How to Format an HP Recovery Drive

The HP Recovery Drive is a partition HP puts on its hard drives for use in case the primary partition becomes corrupt or unusable. The recovery partition contains system files and the ability to boot and repair, format and reinstall the operating system if needed. For those who prefer recovery disks or who don't feel the need for the insurance of the HP Recovery drive, it can be formatted by following the steps below.

Instructions

1. Open Disk Management by Right Clicking "My Computer" and selecting "Manage."

2. Click on "Storage" and "Disk Management."

3. Find the Recovery Drive partition. There are usually two partitions: the "C: partition" and the "HP_RECOVERY D: partition."

4. Right-click on "HP_RECOVERY D:" and select "Format."

5. Choose the File system and Allocation Unit Size and click "OK." The HP Recovery Drive partition will format and be available for your specified use.

Tips & Warnings

• Be very careful to not format the C: drive by accident.

Resources

• HP on Recovery Manager