64gb ssd wasted on M14x R2

I have a new alienware laptop with 64gb ssd, straight after first boot I have only 5 gb FREE of a 40gb C drive left. C drive being the ssd.

Further investigation shows there is a hidden recovery partition of some 20GB, what a waste of ssd? the system also has a d drive conventional hdd of 1TB.

I think a recovery partition is a good idea, but not on the ssd.

A recovery partition on the 1TB hdd drive would make much more sense to me.

I investigated an image file of my system, seems I can burn it to either the 1TB hdd or to dvd's

looking at that it says

C; os drive total size;40.37Gb used: 35.4GB

recovery total size: 19.2gb used: 6.7GB

now regarding the c drive ssd i check under windows and i added it all up to approximately 26GB being used (added all the folders etc and made sure all hidden files folder were made visible).
Question 1 where is the other approx 7gb?

question 2: why does the recovery have 19Gb allocated when its only using 6.7? is that the approx 7gb missing on the c drive?.

Question 3: if i make an image file on the d drive of 1 TB can i use that as the recovery partition if i need it, and then delete the recovery partition that currently existed, hopefully getting back some 20gb.

Question4: If i burn the image as dvd's to store away, test them and then remove the recovery partition, seems to me just making it slower to recover from dvd verse ssd drive, wonder how much slower?

Question 5: If i remove the recovery partition then i will get back this space on the ssd drive, is the windows admin tools good enough to handle this, or should i look at another software?

Question 6: can i just MOVE the recovery partition from the c drive to the d drive, and regain the space? do i need any special software for that process

Question 7: alienware laptop comes with win7 disk and an alienware resource disk, now assuming i have these available , is it not the same as burning a full recovery dvd?. assuming if i was doing a recovery the system would be returned to factory settings anyway even using the recovery partition. So i could just delete the recovery partition and use the original DVD's for the win 7 and alineware resource disk if needed? Or have i missed something here?

any other ideas or optionss on this subject much appreciated

To anyone who has read all this thanks and to anyone who responds thanks

 

I got the same config, with the same issue with the SSD so just nuked it with a clean install after removing the partitions. I now have 59.5Gb on my OS partition..

If you want to keep the recovery partition you could use a disk clone tool to copy the SSD to the 1Tb drive, however, my alienware came with all the restore media so I felt I didn't need it.

Deleting the 20Gb partiton probably won't increase the size of the operating system partition as they are seperate. You'd need to do a clean install.

From my experience, A clean install putting on only what you want is the best way of getting rid of the rubbish vendors seem to install, I can't be sure what was on the factory install as it didnt stay on long enough tho

 

I won't be reinstalling 7 but I'll be removing the recovery partition when I get mine.

I'm one of those people that has a massive external, so I dont recover I just reinstall 7 when something goes wrong, easier that way cause all my vital info is on the external.

 

I had a 64gb SSD for a while on the old R1. After a fresh Win7 squirt I had like 35-38GB for games. Not much considering you still have to install utilities and so forth. Most MMO's take up 20+ gigs. Good Luck!

 

Hey Zeju, can you just remove the recovery partition? From what I've been reading, I thought you couldn't do that. If you have time, can you elaborate on how to do that? I want to do the same thing once mine arrives.

Thanks

 

Well, I'm not 100% sure, but I can remove partitions in Computer management > Disk Management, not sure if it works on the M14 but I can delete volumes there.

 

computer management should do this, as does the GUI installer for windows

 

So many questions.

Simple answer: Clean install windows. In the installation process, nuke the recovery partition. You do not need it. People tend to think the world will end if they don't carry a factory recovery. All it is is Windows, drivers, and a couple barely useful programs.

A clean install, with hibernation disabled and pagefile shrunk, will give you 40gb free.

 

It is possible to delete the recovery partition without harming your Windows partition. We discussed it in this thread

If you want to back up your recovery partition, you can use the Alien ReSpawn program that came with your computer to back up its contents either to DVD or USB. At that point it becomes completely unnecessary and you can follow the steps in that thread to remove it and reclaim the space.

