Hidden HD partitions

[BCNZ]

Do you think it's possible to hide a partition on a hard drive? If you could, how would you go about discovering if a drive had a hidden partition on it?

[z80]

Do you think it's possible to hide a partition on a hard drive? If you could, how would you go about discovering if a drive had a hidden partition on it?

A lot of new systems have exactly that.

Often they contain the recovery partition which the user is supposed to access by a program utility to create a set of CD's in case something goes wrong.

It is generally a cost/profit saving measure.

[ssrattus]

Yes... many new PC's and laptops have hidden partitions... called recovery partitions that are used to make the normal partition just like it was when they first sent it to you, ie reloads the OS and all their apps.

One way to discover if you have one is to compare the size of your drive to the size of the partitions on it. Be aware that Bytes, MB and GB will give different numbers.

I am not certain if this works on drives with hidden partitions... as I don't have a HD with a hidden drive on it:

1. Go to the Command Prompt and type "diskpart"
2. At the prompt type: "List Volume" Note which volume is your HD, eg it may be Volume 1...
3. type: "Select Volume 1"
4. type: "List Partition"
see if it shows a small un-named partition.

[fandtm666]

easy way to find is bootup with hirens boot cd and option 1 then select one of the programs there , they will show what hdd is installed and what partitions are there .

you can now format - delete do what ever you want with it

[ssrattus]

Boot to a linux live CD, it will probably show it too.

[mickc]

fdisk is all you need
its on most windows boot disks

[ssrattus]

Yes... many new PC's and laptops have hidden partitions... called recovery partitions that are used to make the normal partition just like it was when they first sent it to you, ie reloads the OS and all their apps.

One way to discover if you have one is to compare the size of your drive to the size of the partitions on it. Be aware that Bytes, MB and GB will give different numbers.

I am not certain if this works on drives with hidden partitions... as I don't have a HD with a hidden drive on it:

1. Go to the Command Prompt and type "diskpart"
2. At the prompt type: "List Volume" Note which volume is your HD, eg it may be Volume 1...
3. type: "Select Volume 1"
4. type: "List Partition"
see if it shows a small un-named partition.

the diskpart command line does work on at least some hidden partitions, we have an Acer laptop here with a 3.2GB "OEM" partition that doesn't show up in windows explorer and it doesn't have a drive letter assigned to it.
It DOES show up in Administrative Tools->Computer Management->Disk Management as well, so it isn't hidden that well.

[BCNZ]

Yeah, I know about the recovery partitions - I was thinking more of a way to hide/safely store sensitive data - business files etc - that wouldn't be affected if the drive was reformatted/repartitioned etc.

[Woodstock]

Disk Management show all partitions as well

[Sage]

to hide from basic users.. go thru Diskmanagement and remove the drive letter.. simple as that

wont fool advanced users tho