Recovery Partition Drive Letter

Hello,
I will be adding a drive from my old computer to my new Pavilion Desktop. The drive from my old computer is already named 'D' and I would prefer to keep the drive letter the same so I don't have to change existing file references.
Can I rename the 'D' HP RECOVERY partition to another letter without any problem? In other words, is the drive letter 'D' significant to any of the recovery processes? If I named the partition 'R' HP RECOVERY am I good?
Regards

I did that sort of rename and had no trouble with a later restore. YMMV

Similar Messages

Backup Recovery & Changed Recovery Partition Drive

Product    : HP Pavilion dv6-6c10us
OS      : Windows 7 64-bit
Error       : Cannot create Factory Default Back-Ups/Laptop Recovery Back-Ups
Changes : Recovery Partition on D drive changed to F drive
Question : What is the process of telling the HP programs and the laptop itself that the recovery partition is now on the F
                    drive?
                    I made a back-up of the Recovery partition before I changed drives. I did not make a back-up of the factory set-up
                    back-up (5 dvds). All newly added programs from my XP 32-bit desktop are now on the D partition.

I changed the drive letters with Windows 7 disk manager using the drive letter change options. I can put the Recovery drive back to drive D and the recovery options would work fine. But I wanted it as another drive letter because my programs from the other pc were installed to that letter and it was just easy to reinstall most of the programs back that way. Of course I had to bump the disk drive down a letter too so that the hdd stuff was right beside each other. Everything is fine, besides recovery on my settings. I just want to tell the computer that the recovery partition is on another partition for the HP program to be able to know where it is again.

Recovery Partition drive D:

This is quite elementary, but I'm paying much closer attention to my HP than I did my Dell, recently replaced.
What is the D: drive for? It's clearly a recovery tool (or tool kit), so in the event of problems you would interupt the boot, "break in via F8" and have the machine first boot to that drive? Once there, the drive is bootable and the various files and folders on the drive would contain the tools to recover the machine, is that it? How would I know what files/fiolders (or files within folders) to put on each Recovery DVD in order to make the space on Drive D: available?
This question was solved.
View Solution.

Weenz1909 wrote:
So I have 3 F keys that will invoke Recovery if necessary and I understand I can move Recovery from D: to DVD, but cannot find info on how. This is going to take some research; sorry I didn't do more before posting. Thank you all.
No.
There is only one F key that will invoke the Recovery Manager from powering on and that is F11.
The only method I am aware of for moving the recovery partition. That is by creation of a sector by sector clone to an external drive. Using the recovery media to perform a factory image recovery creates all factory partitions on the original or a new hard dish, including the recovery partition. It has been my experience, using recovery media, specifically the usb media, is the most reliable way to go. The DVD disk set is way too fragile. One scratch on the label of one of the disks and the set is unuseable.
****Please click on Accept As Solution if a suggestion solves your problem. It helps others facing the same problem to find a solution easily****
2015 Microsoft MVP - Windows Experience Consumer

Recovery Partition Drive

I purchased 4540s with win 8 preinstalled.By mistake i formatted all my drive with nothing left behind.After that i realized that i also deleted my recovery partition.Then i got new win 7 from Microsoft but still not installed because i want the factory partition also with win 7.It is easy to press F11 and recover your laptop. Iwant t o know how can i do yhat.I have real Windows key that i got from microsoft. Help me plz

Hi,
Please call HP technical support: 800-474-6836. If you live outside the US/Canada Region please click the link below to get the support number for your region.
http://www.hp.com/cgi-bin/hpsupport/index.pl
Regards.
BH
**Click the KUDOS thumb up on the left to say 'Thanks'**
Make it easier for other people to find solutions by marking a Reply 'Accept as Solution' if it solves your problem.

How can I get back my recovery partition when my harddisk is corrupt ?

