on regular partitions, but not on this one.

Richard, I tried converting as you suggested, but I did not work. The system recovery partition has no letter drive assigned to it and the other partition on the drive is already NTFS.

Thanks for your suggestions, but I am still stuck.

[Chuck Engels]

You might need a tool like Partition Magic or something, most of them are not free but you may find something at cnet.com that will work.

[Bobby]

Ronnie, I would have liked to be in on this discussion, but I was away for the weekend.

I don't understand why Chuck's solution didn't work. Could you provide details as to how it failed please.

And BTW I will never use Partition Magic again. I bought a copy to help a client combine two partitions and it really messed up big time. I spent a lot of time on the phone with their tech support and they freely admitted to me that it doesn't work very well in that mode. They accepted a return of the software no questions asked.

[Ronnie]

Bob, The problem is that "Help" is the one command available when I put my mouse on the system recover partition. I get a whole list of commands like "Format" and "Delete Partition" on other other partitions, but not on the system recovery partition. A have browsed through the help file but I have not found anything.

One addition note, I am not a computer professional so I could be using the wrong terms. I am calling this partition the system recovery partition because it it that part of the HD that the user can not use and contains the files that the manufacture use to send on CD/DVD. It may be called something else, but I do not know what. It is not the partition that contains the boot sector which is normally the C: volume.

[Ken Jarstad]

Delpart.exe is an old tool I have kept around for years. It will blow away everything! Here is a link:

http://www.russelltexas.com/delpart.htm

[Bobby]

Thanks for the info Ronnie. I see those partitions all the time - mostly on HP PCs. It is a bad implementation, as it a) steals space from the HD for no purpose and b) won't help you at all if your HD crashes.

I just bought a Vista PC to have one here at the shop (I refused to take part in the beta program) and it was an HP and sure enough had the recovery partition - and, yes, you identified it correctly.

It came with an ap to write recovery DVDs (only ONCE, thank you HP) and of course I did that first thing. I need to go check whether it in fact left the partition on the HD and if I can get the FORMAT option on it. Be back sometime later with some answers, I hope.

[Bobby]

I just looked at my PC, and the option to Format the HP recovery partition was there. So I am not sure what is happening in your case. Who is the PC manufacturer?