▷ Oem partition or recovery partition, what is it and what is it for

If we have bought a computer and open the Hard Drive Manager out of curiosity, we will see that there is an OEM partition created on our hard drive. There may even be as many as two. If you do not know what these small space partitions are for, today we will analyze them and learn to create or delete them, as well as explore what is inside them.

Index of contents

We are all used to accessing the file explorer to access our hard drives or file partitions that we have. We may have one or two, depending on the hard drives we have installed. Currently, mid-range and high-end notebooks come with an SSD hard drive of about 150 GB where the operating system is installed, and a larger one for our files.

If we are a little curious and we have the opportunity to enter the hard disk manager we will see that there are quite a lot more partitions on our hard disk that we didn't even know about. What are these partitions really? Are they good for anything?

What is an OEM partition or recovery partition

As a general rule, computers that we purchase factory-mounted with all their hardware and operating system installed, contain one, two, or even three partitions that are called an OEM partition or recovery partition.

These partitions will normally have a total space of between 450 and 900 MB, and will be invisible to our eyes if we only dedicate ourselves to using the file explorer of our operating system.

The objective of this or these partitions created by the equipment manufacturers and the system itself, is none other than to have stored a series of files and files so that, when a recovery is made of the operating system, it can remain as it is. it was when we bought it. This means that we will not have a virgin system without drivers or installed, but we will also "enjoy" our own applications and drivers that the manufacturer introduces when selling the computer to us.

As an example, portable computers, many of them already come with their own programs such as graphics card drivers, Microsoft Office, or any other. When we factory restore the computer's operating system, it will return to the same state it was in when we purchased it. Even if we have uninstalled these applications, they will be available again.

How to see OEM partition of our computer

Well now that we know what this partition is for, let's find out how to see it. Apparently we should not see it in our file explorer, since by default they do not have a letter assigned, precisely to keep them hidden from the user's view. But thanks to tools like the Hard Disk Manager, we will be able to see it perfectly graphically.

What we must do is go to the start menu and right click on its button. A menu will appear in which we must locate and press the option " Management of hard drives ".

We will open an application in which we will see all the drives and partitions available on our computer. We will be able to identify each hard disk or partition either in the upper list by name, or in the lower list where each drive and its partitions are graphically represented.

Our case is that of a laptop which only has a visible partition in the file explorer, but it has no less than 3 extra partitions, in addition to the one we have for another operating system.

If we now go to a desktop computer, which we have assembled piece by piece and we have installed the system, we will see the following:

Practically the same, but with different names, we are sure that when installing the operating system these two partitions were not created, so we corroborate that the system itself created them.

That yes in this case we get more clues about its usefulness, on the one hand, the 450 MB has the name " Reserved for the system " and the other " Recovery partition ". What is the difference between these two?

Partition Reserved for the system

Well the main difference is that the first one, 450 MB is a partition that stores the system's boot configuration, as well as configuration files. It started with Windows 7 with a size of 100 MB and is currently 450 MB. This partition should not be erased since we would lose the Windows startup. In addition, being located to the left of the other partitions, it will not be possible to unite it, once destroyed, with the rest.

Recovery partition

This has 850 MB of space and is also created by Windows, from the latest versions of the system. Its function is to store files for system recovery. If we look at it, it is located on the right side, so if we remove it, we can attach this free space to other partitions.

We can delete this partition in case it is not a computer bought like this from the factory. Since there will be nothing stored in it. If it is a factory equipment, it will have files stored inside, precisely for what we have discussed.

How to show OEM partition in Windows Explorer

In order to display this partition in the file explorer, we will need to assign a letter to the drive. It is the only requirement we need to access it, but we will have to do it using the system command terminal and the Diskpart tool. Let's see how.

The first thing will be to open, either command prompt or PowerShell with administrator permissions. We will opt for the second option.

Then we open the start tools menu again with the right button and select " Windows PowerShell (administrator) ". So we will access it.

Now we place the following commands, and behind each one we press Enter:

diskpart

To run the program.

list volume

To display hard drives.

select volume

To select the volume to which we want to assign the letter.

assign letter

To assign a letter to the unit we want. We will perform the same procedure with the two partitions, as seen in the following image.

Now we can see these units in the file explorer.

If we access its interior, we will see absolutely nothing. In fact, we can only see something, if we install for example a file compressor such as 7-Zip or WinRAR. Two folders will appear to which we will not have access, so we will practically be in them. However, the system shows us this partition as almost fully occupied, surely they store nuclear codes or something like that… or not.

How to hide OEM partition in Windows Explorer

Well, once seen inside, we can already hide it so that it does not appear again. In Windows updates, such as 1703, there was an error and these partitions were automatically visible in the system, something really uncomfortable.

We will use the same procedure as before, that is, Diskpart. Then we write:

diskpart list volume select volume remove letter

To finish, we write " exit ".

In this way, if we access the browser, we will no longer see the partitions anywhere.

In our opinion, the OEM partitions are valid and it is not that they occupy a large storage space, the total does not reach 1.5 GB, so we do not recommend deleting them. We are not going to solve our lives by gaining 1 GB of space on our disk.

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What do you think about the usefulness of these partitions that both Windows and manufacturers create? Leave us your opinion about it.