Delete EISA Partitions

      For reference only!  Do not do this unless you know what you are doing!!!

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 doesn’t 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, it’s 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, it’s 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, it’s 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).

Here’s 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 won’t 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
DISKPART
in the command prompt.
3) In the “Diskpart” prompt, enter the
RESCAN
command to re-scan all partitions, volumes and drives available.
4) Then enter
LIST DISK
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:
SELECT DISK 0
6) Enter
LIST PARTITION to show all available and created partitions in the disk
selected.
7) Select the partition that wanted to be deleted by entering
SELECT PARTITION 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.
Cool Finally, enter
DELETE PARTITION OVERRIDE
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.