Does anyone know if this is possible? I just want to “mount” it so i can copy the whole lot to another hard drive, and not worry about wasting 10 CDRs making the discs.

If you have partition backup software like Acronis TrueImage then you can backup the entire partition to another drive if you ever need it later.

but can i actually read the files from it?

Well, you can mount the partition itself…but I’m not sure about the software to open it up. If you have CD virtualization software (like what comes with Nero) you can have the recovery process run but burn the images to a virtual CD burner which creates ISO/NRI images which you can store elsewhere. Then, you can access those later if you need to pull actual files from it.

ah ok, thats a start. i figure if we can come up with a nicely documented way to get all the sony software/drivers off the recovery partition without the need to create those blasted recovery cds/dvd it will save everyone a lot of pain and effort!

well i have found something that comes with nero called nero imageDrive, but i get the impression that is just classic virtual drive system so u can mount images. dosnt appear the do the reverse - let u burn to a virtual drive

ok think my best chance so far is the dskprobe.exe utility from the xp installation disc. this is basically a low level hex editor for discs! i can see the recovery partition listed as 5gb of hidden sectors under the c: logical disc. now to play around and see if i can unhide it…!

Oops, sorry, I may have been jumping the gun on the virtual burning issue. ImageDrive can burn virtual images but not directly from other programs. You’ll need to image the discs. Of course, you can do what everyone else does and complain to Sony and get the DVD recovery discs directly from them. In some cases it’s a small fee or you can try to bitch and moan about it until they send it for free. That would probably solve your problem and then you could get rid of the partition altogether.

UPDATE: please see article http://www.siliconpopculture.com/sonytr/viewtopic.php?t=1306&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight;= with full instructions

I finally feel relieved to be contributing something to this community! Below is the picture of the hidden “recovery partition” freely accessed under windows explorer.

  (168k, sorry for quality but clear type makes it look crap)

As I had hoped the hack was very easy, but involves directly editing the partition table so dont blame me if you kill your computer. Just use dskprobe.exe off the XP cd, and change the first partition from the uknown type to NTFS. I will post a detailed account on how to do this tomorrow but now I must sleep…

Jack

PS. I have not investiaged the VAIO Recovery message box yet. It popped up as soon as the computer booted. It could be that the machine checks that the partition table hasnt been altered and has spotted my hack and already reverted my chang. No doubt as soon as I press Ok and restart the partition wont be visible any longer. Will let you know when I find out more…

PPS Yup. Theres an application, PartSeal.exe, which runs on startup to seal the partition by the looks of it. simply disable this in msconfig to stop it bothering you. Now I have permanent access to the partition. wooohooo! :D