Unhide the Recovery Partition on a Basic Disk with DiskPart.

This quick step guide describes how to unhide recovery partition on your hard drive. It was tested on a Windows Vista machine with a Basic disk.

DiskPart command line syntax and parameters can be found on Microsoft documentation page.

Unhide Recovery Partition

1. Start Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) on your computer and take a closer look at your hard disk. Note the disk number and the partitions.
2. Start DiskPart and select your disk: DISKPART> select disk 0
3. List all partitions: DISKPART> list partition
4. Now, select the hidden partition (see step 1) DISKPART> select partition 1
5. Type DISKPART> detail partition and verify that it is hidden. Remember the Type value, this will be handy if something goes wrong.
6. Set the type of the hidden partition to 07. Type DISKPART> set id = 07 override
7. If everything goes ok, you will receive the following message “Diskpart successfully set the partition ID.“
8. All done. Type Exit to close DiskPart.
9. Check the Disk Management to see witch drive letter has been assigned to the recovery partition.

List of partition types:

• 07 = Windows NT NTFS
• 17 = Hidden
• 27 = OEM Recovery

Cheers!

– Marek.Z