Hidden partitions

[muno]

A job I applied to said in the requirements section the following:
'Knowledge on hidden partitions used for recovery purposes'

A thread I posted into long time ago popped up (it was concerning compaqs hidden partition for bios info) and I remembered that I needed to find out what the partition is about, how to make one and how to use it.

Can someone point me to a good site that tells me basic info about it?

[butch81385]

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14597

wow... check out the results at the bottom... amazing

[elroy]

You're referring to 2 different things. The Compaq hidden partition holds info similar to bios. The ones I've messed with had a 6mb hidden partition at the beginning of the drive. Sounds like what they are talking about is a hidden partition that holds a backup of the original Windows and programs that were installed on the pc when sold new. That way if the user hoses the os you can just copy the hidden partition and it is like new.

[butch81385]

http://www.boot-us.com/gloss08.htm

different type of hidden partition

[butch81385]

my first link has been proven useless by another forum so dont attempt yourself... as for the second link, it may help you

it appears that dell uses a hidden partition (from what i have seen about 31mb) so that when you put the dell restore cd in it uses both the cd and the hidden hard drive partition

[muno]

Yeah, I know about that kinda hidden partitions

I was referring to what elroy pointed.
That's excatly how the ad described it, hold a backup copy of windows. What I understood, they use ghost to dump the new computers with image, and, if the user messes it up, the hidden partition should hold the image file for easy recovery.

But then again, the ad also said there are only few platforms, which would mean only two images, which would mean it would be a waste of space to have every computer hold the image when you can easily fit it on a few cds...

Thanks for the second link

[HeadBand]

with disk management you can remove the drive letters and paths but if they wanted they could turn them back on but i'm not sure on the enviornment so it might not be possible to give limited rights to tem so they cant change it