"hidden" partition on Acer laptop

[SteveSxx]

Does anyone know how to hide a partition on an Acer laptop - that is used to rebuild it if necessary ?

It is running XP home and for safety - I prefer this user (my wife) not to be able to access the partition

[Ethel]

If I understand your question - you want to create a hidden and protected partition on your hard drive so you can recover / repair Windows XP if things go wrong.

I think it would be better to create a recovery cd that you can lock away.

Apologies if I have misunderstood your question.

[SteveSxx]

Sorry - no
What I am trying to do is to protect the image which is saved on a partition from her deleting it by accident
This image is the only back up that we have - she mistakenly chucked out the back up CD's with the packaging
As for a back up - yes if I can figure out exactly what files to copy - there are almost 4Gb of them in the partition - I guess that I could copy the lot to DVD ?

[Ethel]

Yes you could!

But another idea - you could create another user account which needs a password - and move your files there.

Or password protect your administrator account, and give her a limited user account.

That way, only you could access them.

[SteveSxx]

What ?
Interfere with her personal laptop - what do think I am - suicidal ?
It is her property and I am not allowed to interfere with it on pain of death (or worse !!) unless she has problems with it -then it becomes my fault, my problem to sort out ...
The laptop is not password protected at the moment - it is safe (never leaves the house)
I think that if I can hide the partition - that will suffice
Which I think that I have done (in the BIOS)

[ACtheTROLL]

Ethel is right

if this is your only backup .... what will you do if the hard disc fails?

you need to get the file(s) over onto a dvd (I'd take 2 copies just in case)
lots of "bundled" systems use drivers which are only available from the manufacturer so if your HDD fails and you have no CDs the hassle getting the machine rebuilt is horrendous.

If it's very important software such as Acronis True Image 10 Home(http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/ trueimage/)
cost $49.00 - about �26.00
it's easy enough to use and will backup anything from your full system to just a few files.

that way you can make (and maintain) a backup of your system on a couple of DVD-RWs as it is now ....

restore in 20 mins should anything go wrong.