How can I recover a hard disk’s recovery partition on my PC?

Q I have recently upgraded from Vista to Windows 7. My PC’s hard disk is partitioned into three partitions: C for the operating system, D for data and E, which was created and labelled by the manufacturer a recovery partition. If I look at drive E’s properties, it shows used space as 5.24GB and free space as 2.27GB.

However, if I double-click the Recovery folder contained on this drive to view the contents, it says that this folder is empty. Why the conflicting information?

Regardless, I now have a separate Windows 7 full installation disc, so do I still need whatever recovery files may be contained on drive E? If not, how would I join this drive to either my operating system drive (C) or my data drive (D)? And which drive would benefit most from the extra space?
Rob Thompson

A We imagine the reason that you cannot see any files in the Recovery folder on your E drive is because they were given a ‘hidden’ attribute by the manufacturer.

By default, files marked in this way will not be displayed in Windows Explorer – and this may go some way to preventing accidental deletion by novices of important files and folders.

You can toggle this concealment feature though, so that hidden files become visible. To do this, launch Windows Explorer (press the Windows key and E), then choose Folder Options from the Tools menu.

In the Folder Options dialogue box, click the View tab and, in the Advanced settings list, click to select the Show hidden files, folders, and drives radio button. Click OK and the files in the Recovery folder on drive E should be visible.

Unfortunately, you didn’t tell us the precise make and model of your PC so we can’t say for certain what the recovery partition may or may not contain or whether any files that do exist are important.

However, as you have replaced the original operating system (Vista) with a full version of Windows 7, our guess is that you have little to worry about by deleting this partition to free up the space – but proceed at your own risk.

You asked which disk – C or D – would most benefit from the extra space. The answer depends on how you use your PC and how much space is currently available on each disk but, typically, the disk that contains the operating system (C) won’t have an increasing demand for storage space – unlike your data disk. So we would suggest combining the freed-up space with disk D.

To do this, click Start, then right-click My Computer and choose Manage. This launches the Computer Management console. Click Disk Management in the left-hand pane to see a breakdown of the partitions on your PC’s hard disk.

Right-click the relevant partition (E, in your case) and select Delete Volume from the pop-up menu. If you are certain you want to proceed (there’s no going back from here) click Yes.

This erases the contents but not the partition itself, so right-click the Free space area that has now appeared in the lower pane of the Computer Management console and select Delete Partition, followed by Yes to confirm. Finally, right-click the partition you would like to extend (disk D) and choose Extend Volume from the pop-up menu.

Now work through the Extend Volume Wizard. This is should be no more difficult than accepting the default selections, which should be to the maximum amount of free space available to extend the D partition into the space previously occupied by E. Click Finish when this is done.