Few days ago I bought my new HP Envy Notebook 1003 tu with windows 7 home premium x64 installed.
After completing the first windows install, I saw that there are only two visible partitions, one big windows partition and other around 20GB recovery partition. I opened Windows disk management and tried to resize the windows partition to 100 gb, on changing windows partition size, windows gave a message that except first no other volume will be bootable or something like that, I don't remember and then I created around 4 more partitions and changed the recovery partition drive letter to Z:
Now today, I wanted to factory reset my pc but F11 recovery manager was giving an error and on searching on internet, I became aware that I changed my harddisk from basic to dynamic. Now Trough different methods I tried to make it back basic, then I editied the partition table and marked all partitions type from 42 (dynamic voumes number or whatever number it was) to 07 (ntfs volume number). After that my windows stopped booting, I tried many different things but unable to start the windows. Windows given an error on booting, I tried to repair the boot manager but ever the repair failed.
Please help me, I just want to backup the recovery partition and/or factory reset the system.
Any response will be highly appreciated. Thanks.

It depends on county and product you have. In few countries no recovery dvds are free while in few time bound. In few countries recovery discs are free as long as product is within warranty. You need to check with HP support team what is applicable for your product and country.
Regards,
WW
“I am an HP Employee“
***** Click the KUDOS star on the left to say 'Thanks'**
Make it easier for other people to find solutions by marking a Reply 'Accept as Solution' if it solves your problem***

Problem creating Mtn Lion Recovery partition on external drive.

USB external. Newly erased, three partitions: one 2GB for Recovery HD, other two backups of my old SL machine and new ML machine (Mini). Those work and their respective machines fine. Drive seems OK.
    Used Recovery Disk Asst v. 1.0 to create Recovery HD on the small partition while booted into 10.8.2 (the brand new Mini). Factory installed Mtn Lion Recovery HD exists on internal drive and it works— when starting with command-R or command-shift-R, not with Option key.     Install of Recovery HD to external seemed to go fine and doing a "diskutil list" in Terminal showed both the internal and external Recovery HD's, properly named as such.   However, when restarted with Option down the recovery partition showed up named the same as my internal— at that point "Macintosh HD" but later when I changed the internal's name, reinstalled the Recovery HD, and restarted with Option key the recovery partition now was named the same as new internal drive name.   Both times choosing the recovery partition resulted in booting into internal drive.
Was wondering if anyone had a similar problem— and found solution/reason.   Apple Tech Support particularly not helpful/knowledgeable on this subject.

Hi Baltwo
   Really appreciate the help.   Many thanks.     Finally seems to be working.     Not sure exactly what worked but in case you're interested I'll give you a, hopefully, short summary:
Using DU (after copy/paste of the command you wrote above into Terminal) I cloned the working internal drives RDH to the partition for it on the ext.   Failed— still seemed to work as almost an alias pointing at the boot volume on the internal.
So, erased the external again; didn't partition, did a reinstall of ML from DU while booted into RDH of internal. Then started from that new ML partition on external and let Setup Asst migrate everything over from the internal to keep Users/Permissions from being a problem.
    When that finished I tried to restart w option key.   Got a recovery HD that was called exactly that but, again, booted into internal boot drive.   Booted into internals RHD just to make sure it was OK and it was.
   For whatever reason again restarted w option key.   This time I got four choices: the boot volume of internal and external, an ext volume called Recovery HD (the trickster), and another volume called Recovery 10.8.3.   Something new— and, as Bill Murray said in Ground Hog Day, "anything new is good."   So I tried booting into that new RHD 10.8.3. (Note, I'm still running 10.8.2 on boot volumes.)
And that worked— booted into Recovery HD but no way that I could figure to see for sure that it was the Recovery HD on ext vs. on internal.   I think I need to activate the Debug menu on the RHD DU so I can choose the 10.8.3 recovery and see if I have the option of Repairing the disk or it's greyed out. If greyed, then proves I'm booted into it.   Might be a more elegant way to see that but it's the one I know.    Still, I assume I was in the RHD on the external.
Then made a second partition for the old mac's backup and that initially resulted in the boot volume of the internal backup not be mountable but after a restart or two testing the two RHD's, the mini decided to see all the volumes and things are, for the moment, copacetic.
Hope that wasn't too long and boring.    From my experience and reading on the 'net, my general sense is that there are a bunch of variables that all have to be right for this process to work. Probably less is more and just installing ML on a disk by itself will be the most reliable method, if most wasteful of data storage.
Regardless, couldn't have done it without you, baltwo.   I don't use this forum enough to know what the etiquette and protocols are but I marked all of your posts as useful, which they were, and, finally, as solving my issue, which they did.
Thanks again

How to install a recovery partition after installing a new Hard drive? and FileVault help.