 

If you do a clean install, the alienware experience from the factory setting is not there and u have to do other tweaks to get it all back. I dont want to do all that work.
I am thinking about using respawn to make a back up and then remove the recovery partition.

But further research suggest that if you do it, then win 7 will not boot, seems some boot process is on the recovery partition. The link regarding further details on reclaiming the recovery partition ( see post by macnbc) explains this in detail. Seems to be getting messy in my view.

So now my thinking is to reduce the size of the partition to say 8gb, that will recover around 12gb, then expand the size of the C drive with the unallocated space. Why Dell made the partition 20GB when it uses around 7gb I dont know.
This can be all done under admin tools disk management. Im just not sure how good win 7 admin tools is at this process and less sure with this laptop. Is there a software program that does this well?

Anyone tried just reducing the size of the recovery and then resizing the c drive?

If i go down this path then i would redirect the libraries folders documents, music etc and the download one to the bigger D drive so as not to incrementally waste valuable ssd space and needlessly write to the ssd. There are also a few "fine" tuning things that can be done to the ssd to stop WIN 7 processes wasting the space.

I would be happy to get back 12GB and keep the recovery partition at around 8GB.

Thanks to all that have responded so far.

 

Sigh, so many frickin questions. You're like an overbearing wife.

A reinstall, with the discs they give us, actually come with the Alienware wallpapers and stuff. Reinstall really is the only way to get exactly what it is you want.

But yes, it MAY work to resize the recovery partition. Easus partition manager I believe is what I used to do something similar in the past.

 

Good information. It seems to me that a clean reinstall might be the simpler way to go.

 

For the record, I got my m14x today and tried the process I linked to out. Backing up the recovery partition to USB took about a half hour, but the actual process of moving the boot files, deleting the recovery partition, and resizing the Windows partition to fill the gap, took about 15 minutes.

Easy peezy. Highly recommended.

 

How much space do you have on the msata drive now? What do you have installed on there?

 

I'm having the same problem -

I've shrunk the recovery drive to 7.69GB , leaving me with 13GB unallocated space, but I don't know how to convert the unallocated space into C drive space...

I think its pretty ridiculous that the factory settings leave the 1TB hard drive basically useless, as everything default installs onto the mSATA 64GB one (Which is only actually 38GB, thanks to the recovery drive).

I don't know much about this kinda thing, so I'm in a bit of a tight spot - I can't install anything more without figuring how to make it save onto the 1TB hard drive..

 

When I first resized the drive I had somewhere around 35GB free. I currently have 32.5GB free after installing Avast, Malwarebytes, and installing a slew of Windows updates. I've been installing all programs that aren't used for startup (like games, Firefox, etc.) onto the secondary HD.

I also disabled hibernation and the Windows swap file.

 

Here's an interesting one for you. My Recovery Partition was only 8GB total when the machine arrived. I backed it up to DVD, deleted the partition and I'm still only at 12GB free.

Anyone else run into this? What's eating up all my 64GB SSD space?

 

Have you tried disabling hibernation? (if that is something you do not use). As far as I know, windows hibernation is equal to your available memory, in your case 16 GBs.

 

Thanks for the reply! I'll give this a shot and see if that fixes the issue.

 

I'm also seeing that turning off the page file can help free up a ton of space granted you have enough RAM to cover what you're running.

Think I might give that a try, too.

 

I used EaseUS to both re-size the recovery partition to 7GB then add the un-allocated space to c: The built in windows disk management service wouldn't let me add the space back to the c: partition.

 

If it turns out you do need the page file, you CAN relocate that off of the SSD and onto the storage drive as well. It doesn't have to reside on the startup drive.

 

I agree 100%. I want my laptop to be factory run too, but I think it's possible to fiddle. As macnbc said, he got his laptop yesterday and he raced through the method and successfully administrated it.

