Deleting a EISA Partition

Most consumer computers these days have their drives partitioned: one for primary use and another for restoration. Often this is a partition that you can’t access because it contains restore / backup data. Fortunately for most users new hard drives are large enough that you likely don’t need the space; unless you’re like me and want every bit that you paid for. Worst is if you have an older computer with less space and roughly 10% of your available hard drive space is gone before you begin putting anything of your own on it. Lucky for you I can tell you / show you how to remove it! You can remove the partition if you want more space and have another way to backup / restore your computer. If you don’t, you might want to leave it. It’s also a good idea to do this when you first get your computer because it will require reinstalling your Operating System.

Tools Needed: External USB CD/DVD Drive, Original Operating System Discs (Windows XP or Vista), a pre-Vista Windows Disc like XP or 2000, and a USB Keyboard. (I haven’t tried this with Windows 7).

Note: I did this on my Samsung Q1 and the partition was an EISA partition. You can determine this by going to the start menu > right clicking on Computer > click on Manage > Click on Disk Management under Storage. You will probably have two Discs 0 and 1. The C drive will be installed on Disc1 (which is the second partition) and a blank drive letter for Disc0 (which is the restore partition). An EISA partition is not recognized by Vista and cannot be deleted by Vista, hence the need for XP or 2000 discs! (I’d assume the same problem exists for Windows 7 and/or any OS after Vista.) See the following article by Microsoft:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=242168

First you want to restart your computer and go into the boot settings. You need to change your boot settings to boot to the CD Drive first, instead of the hard drive. When you exit and restart, make sure the pre-Vista Disc (I used a Windows XP bootable disc) and boot into the setup.

Next, after the XP setup process (or whatever OS you used) has loaded; it will recognize both the EISA partition and your regular partition. From here you can delete both partitions (by pressing L) which will create one large non-partitioned drive that can then be partitioned into a single NTFS drive. Once the formatting is over Windows will want to start loading files onto the drive; it’s at this point you can basically shut off the computer without any damage.

Now reinstall your operating system of choice and your EISA partition will be there again. Remember that if you are removing a backup partition to burn the backup or restore discs first. As always questions and comments are appreciated.