Hi,
I recently swapped out hard drives and when I did a Time Machine backup to the new drive, I noticed there was no Recovery HD partition for my drive. Is there a way to install it back on my MacBook Pro (Late 2011, running 10.7.4)?
On a slighlty different topic FileVault won't let me encrypt my new HD it says "Some disk formats don’t support the recovery partition required by encryption. To use encryption, reinstall this version of Mac OS X on a reformatted disk."
What formatting does my disk require for FV to be turned on? Currently it is Mac OS Extended (journaled)
If there is a solution to solve both these issues, or any one issue it would be appreciated.

The formatting being referred to is actually the presence of the Recovery Disk.
You can't enable FV2 without a recovery partition being present. The reason is strictly logical: if your entire disk was encrypted, how could you run the unencryption procedure you need to start up? That would itself be hidden behind the encryption. Hence, for FV2 to be able to work, you must have a Recovery disk present.
When you boot up with FV2 enabled, the login screen you see to enter your password is actually running from the recovery disk (invisible to the user). After you enter your password, recovery boots your encrypted partition and logs you in to your account.

TP T500 - S drive used for recovery partition

I need to change the recovery partition to another drive letter but it is not giving me the option. The S: drive has been dedicated as the drive letter for our corporate SAN unit and all scripts are configured to point to that drive. Is there a way to change this on the laptop? I would rather not have to make a corporate change due to this model of Thinkpad.
tacasey

You'll have to change it in the registry. The relevant key is
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
Rename
\DosDevices\S:
to
\DosDevices\X:
where X is any available drive letter except A or B. For more information see here.
Don

Reformat of hard drive wiped lion recovery partition

and internet recovery takes an eternity, i am redownloading lion from the appstore (to build a usb recovery pen) but i had to pay for it despite it coming preloaded on my laptop
can i be reimbursed for this?
system is an early 2011 Macbook Pro 15" 2.2ghz i7 that came preloaded with lion, so no reinstall disks just a recovery partition (thats gone) and internet recovery

it only took so long because i have a crappy internet connection i think it downloads basically the files from the recovery partition from online.
i lost the recovery partition by formatting my drive when restoring a time machine backup, and when that installation wouldn't let me past the login screen i restarted going into the internet recovery, it took around 1.5hrs to download the necessary files (~1mb connection ) and loaded straight into what looked like the recovery partition, now in order to partition my hard drive for windows(says i have a broken partition map, fixing that can only be done outside of the operating system).
hence i'm downloading lion as we speak from the appstore to keep on a usb stick
edit: also internet recovery when it's downloading shows just a spinning globe with a progress bar and a timer at the bottom, it also appears to not save the files it's downloaded, just caches them

HT4718 How do I install the seperate system recovery partition after installing OSX on an external drive?

My Mac Mini (2011 - Mountain Lion) died on me and I'm trying to get Internet Recovery (or ANY recovery) to work. I have done the hold down D on boot hardware test and the extensive test and it says all is well. However Internet Recovery downloads (or appears to) and then I just get a never-ending spinning wheel and Apple logo.
I just installed Lion 10.7 from my older Mini that can't run Mountain Lion onto the newer Mini's hard drive as an external disk. How can I get the recovery partition added to that disk too?

Google recovery disk assistant. Hopefully that'll be what you need.

The guide to bootcamp assistant states that bootcamp can only be installed on a drive with a single partition. New Macs with Lion preinstalled have two partitions - the second is a recovery partition. How do I install Bootcamp?

