WIN8 - how to change recovery partition drive letter

[Gary-Bennett]

Just bought a HP WIN8 laptop. I need to change the Recovery Partition Drive Letter to something other than 'D'.

Like all my computers I partitioned (shrink) the drive and put my work files on Drive 'D'. But the Recovery Partition is occupying Drive 'D' and won't let me change the drive letter.

Can you help me? I am sure what I am trying to do is a very common need. All previous versions of windows let me do this.

[lasvegaswireman]

Please provide the full HP model name and/or product number of the computer in question.

The HP Recovery partition is a semi-hidden partition designed to restore your computer to a "factory like state" in the event you encounter certain problems. Changing the drive letter and/or moving the partition will most likely break your ability to use this partition if needed. Please create your personal set of HP Recovery Discs before attempting to modify any drive letter and/or move any partitions. Once you have a set of recovery discs, you can actually delete the partition... recovery the space... and create a new "D:" partiton.

You will need to use the discs to recovery the computer if needed and this will break the use of "F11" at boot.

[Gary-Bennett]

Model is ENVY M6-1164ca

[Gary-Bennett]

Model is ENVY M6-1164ca

I created a full back-up but disk manager will still NOT let me change drive letter or delete the partition. It did let me reformat so now I have an empty recovery partition but I still can't do anything with it.

[Gary-Bennett · Accepted solution]

Problem solved! I used this tip:

http://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/show/883-how-to-unlock-delete-or-remove-the-eisa-hidden-recov...

In review, I followed these steps to resolve the problem:

1) I created a full system back-up (117Gb) that included the recovery partition and placed it on a external usb drive. If I need to restore my computer I will use the USB Drive

2) I followed the steps shown in the above link to delete the partition. 
3) I changed the Drive letter of the partition I created to 'D'

4) I now had 28Gb of unallocated space that I used to extend drive 'D'