Here is a step-by-step guide for accessing your Sony VAIO TR recovery partition directly without the pain of using the VAIO recovery tools to burn CDRS/DVDRs. After completeing this procedure your partiton will show up in My Computer just like any other drive, meaning you can access drivers and program installers etc located on it.

DISCLAIMER: This procedure is undetaken entirely at your own risk. Making changes to the partition table can result in total loss of data or prevent your VAIO from booting, should you make any mistakes. So please be careful and only undertake this procedure if you know what you are doing. This procedure has only been tested on the TR3A (North American), so be careful when using on other hardware. It should work universally though.

1) Install the Windows XP Support Tools. The tools can be found on the Windows XP Installation CD (\SUPPORT\TOOLS\SETUP.EXE), or alternatively downloaded as part of the Windows 2000 Support Tools pack. NOTE: I have not verified the Windows 2000 Support Tools are identical to the XP Support Tools, so as ever, use at your own risk, but they should work fine. The latest version of the Windows 2000 Support Tools can be found here:

When installing make sure you choose the “Complete” option.

2) Before proceeding futher, you must make sure you disable the Sony tool which runs at startup to ensure the recovery partition stays hidden. This application is called PartSeal.exe and runs automatically on startup. To disable it run msconfig (start menu->run, type msconfig), choose the Startup tab, and untick the box next to PartSeal, and OK.

3) Run dskprobe.exe which can be found in \Program Files\Support Tools\

4) On the Drives menu, click Physical Drive.

5) In the Open Physical Drive dialog box, double click the disk that contains the partition table that you want to display. In our case its PhysicalDrive0.

6) In the Handle 0 area of the Open Physical Drive dialog box, untick the Read Only box, click Set Active, and then click OK.

7) On the Sectors menu, click Read

8) In the Read Sectors dialog box, enter 0 in the Starting Sector text box, enter 1 in the Number of Sectors text box, and then click Read. (These values are probably already selected by default.)

9) On the View menu, click Partition table. Information about the partition table is displayed. If you have the same TR model as me the dialog should look exactly like the one shown below. By default the first partition should be selected (i.e. Partition Table Index = Partition 1). The System ID should display Uknown Type, which is the reason the partition is hidden.

10) Change System ID to NTFS by double-clicking it in the list (careful not to select NTFS FT or Orphan NTFS). VERY IMPORTANT: Merely highlighting the System ID to be NTFS is not enough to make it change. You must double click it. You can check this has worked by viewing the 2nd partition then viewing the 1st partition again (do this by double clicking items in the Partition table index on the right). If the System ID was changed succesfully it should still display NTFS.

11) Finally you must write these changes back to the disk. Make sure you have only changed the values described above or you could screw over you hard disk. On the Sectors menu, click Write. The dialog below should be displayed. Do not change any values. Click Ok, and OK again when it asks if you are sure.

12) Thats it! When you restart your VAIO the partition should be available. If not go to the Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Computer Management->Disk Management, select the 5GB partition, right click and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths…, assign the drive a letter and it should now show up in my computer. The contents of the drive should be almost identical to the picture below.

Thanks, this will come in handy for new users.
Using the Vaio disc was a pain.

Erik

and after that i can format and do whatever i want to,right? how about merging that drive to my D drive without reformatting the computer

Yes you can format it and use it as a 5gb data partition, but you will still need to use a 3rd party application such as Partition Magic if you want to merge the 5gb with the C and/or D drives.

After i did 3 times the trick, the partition has disappeared and i can’t find it.What’s happened.Now when i try to do newly the procedure, during the step 5 i only can see a “PArtitio 0” and Partition 1 is no longer there.
Any solution?

The “trick” only needs to be done once if you do it right.

Step 5 concerns physical drives not partitions so I assume you meant physical drives. PhysicalDrive0 is the hard disk, and PhysicalDrive1 is the memory stick slot, so I assume it simply means you have unplugged your memory stick.

If you have already failed at this procedure 3 times I would advise you not to try again. Wouldnt like to hear that you had lost your boot partition. If you do decide to try again please read the warning in BOLD once more before starting.