In hindsight, I probably should have told my rep I don't want a recovery partition but I guess I was excited, haha, I don't know if he would have done that anyway. At any rate I can handle it.

 

did use use the free version of that program to do it?

also how long ago did you do it and have you noticed any problems from doing it?

Thanks

 

There are a range of things u can do to get back valuable ssd space and maske sure its operating effectively.

turn off drive indexing on both drives c and d
turn off defrag on c
verify trim is enabled
turn off hybernation - I have seen claims that say u will get back anywhere from 1 to 2.5GB. also because the ssd is supposedly faster in startup, then hybernation is not much faster than cold booting the system.
the pagefile, you can move that to the D drive, the only downside i have seen is that if a BSOD hits the system will not generate a minidump of the problem.( not 100% sure about that, anyway you can always put the paging file back on c if needed).

move the liararies items such as documents pictures music etc to the d drive
by default they are on C but various programs use them in some cases without your knowlegde and this leads to incremental increases on the c drive.
you can also move the downloads folder (the standard one used if you dont select an alternative) to the D drive as well. these folders can be restored to their previous location if you need to. They will still appear under windows explorer as they do now.

There are also a range of other services/tweaks that can be modified to save ssd space, some say to do them and others say not to, so i have not outlined any of those things.

I have not outlined how to do any of the above, if someone wants to know then i'll put up the steps required.

 

Hi i am quite new to all these. Would appreciate if u can put the steps in. Cheers!

 

Dude. Google. He gave good advice, now don't be lazy. Learn to google and find some answers yourself.

 

From what I understand (which is not too much but growing daily) you can leave a small pagefile on the ssd for minidumps (I think the minimum size allowed by windows is 800 megs) then you can move your "main" pagefile to the D drive.

Does this sound doable?

Thanks for posting the info dommo3. I think any info directly relating to the m14x by m14x users is valuable.

 

Definitely doable. This is exactly what I did. I left 1024 on the C: and then threw 4096 onto my storage drive (D:\).

So far, so good!

 

Also good advice. Google is a tech's best friend.

 

Here is a link that talks about a range of changes to make to a ssd drive to keep it fast and recover valuable data space.If you a new to an ssd then i suggest you read the whole article. You will have to make up your own mind as to whether or not the changes are right for you. Other sites point out that some of the changes are not a good idea.

here is the link, do your own research and then decide what to do.
The SSD Optimization Guide Redesigned - The SSD Review

hope it helps

 

WARNING - I used Easus Partition Manager to try and resize the C drive because it wouldn't let me use DIsk Management to incorporate the unallocated space, and it seemed to work, but when i rebooted, it said Boot Manager was missing, so i had to reinstall Windows... It was easy from there at least, because I could just delete the recovery drive from the Windows Setup, so now i have my full 59GB of space I'd make sure you backup if you try deleting the partition through disk management or third party software, unlike myself... (Although all my important files were on the secondary 1TB hd, so all good!)

Also yeah - deleting hiberfil.sys was a good idea - gave me an extra 9GB or so ( http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/15140/what-is-hiberfil.sys-and-how-do-i-delete-it/ if you need help with that)

 

I used easeus partition manager and it worked fine for me. That is I reduced the size of the recovery partition and added the space to the C drive.
I read somewhere if you delete the recovery partition completely then the laptop will not boot as some part of the boot process is contained on the recovery partition.

I assume clifford103 deleted the recovery partition in his process.

I also switched off hybernate as per the article details in my previous post and I regained around 4 - 5 gb.

 

As stated on page 1 of this thread, you have to follow the steps EXACTLY as detailed here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m14x/664467-help-me-delete-move-recovery-partition.html

That thread shows the steps to remove the recovery partition while also moving the associated boot files to the C: partition so that you boot normally.

 

Thats why you buy a bigger SSD

 

Well, I finally got my m14x. I have the 64GB mSATA. It came with, I think, 15GB free space. I made the AlienRespawn Backup disks and then followed the instructions on the above link and removed the recovery partition. I then used the free version of EaseUS Partition Master to merge my partitions. Overall, the process was not too difficult. I now have 34GB free of 59GB on the mSATA. I also disabled hibernation and set the page file to 1GB. So far, everything is running pretty good.

