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Hidden partitions revealed


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On www.theinquirer.net I read the following:

READER WILEY SILER has sent us a method which he said was discovered by Scott Komblue and documented by himself which they claim can recover unused areas of the hard drive in the form of hidden partitions.
We haven't tried this here at the INQUIRER, and would caution readers that messing with your hard drive is done at your own peril and very likely breaches your warranty.

The method is described [url="http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14597"]here[/url]. Some results:

- Western Digital 200GB SATA
Yield after recovery: 510GB
- IBM Deskstar 80GB EIDE
Yield after recovery: 150GB
- Maxtor 40GB EIDE
Yield after recovery: 80GB
- Seagate 20GB EIDE
Yield after recovery: 30GB
-Merkloze laptop 80GB HDD
Yield after recovery: 120GB

Someone interested in trying? :P:
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  • 4 weeks later...
the one who discovered it claims that on for example a hd of 40 gb, a hidden partition exists, which can be used by trying the method. in theory, a hd of a size of 40 gb, should in reality be a hd with a size around the 80 gb, if you recover the hidden partition. a possibility is data corruption on your hd i guess, i didn't try it myself on a hd, i don't have any spare small hd's here, and i don't want to risk my 40 and new 120 gb hd's...

so if you have bought a hd of 40 gb, the claim is that in theory, you could enlarge it to 80 gb by using the method... you just recover a hidden partition which will approximately double the size of your hd... the partition is on your hd, but hidden, that's why you can't use it now :):
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that's bullshit... :no:

[quote]Commenting on an article you posted today about hidden hard drive space. It was brought to my attention from a link to it from HardOCP.

What is happening is that Norton Ghost creates a virtual partition on the drive, and the data for that virtual partition resides on one of the existing partitions. So as more data is added on the virtual partition, a file on the normal drive partition expands as well.

It's kind of like a disk image which is being mounted to a drive letter. All the data for it is still on the primary partition.

Hopefully that's clear enough to explain what is happening here. The extra virtual partition basically is defined as the amount of freespace on the partition to which the that virtual partition file actually resides.

In short: No miracle space here, don't bother the hard drives manufactures. Just using a feature in ghost in a weird way, but with no real benifits other than being able to boot a disk image without reszing all the partitions on your drive.

Peace

Matt
[/quote]
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  • 1 month later...
Some new reactions and it might really work!

Update: [url="http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14608"]http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14608[/url] (scroll down half the page)

"First, users are usually amused to learn that the capacity of modern hard drives is _unknown_, until it goes through the factory's qualification tests. The 120GB hard drive you purchased may have been physically identical to a 250GB hard drive, but simply it only passed qualification at 120GB."

!! Dat zou vet zijn ;) !!
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[quote]most of the "invisible free space" exists for a purpose -- either it's spare sectors for bad sector remapping, or its capacity that didn't pass factory qualification, that you don't want to use anyway.[/quote]
and i keep reading about data corruption and partition overlapping... well, i do have a spare 8gb HDD here i noticed, in a couple of weeks i should have enough spare time to go try it :):
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I'll get a second pc thursday (P2 or 3 or so) and it has a hdd with it and I have some old ones her. So I will try it aswell :)

Let us hear the results :d (juts like I will)
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dat is met processors tog ook zo: ze kunnen wel sneller dan dat ze doen, maar op de snelheid die aangegeven staat. Ze kunnne veel harder, alleen kunnen ze dan niet de garantie geven dat ie ut lang volhoudt
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  • 1 year later...
Inmiddels zijn er veel reacties gekomen op dat stuk van The Inquirer en blijkt er helemaal niks van waar te zijn. Tenminste in theorie wel, maar niet in de praktijk.

Het is namelijk zo dat in dat voorbeeld bij Norton Ghost norton een virtueele partitie aanmaakt die gebruik maakt van de ruimte op de primare partitie. Dus gewoon een virtueele link van ruimte...

Meer zie ik er niet bij staan, dus ik denk dat dit nooit echt zo zal gaan werken, jammer hoor :p

Processors kunnen altijd meer als ze zeggen, maar word het idd onstabiel van ivm de hitte... Je ziet wel eens van die gigantische tweaks van een P4 3,2 Ghz die draait op 5 Ghz ofzo. Doen ze met vloeibaar stikstof :)
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  • 3 weeks later...
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