[quote author=“jtu100”]The “trick” only needs to be done once if you do it right.

Step 5 concerns physical drives not partitions so I assume you meant physical drives. PhysicalDrive0 is the hard disk, and PhysicalDrive1 is the memory stick slot, so I assume it simply means you have unplugged your memory stick.

If you have already failed at this procedure 3 times I would advise you not to try again. Wouldnt like to hear that you had lost your boot partition. If you do decide to try again please read the warning in BOLD once more before starting.

Yes,effectively, the slot doesn’t work,so i’ll try again the procedure.
What do you mean with “lose the boot Partition”?
Do not worry,you have no responsibility of my activities.

[quote author=“djpus”][quote author=“jtu100”]The “trick” only needs to be done once if you do it right.

Step 5 concerns physical drives not partitions so I assume you meant physical drives. PhysicalDrive0 is the hard disk, and PhysicalDrive1 is the memory stick slot, so I assume it simply means you have unplugged your memory stick.

If you have already failed at this procedure 3 times I would advise you not to try again. Wouldnt like to hear that you had lost your boot partition. If you do decide to try again please read the warning in BOLD once more before starting.

Yes,effectively, the slot doesn’t work,so i’ll try again the procedure.
What do you mean with “lose the boot Partition”?
Do not worry,you have no responsibility of my activities.

If you loose your boot partition then you wont be able to boot any operating system, even if its on another patition. I dont think you should be attempting direct access of the recovery partition right now, as you’ve already said you still have the Japanese OS installed, and bootable.  I belive the recovery partition is just an image of the Japanese OS as you got it out of the box, and you’ll only need it if you want to revert back to how it was out of the box.

uhmmm ok, i’ve done what you said, worked like a charm nothing went wrong…

now what? i have fresh formated my TR3AP2 with winXP Pro and i need to find / install the utilities (hotkeys, power management, etc , etc) ... i believe they reside in the hidden partition in the root as i see some image files…

but how do i burn them in a cd to extract their contents? Nero? Use IsoBuster? Is there another utility? The included utility in the hidden partition \CreateCD\createcd.exe gives an error when executed (a dll is missing).

Thanks

What about accessing programs on the disk itself?
I got a recovery DVD disk, but all the files are in strange format.
I think I saw somewhere on the forum how to access that…
Any advise would be great.
Also, how can I just completely remove that partition and use that free space or does it worth at all? safer just keeping that partition will all the files?

another, just a quick dumb question.
if system crashes (knock, knock, knock) can I restore everything from that recovery partition or I would need that recovery CD anyway?

[quote author=“KZ2030”]another, just a quick dumb question.
if system crashes (knock, knock, knock) can I restore everything from that recovery partition or I would need that recovery CD anyway?

I think it’s depend on which step are you on when your system crashes. If it’s after you’ve wiped out your system then i think you would need Recovery CDs.

if i copy the whole drive (the hidden partition) to an external HD, can i still make the recovery cd? i assume i can since there is a folder name createcd, but just want to make sure.  thanks

hi

i dunno if anyone still does this to their TR, but I have a slight deviation from the steps

i tried steps 1-8 with no issues

on step on 9, my partition 1 says “system ID” = NTFS already
i don’t get the “unknown” unless i click on “next Partition”
and if I double click on partition 2 from Partition table index I get “Extended-LBA”

I have a tr2a and i will admit it.  ahha i’d like to know more before i do something that may/may not screw up my settings

no one knows? boo… hahah i guess i’ll have to wait until this semester is over.  Maybe i’ll just ghost it and then reinstall everything later blah…

One thing i forgot to mention all those months ago…

The Sony recovery partition is setup for autorun. What this means is, if you dont disable autorun for the drive before you mount it, a little sony utility automatically runs when you mount the drive. This utility will go and revert your changes to the partition table, and next time you reboot the recovery partition will have vanished again!! Unfortunately I dont have time to explain how to disable autorun here, but a quick search on google should help.