Ok, so I made the page file 1GB to save space on the 64GB mSata. Today I had firefox open, probably about 6 or 7 tabs, and I was editing a document in Word. I think I had two word docs open and I may have had Steam open also. While editing the Word doc, Bam! BSOD.

WhoCrashed:

On Wed 6/20/2012 11:21:36 PM GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\062012-16208-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x7CD40)
Bugcheck code: 0x50 (0xFFFFF880884E5000, 0x1, 0xFFFFF8800F606B76, 0x5)
Error: PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA
file path: C:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: NT Kernel & System
Bug check description: This indicates that invalid system memory has been referenced.
This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem.
The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver which cannot be identified at this time.


On Wed 6/20/2012 11:21:36 PM GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\memory.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: nvlddmkm.sys (nvlddmkm+0x1ECB76)
Bugcheck code: 0x50 (0xFFFFF880884E5000, 0x1, 0xFFFFF8800F606B76, 0x5)
Error: PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA
file path: C:\Windows\system32\drivers\nvlddmkm.sys
product: NVIDIA Windows Kernel Mode Driver, Version 296.16
company: NVIDIA Corporation
description: NVIDIA Windows Kernel Mode Driver, Version 296.16
Bug check description: This indicates that invalid system memory has been referenced.
This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem.
A third party driver was identified as the probable root cause of this system error. It is suggested you look for an update for the following driver: nvlddmkm.sys (NVIDIA Windows Kernel Mode Driver, Version 296.16 , NVIDIA Corporation).

I did a system check and a RAM check and everything reported back as fine. I wonder if this crash has any relation to the page file. Just finished a memory test with memtest86. No errors.

Any suggestions?

 

alienowl, we had very similar plans, but if your getting unexplained BSOD's, I'm simply not going to risk it.

When I get my laptop, I'll install GTA IV, give it a shake down, do some power drains, then reinstall Windows 7.. I don't wanna fiddle with partitions if theres a risk of a blue screen.

 

So far, I've only had one BSOD. I am thinking that this may be more related to the page file than anything else, but I'm not too sure. I changed the page file back to allow Windows to manage the size and I have not had any problems since that.

Yesterday I spend about 5 hours editing some large Word files, many documents open at the same time, firefox going with multiple tabs open, PDFs open, Skype on and didn't experience any problems. Although, having the page file back to default takes away about 8 GBs of space from the mSATA.

 

an option you could try to save space with the page file would be to make a page file on C of approx 1024 and then make a larger pagefile on D.

 

I began by making my page file 1024 on C, but I didn't make a larger one on D. Then I got the BSOD. I could try making the larger one on D and give it a test, or I am even thinking that I might get a larger mSATA and do a clean install on that and not have to worry about space issues

So far with the page file back to having windows manage it, it's running excellently!

 

If I were to reformat my computer and delete the 20gb recovery partition in the process, would my computer run into any problems later on? I read somewhere that some sort of boot file is found within that recovery partition therefore a BSOD results if there's no recovery partition. Also, would it be possible to create the recovery partition using a portion of the 500GB Hard Drive instead of the 64GB SSD? Thanks.

 

As far as I know you cannot move the recovery partition off of your boot drive.

If you check through the links earlier in this thread about deleting the recovery partition, you will see that there are boot files within the recovery partition that are needed for start up; part of the procedure of deleting the recovery partition is moving those boot files out of the recovery partition before you delete it.

 

Ahh that sucks...thanks for the reply

 

Really? I reformatted my hard drive and deleted the recovery partition during a fresh install of windows and my system has been running fine for 2 weeks now :s

 

Fresh install is fine, but just deleting the recovery partition that dell installs does not work. you need to go through the steps that are outlined earlier in this thread. please let me know if I'm wrong

 

Oh yeh right that's what i thought *phew*