Remove Recovery Partition - Sony Vaio SZ Series (VGN-SZ370P/C)

[chiefsmt123]

We need to remove the Recovery Partiton (EISA Partition) from a Sony VAIO SZ Series laptop without running a System Recovery as instructed by Sony Tech Support. I asked if there is anyway to remove this partition without damaging, or removing, the C: partition. Sony stated NO.

We must remove this Recovery Partition without touching the current C: partition. Of course, the laptop must still boot the OS after removal of the Recovery Partition.

Any ideas?

I wondering if it is just as simple as using Disk Manager and deleting the Recovery Partition. I've seen that this will not work, however. Using Partition Magic is not an option at this time.

Thanks.

 

[wahnula]

So you cannot delete through Disk Management, logged in as local admin? Odd. Right-click the partition, Properties, Security, Add Administrator if not present, check all other entries and grant everything full control, then delete it. You might need to do this from Safe Mode, but I find it hard to believe that they could lock out a sysadmin from his/her own drive.

As anal as I am, I would clone the entire disk first and check that the clone was good by booting from it before trying anything like this, but that's me! It should be fine.

Tony

"If it can't take it, I don't want it

 

[wahnula]

From another forum:

http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/48032/

1) Boot the system off of the Windows install CD
2) When you get to the partitioning part of the install, delete the offending partition
3) Download freeware utility "EditBINI" from

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/utilities.html

4) Unzip it onto a DOS/Win98 bootdisk
4) Boot the system with the DOS/Win98 bootdisk and run EditBINI
5) Update the partition number for your Windows install to reflect your system partition's new number (probably reduced it by one)

That's it. The EISA partition is now gone but you will still have the empty space where it used to be. To get rid of that use Ghost to do a partition dump of the system partition to your Ghost server, rather than a disk dump. Then pull the image back onto the system and the empty space will be gone.




Tony

"If it can't take it, I don't want it

 

[chiefsmt123]

I do not have the Sony in my possession, so I don't know for sure that we can't use Disk Manager to get rid of it. I've just read on the internet where other Sony users couldn't remove that partition in that manner.

Thanks for the suggestions. I was hoping there would be someone that actually has gone through the process with a Sony Vaio that could give a definite procedure. I don't have the luxury of experimenting.

Thanks