Late in August 2011 I took delivery of a new 27" iMac with Lion preinstalled. I need to run Windows as well. Following Apple's written suggestion, I printed off the then current 12 pages of the document "Bootcamp Installation & Setup Guide" which clearly stated that the hard drive you were going to install on had to have on it, before install, a maximum of one partition. Using finder and disk utility I determined that there was only one partition. Unbeknownst to me, there was (is) an additional hidden (from those two pieces of software) partition on the disk. As of machines delivered new with Lion preinstalled, Apple has begun to include a "recovery partition". In that partition there is a copy of the software necessary to reinstall Lion via a download from the Apple App Store. Not knowing the partition was there, I cranked up "Bootcamp Assistant" which nicely offered to repartition my hard drive creating a "Bootcamp Partition" in addition to the existing. I told it how big to make each and hit the do it button, subsequently destroying my operating system. Oh, it very nicely told me, after the damage was done, how many partitions were REALLY on the disk and that I could not install Bootcamp cause there were too many partitions.
Luckily the the Recovery Partition, which at that point I knew existed, was not harmed and after doing some research on another compter, I used it to once again download Lion from the App Store and reinstall. So, I have recovered but am still stuck with the problem: how do I install Bootcamp in this new environment?

First you need to seriously back up your Mac.
A clone is an exact duplicate of your existing Mac HDD. Merely copying and pasting a drive will not make a bootable backup. In case of problems you can boot from an Ext HDD clone and use the utilities to repair, reformat, or clone the Ext HDD back to the internal Mac HDD. While Time machine back ups are easy you can not boot from it. The best thing to have for any kind of problem is a bootable clone backup on an external drive. Some even have two external backup drives in case one fails. There are two good apps for cloning named SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner.
In dealing with the recovery partition a simple approach is to clone the Mac partition to an external disk then re-partition the Mac to a single partition (GUID partition table) . Then clone the external disk clone back to the Mac. You will now have only one Partition and Boot Camp assistant sould not object.
Some have recommended getting rid of the recovery partition while others have advised not to do this. If you have the Lion USB Thumb Drive you do not need a recovery partition so can discard it without concern. There is another way to get rid of the recovery partition if you decide to do it but first be sure to have a backup of your Mac ( I know I sound like a nagging mom but many dead computers have been saved by this simple precaution).
Use Disk Utility.
1) Make the Recovery visible in Disk Utility by using a program like Secrets:http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/27025/secrets or MacPilot:http://www.koingosw.com/products/macpilot.php (15 day free trial).
2) Highlite the Recovery partition and Control click it and select Mount the partition.
3) With the Recovery partition highlited, erase the partition, you'll get an error message, ignore it.
4) Now highlite the top identity of the hard drive and select the partition tab.
5) Highlite the Recovery partition and press the minus sign.
6) Click and hold on the bottom edge of the partition above and drag it to the bottom, if it doesn't go there automatically, the press apply.

How to delete unused, no drive letter assigned, partitions in Windows 8.1 Pro

Hi,
My drive partitions are assigned as below within "Computer Management" > "Disk Management":
(screenshot not allowed from my account, for some reason).
Volume   Layout    Type File System    Status
Capacity          FreeSpace %Free
<blank> Simple     Basic   <blank>        Healthy(Recovery Part.)    300MB
300MB        100%
<blank> Simple     Basic   <blank>        Healthy(Recovery Part.)    99MB
99MB          100%
3TB (E:) Simple     Basic     NTFS            Healthy(Recovery Part.)   3000 GB
2000 GB      81%
SSD(C:) Simple     Basic     NTFS           Healthy(Recovery Part.)     465 GB
78 GB       17%
I want to remove/delete the 2 partitions, Recovery Partition & EFI System Partition, to the left of the C: Partition on Disk 1.
However when I right click on either partition I'm unable to do anything ("Recovery" only shows help in right click menu, "EFI System" shows full right click menu however everything but the help option is greyed out).
I've also looked around and tried the diskpart command from an Administrative command line. However having tried:
>diskpart
>rescan
>list disk
I can only see the 2 main partitions (3TB/SSD) on both Disc 0 & 1. Leaving me unable to assign drive letters/delete/etc.
Help !

Hi,
Why do you want to delete the two partitions?
Actually, they are not unused, they are managed by PC. Each bootable drive must contain an ESP. The computer will boot to the Extensible Firmware Interface System Partition (EFI System Partition, or ESP).
The recovery partition is Windows RE tools partition.
Alex Zhao
TechNet Community Support

How can I see the files in the Recovery partition folders? Explorer won't let me.

