Windows Hidden Extended Volume

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JohnG
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 12:26 am

Windows Hidden Extended Volume

Post by JohnG »

With BIBM 1.55 I have three Boot Menu Items that access an Extended Partition within which a 200 GB NTFS volume is marked as Hidden. This Extended Partition is physically located last on the drive, after all other partitions. These three Menu Items boot three different versions of Windows.

Disk Management in Windows XP shows this hidden volume as:

VOL_NAME
200.00 GB NTFS
Healthy (Unknown Partition)

Disk Management in Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 both show this same hidden volume as:

200.00 GB
Healthy (Primary Partition)

Note that Win 8.1 & 10 do not show a volume name nor the file system, but both show it as a "Primary Partition" rather than "Unknown".

I've not been too concerned about this since there is no drive letter assigned, and apparently Windows does not attempt or allow access to the data on the volume.

However, in Windows 10 (1803) Settings -> System -> Storage, the System C: drive, which is 80 GB, shows a size of 280 GB! Win 10 is adding that "Primary Partition" size to "This PC (C:)" size. File Explorer however shows the correct 80 GB size, so this is clearly a bug in Windows 10.

The point is, first of all, to alert BIBM users of this anomaly.

Secondly, is there any way for BIBM to mark the hidden volume differently so that Windows does not see this as a healthy NTFS partition? (I do realize that marking it differently would not be in accordance with established standards).

Or is Windows simply looking at the contents, regardless of the partition/volume file-system type ID?

- John
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