SOFTWARE

Feb 29, 2008 My Digital Life Editorial Team 1 Comment

Delete and Remove to Unlock EISA Hidden
Recovery or Diagnostic Partition in Vista
All OEM computers, desktop or notebook PCs
from Dell, HP, Lenovo, IBM, Acer, ASUS, Sony,
Fujitsu, Toshiba and many more probably comes
with special EISA partition either in FAT or NTFS
file system that contains system recovery utility
to rollback to factory settings and/or diagnostic
tools. The special partition, normally hidden, can
have a size of from few gigabytes to 10 GB or
more. In some OEM system, such as those from
IBM/Lenovo, is impossible to delete from within
Windows.
Some EISA hidden special partition doesnt even
have drive letter assigned, nor can be deleted by
using Disk Management snap-in of computer
Management in Control Panel Administrator Tool.
The partition cannot be merged into any other existing partition either. Some users reported that even
advanced third-party disk management tool such as Acronis Disk Director Suite and Partition Magic
cannot manipulate, change, remove and delete the partition either under Windows desktop.
The special recovery partition is protected and locked to secure and avoid accidental deletion of the
recovery partition, which is important when to recover and reinstall operating with needed drivers and
software application when system corrupts or fails. Some recovery procedure which installed in the
EISA partition can be activated with just one key press, or access during boot up.
Some users may not want this special recovery partition, which can possibly free up a few GBs of hard
disk storage space. As mentioned, its possibly almost impossible to delete this special recovery or
diagnostic partition under Windows operating system. Some tips provided on the net recommend users
to do removal process under DOS environment, or from another operating system on dual boot or
multiple boot system.
However, its recommended that users check with manufacturer first if the OEM provides any removal
and deletion procedure or guide, such as those provided by Lenovo/IBM and HP. If none is found, its
possible to remove the recovery partition from Windows Vista, by using advanced Diskpart, a text-mode
command line interpreter based on scripts that manages hard disk, partition and volume in Vista (also
available for free download for XP, 2000, and 2003).
Heres the trick to delete and remove the EISA recovery or diagnostic partition in Vista. Before
proceeding with the deletion action, make sure that at least a set of Recovery Disc Media has been
created. Else, you wont be able to restore your computer to working and factory default condition when
any problem on PC requires reinstallation.
1. Open a command prompt as administrator.
2. Run Diskpart application by typing Di skpart in the command prompt.
3. In the Diskpartprompt, enter rescan command and press Enter key to re-scan all partitions,
volumes and drives available.
4. Then type in l ist di sk and press Enter key to show all hard disk drive available.
5. Select the disk that contains the partition you want to remove. Normally, with just 1 hard disk, it
will be disk 0. So the command will be:
sel ect di sk 0
Finish by Enter key.
6. Type l i st partiti on and press Enter key to show all available and created partition in the disk
selected.
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7. Select the partition that wanted to be deleted by using the following command, followed by Enter
key:
sel ect parti tion x
where x is the number of the EISA based recovery partition to be removed and unlocked its
space. Be careful with the number of this partition, as wrong number may get data wipes off.
8. Finally, type in del ete partiti on overri de and press Enter key.
Once the partition has been deleted, exit from Diskpart, and now users can use the much familiar and
much easier Disk Management tool in Windows (diskmgmt.msc) to manipulate the freed unallocated
partition. Users can create a new volume (partition) with this space, or simply merge it to existing
partition by extending the size of the existing partition.
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incontri
very well, I am going to try it with my acer 6930g, as I created my custom partition
to put on its place.

lecrowe
Thanks for the help. Worked perfectly

Reuben
Thank you! This worked perfectly. Expert instruction at the tips of our fingers :)

ravi
forget secret disk password..........how to unlock

Max Johnson
Worked like a champ.
Thanks for sharing.

Joe
Worked beautifully in XP,too. Thanks.

best
it was helpfull

Rye Ayan
Hey! thanks fot this one. I give you a 100% score for this...

AdamTam
perfect! worked like a charm. ty so much

LOU JIM
..awesome. nice one!

bil l
thank you, works great in windows 7 too :)

Manuel Mesqui ta
Thanks, it works.
Regards

Barry
Thanks, that did the trick. Very helpful

Fergus
Nice one.

manos
Great !!! thanks man. I deleted a 15Gb Healthy Recovery disk of my Sony VAIO
laptop.
Ryu Darragh

Doesn&#039t seem to work on a Dell Inspiron 1525. EISA partition not shown.

