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The Hidden Partition (inquiring minds want to know)
Greetings all,
My first post to the forum, hope I've chosen the correct group.
Received my laptop two weeks ago. No problems. I'm running fully patched XP Home. Got to poking around and discovered the 3gb hidden partition. Emailed tech support, they informed me that the partiton contains "system utilities". Fair enough. I'm a curious sort and a professional Unix geek (mostly SunOS and Solaris), so I poked around with fsutil, etc., and got the "device not ready" response from an attempted query of the partition (resulting from the partition not being mounted, I assume).
I was about to try mounting it when I had a rare lucid moment and considered that this might have unintended consequences.
Has anyone done this? Can it be done? Should it be done?
I've searched the forum and seen a few different answers as to what the partion contains. Anybody know the "real" answer?
TIA for your thoughts and advice.
Regards, Glenn
bacillus
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March 30th, 2008 17:00
Anonymous
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March 31st, 2008 19:00
Assuming Inspiron of some type with MediaDirect installed.
Your partitions should be 1. small FAT partition with Dell 32 bit diags, 2. ~2-3GB partition for MediaDirect 3. Large NTFS partition C: for the o/s 4. ~4-7 GB hidden partition for Dell PCRestore, which is an image of the original factory load.
glenncorson
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March 31st, 2008 21:00
Bill-thanks for the official response. Yes, my machine is a I9400/E1705 with MD
Your answer is close, but isn't exactly what I have:
55mb FAT eide config (contains diags I assume)
3.29gb FAT32 76% full
69.76gb NTFS
This is what I see via the Computer Management gui.When I select "hidden" from the view menu nothing appears.
Am I missing something?
Regards,
Glenn
Anonymous
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March 31st, 2008 22:00
glenncorson
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March 31st, 2008 22:00
Bill-Thanks for the prompt responses. I thought the "hidden" option in the gui would show it. Questions answered.
Regards,
Glenn
Balaji Ramanath
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March 31st, 2008 22:00
dg1261
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April 1st, 2008 01:00
As balaji said, the manufacturer's 80,000,000,000 is really about 74.5 GB, so don't try to make things add up to 80 GB. The two hidden partitions are covered here:
You do not appear to have a MediaDirect 3 partition, as that would show up as a 2GB hidden NTFS partition. Given your assertion that you have MD, and that the three partitions you're aware of are a bit short of 74.5 GB, it's possible you may have MediaDirect 2. That's completely hidden (even from Disk Mgmt) in an HPA. MD2 is covered here:
If you're curious to confirm whether you have an HPA, my Dsrfix utility will reveal that.
Dan Goodell
glenncorson
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April 1st, 2008 03:00
Dan-I have MD2-Thanks for the links-great info.
Glenn
Anonymous
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April 1st, 2008 12:00
Thanks, Dan. I probably should have linked to your site on my first post.
There should be 4 partitions on that system, sizes may vary- diags, PCRestore, MD, and XP.