Deleting the recovery partition and clean installing windows off of the Windows 7 DVD that came with it

Hi guys,

Looking through the forums there seems to be a mix of responses.
Some say that not to delete the recovery partition when doing a clean install of windows because it will delete boot files or something
Other say its completely fine and actually the best thing to do when getting the laptop to maximise space on the 64gb mSATA SSD.

What do people think? Again i'm going to remove the partition when i go to do a clean install of windows off of the windows 7 DVD that came with my alienware. Is this a bad idea?

+rep for useful answers. Thanks again!

 

I did a clean install without the recovery partition because I don't use alienrespawn . So why use 10-20GB more. If the pc eventualy crashes and doesn't boot up I'll just do a clean install again. After all an occasional format cleans the pc and it just performs faster. if you worry about the files on your drive, even if you can't boot windows you can still boot ubuntu(linux) from a usb stick and get the files form that drive

 

i wiped eveything and started over too.

if you save important stuff on your physical hdd, then you can format your ssd without worrying about loosing anything

 

If you already made a recovery disc, then feel free to delete the recovery partition, but if not, I suggest you do so, in fact that should be the first thing you do when you received the laptop: HOW TO: Preserve AlienRespawn - stock drive to aftermarket drive / AlienRespawn Q&A, as for me, I did the recovery disc first hand then do a clean install even though I have the standard 750GB HDD, but 10-20GB sometimes is really crucial especially when you really need those spaces.

Here is Guide on HOW TO: Clean Windows 7 Install (Driver Install Order) Guide for Alienware Systems and after you clean install, if you want to restore the "Look and Feel" here is the guide: HOW TO: Restore the Alienware 'Look and Feel' after a clean install of Windows 7.

On side note, honestly for me I think the recovery partition is not that important once you have that recovery disc, since the disc is just the same file that is compress into 2 DVDs, so basically it is just a portable/external recovery partition that you can extract it anytime you need it to.

 

Hi! There is no problem in deleting it, if you have a problem with the machine you can use the regular Windows 7 recovery (creating a recovery disc) or re-install everything from scratch. It will save you a lot of hard drive space.
Here is how to make the full installation from the Windows DVD and where to get the drivers.

 

Hi,

For win7 the boot files are stored in "system reserved" partition which is only 100M size. For me actually I dont like the system reserved partition and the Recovery partition which is setup by OEM, since some of the process not really useful, but only will slow down performance, thus I perfer a reinstall after I purchase a computer.

if updata system from HDD to SSD, I'd like choose other software to migrate os, you could learn more by search "partition magic for windows 7", it will merge the boot files to system partition, will not migrate the recovery partition, do not need reconfigurate system.