[diggeryo]

I have a 60 gig harddrive. Partition 1 is FAT32, about 4 gigs in size, and contains the "restore data" that came with the new laptop I bought. Partition 2 is NTFS, about 56 gigs, and contains my primary operating system and all other data.

I can see the first partition with "disc managament" under "computer management." however, I can't access it in anyway--i believe because it doesn't have a drive letter assigned to it. "Disc Management" doesn't give me the option to assign it a drive letter. Is there anyway I can access the contents of this partition in Windows without having to format it or lose any of the data?

thanks,
mike.

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you cannot access it because it's "protected" and marked as inactive...some companies even make the recovery partitions invisible (really bad idea as then you don't know it's there when you format your drive) is there a specific reason you want to access it ?

[dsenette]

you cannot access it because it's "protected" and marked as inactive...some companies even make the recovery partitions invisible (really bad idea as then you don't know it's there when you format your drive) is there a specific reason you want to access it ?

[diggeryo]

Mainly, I'd just like to burn the recovery data to a CD and reclaim the extra partition as hard drive space. (it's only taking up about 600 megs of the 4 gigs it has set aside).

[dsenette]

...you could try imaging the entire drive with something lke acronis true image...of course...when you restore the computer it would put that partition back

not sure if it would work but you could try the UBCD4WIN...you may be able to burn that data off that way (have had very few partitions able to hide from me with that particular tool)