I am preparing to do a clean install of Windows 7 onto a hard drive that shipped with Vista Home and the Recovery partition. I want to reuse the recovery tools along with Windows 7 in the recovery partition. Windows Explorer won't display the contents of the recovery folders. How can I overcome this?
Thanks,
Luke

Force it into recovery mode to restore it as explained here: If you can't update or restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Sometimes you have to do this more than once to be successful. After restoring, you'll have to restore an existing backup, if you have one.

Can I use the HP Recovery partition after formatting and repartitioning the rest of the hard drive?

I recently had my HP Pavilion dv4 2145dx laptop (Windows 7 64-bit) go kerput. The Geek Squad said that the motherboard died. I've purchased another laptop, and I'm using that one for now, and I am using the hard drive from the old dv4 as an external.
I'm planning to keep using the hard drive from the old dv4 as an external for now, but I'd like to be able to fix the dv4 at some point in the future. Here's the problem: to get the most out of the old dv4's drive as an external, I'd like to repartition it so that there is one NTFS partition and one HFS+ partition. That way I could use it easily with both my Mac and Windows machines.
But if I do that, I'm not sure if the HP Recovery image would still work. If it didn't work, then if/when I get the old dv4 a new motherboard, I couldn't restore the OS from the Recovery partition. This is a problem, because I didn't create Recovery Disks (stupid, I know - I'm definitely making them for the new machine).
So I'd like to do one of these two things:
1) Create my dv4 Recovery Disks. Can I do this if the dv4's drive is mounted in an external enclosure?
2) Format and partition the dv4 drive (leaving the Recovery partition intact), and later recover the system from the Recovery partition. Would the Recovery partition still work under those conditions?
Thanks for any help anyone's got.
This question was solved.
View Solution.

Hi:
Anything you do to the C:\drive will render the recovery partition inoperable.
You won't be able to create a set of recovery disks unless the drive is operable in the notebook.
Can you still read all 25 characters of your W7 product key on the bottom of your busted notebook?
If so, you can do this...
If you can read the 25 character Microsoft windows 7 product key, you can download plain Windows 7 ISO files to burn to a DVD for the version of windows that came installed on your PC, and that is listed on the Microsoft COA sticker on your PC's case.
Burn the ISO using the Burn ISO option on your DVD burning program and burn at the slowest possible speed your program will allow. This will create a bootable DVD.
Or use the Windows 7 USB/DVD installation tool to compile the ISO file you download from Digital River. Link and instructions below. You need a 4 GB flash drive to use the USB method of compilation.
http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/html/pbPage.Help_Win7_usbdvd_dwnTool
Use the 25 character product key on the PC to activate the installation.
The key will activate either a 32 or 64 bit installation.
Then go to the PC's support and driver page to install the drivers you need.
Link to the W7 ISO file downloads is below.
http://www.mydigitallife.info/official-windows-7-sp1-iso-from-digital-river/
Or, you can probably still order a set of recovery disks for your notebook from HP.
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=bph07143&tmp_task=solveCategory&cc=us&dlc=en&lan...
Paul

How do I reformat hard drive without affecting recovery partition?

I would like to know how I can reformat my Toshiba hard drive without affecting the hidden recovery partition? I would like to get rid of the preinstalled Windows 7 OS and replace it with Windows XP, which is not as bloated. Also, does anyone know of a good 'free' disk scrubber program? I actually have the original 'disk scrubber' software, but the software disk just won't work any more. Finally, I tried to get the computer ready for the drive scrubbing, but I still can't change the disk order on my Toshiba laptop. I did get into the 'bios' screen by hitting the F8 key on startup, which did bring up the 'boot menu' screen. When I selected the cd/dvd drive and then hit the F10 key to save the change, nothing happened! I put in a data disk, but the laptop still booted into the Windows 7 OS. If I can't get the laptop to boot into the cd/dvd drive, I don't think that I can erase the hard drive and put Windows XP on since I wouldn't be able to boot up the laptop with the Windwos XP disk. Is that true? Anyway, without changing the boot order, I can't do anything. Please help! Thanks!

If you use the recovery that is on the hidden partition (hold down the zero key while starting up computer) then your OS reinstall will not affect that hidden partition, just overwrite the c: drive.
L305-S5955, T9300 Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, 60GB SSD, Win 7 Ultimate 64-bit

Recovery Partition Drive Letter

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for