What is an OEM?
Many laptops or Desktops now a days have this hidden partition that is used for OEMS. An OEM or original equipment manufacturer for those who don’t know is a company that sells a system with it’s own branding or services. It varies from company to company just what they sell to the consumer. Having Said that, let’s talk about this Hidden Partition.
Why do I have a Hidden Partition on my drive?
[ad]To simply put it, most likely it is there for a emergency backup for your Operating System. It can be accessed through your boot up. Most of the time if you press f11 or f12, some key combination to go to this hidden partition and restore the system to the factory settings. Now I tell you this to warn you that you don’t ever want to delete this partition because you need it to verify that in case you need a driver it might be there. Now a days, most laptop and desktop sellers don’t want to include a backup CD or DVD in the box so they expect you do make one. This is where the hidden partition comes to play. This also used to make DVD or CD of operating system.
How big is the Partition?
That isn’t a simple question because most OEM’s like to vary partition to prevent them from being used in other OEM systems. Now not saying it is hard to find out. There are several tools used to backup this hidden partition but can cost to get to it. Like my system, it takes up around 8 gigabytes of space on mine. Others, I’ve seen, only take up 4 gigabytes. It varies from branding to branding. Also keep in mind that you want to backup this important partition just in case there is a problem with the Hard Drive. This is really IMPORTANT: the Hidden Partition is only good for the hardware you have right now so it can only be used with that particular system. Should you try it on another system, may have trouble or not work at all.
How do I back up this Hidden Partition or Even transfer it to another Hard drive?
If you wanted to change out your old laptop or desktop hard drive and put in a bigger and better hard drive. You’d need to copy the old partition of the drive first to put in the new drive. How do you do that? Most laptops only have room for one Hard Drive so you might need to buy a cable for that laptop. It’s call a USB to Sata Adapter and it allows you to hook up a second hard drive so you can copy from the original source. This one I am showing you is good for both Laptop and Desktop it’s got all you need to make a back up or even copy the data off.
What software do I need to copy this Hidden partition?
There are several programs that will help you do this. Each of them have there own look and feel to them. These companies will support people who are wanting to backup there important Operating system. Yes the operating system is important if you didn’t have that the hardware would just sit there. Although there are free operating systems they do come with there own problems and solutions. So let’s begin talking about the commercial backup software:
- Acronis True Image — Backup your entire PC: Acronis True Image includes our patented disk-imaging backup technology. You can copy your entire PC, including the operating system, applications, user settings, and all data. In the event of a system or disk crash, virus attack, or other fatal failures, you can restore the entire disk contents in minutes–no reinstallations required!
- Norton Ghost 14.0 — Protects your computer with advanced backup and recovery: creates full system and file backups, restore from system failures, and back up based on schedules and events
- Paragon Partition Manager 9.0 Personal — Partitioning, Manage disk partitions, Optimization and Defragmentation, Boot Manager, and Simple Backup Wizard
[ad#ad2-right]I will add more to my store when I find others that work well with doing the hidden partition. You will also not that these are are the best to use when you want copy the hidden partition because they know about the hidden partition. Other software might only copy the visible partition and ignore the hidden. So that is why I talk about commercial software because there’s a person on the other end who could help you out.
These are just a few that will work for you, if you want to go find the free software by all means but I must warn you the free software doesn’t come with any warranties or someone who could help most of the time. It is a pot shot with free software, some work well and others just make a mess. There are some free back up software but most of the time they only copy the visible and not the hidden, so if you must go looking. Go looking for the ones who say they can copy the hidden partition. These are the ones you need use to back up your operating system.