Di gi tal Technophil e
Agrees with Deevious; simply excellent! Didn&#039t know that handy little tool
existed either (and I thought I was a superadmin!) Great work, Thank you!

Deevious
Mate, perfect walk through. i didnt even know disk part even existed on my comp.
thanks champ!

Andrew
You are a LEGEND. The method above works to remove the EISA partition.
THANK-YOU SO MUCH. You have really delivered the goods!
The reason why I wanted to delete this partition is that I have three HDDs of the
same type and I want them to all be partitioned and formatted in the same way.
Not being able to get rid of this very inelegant partition (ie. "fly in the ointment")
would have really got on my nerves.
I SO appreciate your help and I hope that you can highlight in some way to people
visiting your site that you are providing solutions that really do work which is VERY
RARE!
God bless you in the name of J esus Christ.

Admi ni strator Of som
Thanks Man Very Helpfull Tip

Shahaan
Thanks a lot dear it works, god bless you, you helped.. thank you again, Take care

jagan
hey thanks a lot yar ...i got back my hidden partition....and im fetting more hd space
nw....thank you....

Rob Sayer
A very good accurate walkthrough to an annoying problem. Much appreciated.
Thanks

Darren Starr
Thank You! That worked like a charm! I installed over 3 separate pieces of software
trying to do this - including Seagate Disk Wizard, Acronis Disk Director and some
other one. Thanks for taking the time to share this valuable information. Very Much
Appreciated!

fl ash
Worked like a charm. Thanks a lot. EISA was around 14GB for my Lenovo Y410.

Ami r Meta
thank you very much worked perfectly!

IT Tech
Worked and got rid of that annoying partition. Put an old laptop HD into an external
case and just wanted a clean format. Tks again!
RJ

RJ
Worked Very well with xp pro sp2...Thanks

glke
great, I deleted this partition

Saurabh
Great... worked like a charm.!!

ITSchoolTech
Thank you. A very clear and precise guide. THANKS AGAIN!!

CJ
Worked! Thanks a million!
(Windows 7)

Chris
It&#039s possible to delete an EISA partition in Windows Vista using a Windows XP
boot disc.

Noob
Thanks so much i just saved 4gb!!!

nick
cheers, worked perfectly and easily! got a new lappy, put old lappy HD in external
case, wanted to reformat completely but couldn&#039t work out how to delete
recovery partition. WORKS WIN7!

Kei th Kaufman
Brilliantly simple. Works in Windows XP. Deleted and retrieved space occupied by
hidden partition on external USB drive that had been formatted as bootable drive by
copying computer&#039s C: drive.

Mi ke
WORKED! Thanks!

Charli e Smi th
This technique also works fine on a Windows 7 Starter System.
I have an ASUS Eee PC 1005PR that came with a 250Gb disk and Windows 7. I
ghosted the 250Gb disk onto a 30Gb OCZ SSD and needed to remove the 10 Gb
"recovery partition". This procedure worked without a problem!

manselh
Thank you so much for these instructions. They worked perfectly and was much
appreciated

Craig
Perfect! Thanks for the quick and simple tip :)

yoyoma
Thank you!!! Was the only way I could delete the no longer needed OEM partition.
Rex
Perfect. Thanks for this very useful info.
Load more comments

Perfect. Thanks for this very useful info.

Bogg
cant merge only creates a new drive

ashish
will it delete all the data in other drives also .. i had windows files in c drve and
partion also in c drive ..will i able to do this

osa
Thank you it was very helpful, I tired until I find this solution

John
Cannot delete this partition - it&#039s marked as a "system" partition. Diskpart will
not allow any partitions marked as "system" to be deleted.

Me
Why delete it?

grateful
Thanks! This was very helpful.

Raj eev
I could delete the eisa partition but when I go to the disk manager, I don&#039t see
the space freed by this partition..

Si mon
thanks!
i spent hours on the net trying to find a solution to this. thanks to you i got rid of the
annoying recovery partion on my sony vaio internal disk (wich now serves as an
external usb-disk, i put in a fast ssd-disk as the system disk instead).
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