Safe to hide HP_Recovery & HP_Tools?

[weldmount]

Hello, Everyone.  This is my first post here on HP Support; I have searched for an answer to my question but have not came across a definite, satisfactory answer.  I have a new ZBook 15u G2 that I am setting up for my own business use.  I would like to hide the HP_Recovery (D) & HP_Tools (E) disk partitions - is this safe to do so through Disk Management?  

Thank you in advance

[WAWood · Accepted solution]

weldmount

Hello;

Allow me to welcome you to the HP forums!

I've not tried this, but my guess is that IF you do that, the HP Recovery function might no longer work.

And since then, you would not be able to get into Windows to unhide it, you might be stuck.

My suggestion, if you don't want Recovery available to the PC user, but still want the feature, is to consider a third-party solution that will allow you to do an image backup to an external drive or USB stick.  That way, you can simply remove the Recovery partition and not worry about it.

I personally prefer to use third-party Recovery solutions as they tend to be both more flexible and more reliable than any built-in solutions.

Macrium Reflect (MR) provides a FREE version that can be used to image and restore partitions or entire drives: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

What I recommend is the following:
1) Download and install Macrium Reflect (MR)
2) Run MR and choose the option: "Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows" to write a full backup to an external drive or USB stick
3) Use the option to create a boot USB stick or CD

My experience is that MR, when using the High Compression option, typically can compress the saved image file to about 50% of the USED space in the OS partition. This means if you have an 80GB OS partition, and 40GB is used, MR only needs about 20GB to store the image file.

I use this all the time and it typically takes less than 10 minutes to do the image backup and about the same time or less to do a restore.

Good Luck

[weldmount]

Thank you, Dean!  I will follow your suggestion, I don't want to risk losing any functionality.  

Thanks Again and Happy New Year to you.