What partitions can be safely deleted on XPS 9550?

I'm preparing to clean install my XPS 9550 following this guide https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/3sr1jh/windows_10_clean_install_guide/ but came to a point where I'm uncertain what partitions I should keep and which ones to delete. I searched this forum as well and found http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...er-m-2-nvme-ssd-upgrade.787420/#post-10187965 that clearly states that all partitions should be deleted.

However, as the partition table looks right now I have partitions I don't know what they are and are meant for and thus I'm hesitant in deleting them.


Name / Total Size / Free space / Type
Drive 1 Partition 1: ESP / 500.0 MB / 433.0 MB / System
Drive 1 Partition 2 / 128.0 MB / 128.0 MB / MSR (Reserved)
Drive 1 Partition 3 / 461.9 GB / 461.9 GB / Primary
Drive 1 Partition 4: WINRETOOLS / 450.0 MB / 61.0 MB / Recovery
Drive 1 Partition 5: Image / 12.9 GB / 659.0 MB / Recovery
Drive 1 Partition 6: DELLSUPPORT / 1.1 GB / 492.0 MB / Recovery

What are these partitions?
Which ones can be deleted and what are the consequences?

Thanks,

 

Delete all of the partitions.

Believe me, you are not the first person to reformat a Dell XPS 15. Deleting those partitions are fine. You WANT to tell Windows to install on a completely unpartitioned drive, so that the windows installer creates all of the partitions it needs on its own.

Partitions 1,2,3 are used by Windows. Wipe them all.
Partitions 4,5,6 are created by Dell as recovery partitions. Wipe them all.

Install Windows 10 onto the bare unpartitioned drive.

 

Thanks for your prompt reply.

But what are these partitions? "ESP", "MSR" etc.? Never encountered them before and thus a bit hesitant (obviously)

 

Partitions 1,2 are used by Windows to store boot information, and to store recovery tools & data. One of them started appearing in Windows 7 & 8, and then the 2nd one showed up with Windows 10.

You never see them because they arne't mounted as drive letters; and you'll never hear about them unless something goes horribly wrong with your computer to the point where you actually NEED to use them.

 

OK,
After a clean install I will have only 3 partitions, assuming that the partitions 1 and 2 will be created during Windows 10 install and the 3rd partition is where my "installation" will reside.
Correct?

 

Yes

Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

 

BTW, if you want to know the exact purpose of partitions 1,2,3, you can find it here:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd799232(v=ws.10).aspx

Partition 4 is Dell created, for Windows Recovery Tools
Partition 5 is the Dell-created Recovery image itself (to copy / restore your laptop back to factory condition, in case something goes wrong).
Partition 6 is more Dell-created recovery tools.

 

I would not rely on those Dell-Windows recovery tools for critical data or even non-critical fun photos, etc. Just not reliable. Get a real recovery solution sorted.

I have tried using Dell recovery tools several times on my 9550 and never got them to work. Fortunately I have virtually no programs or data on that computer so it failure was not catastrophic, just required clean install of Windoze 10 to get things sorted.

 

I've successfully reinstalled my XPS 9550.

I could safely delete all the partitions that I listed in my first post.

Thanks for your help guys!

 

I did a clean install on my 9550 earlier and was unable to delete all partitions. Was left with three:

Name Total Size Free Space

Drive 0 Unallocated Space 628 MB 628 MB
Drive 0 Partition 1 940.9 GB 940.7 GB Primary
Drive 0 Unallocated Space 12.4 GB 12.4 GB

Is there a set order you need to delete them? The delete option was greyed out whilst any of the above were highlighted. I did format the primary partition though just in case.

 

Hi,
This seems odd .. but as you have a different configuration than me, that could be the reason.

My configuration is same as yours with these exceptions (and I have no docks):

• RAM: 16GB
• Storage: 512GB Toshiba NVMe THNSN5512GPU7

Perhaps that could be reason enough to give you these oddities?

Also, before installation I switched to

• Safe boot OFF
• AHCI mode ON

Those could affect this too, I presume.

 

Well, I'm going to have another stab at doing a clean install but this time I shall load diskpart via command prompt at the Win 10 installation screen and delete all partitions then format it before proceeding.

 

Okay so successfully deleted all partitions and re-installed custom Win 10 .ISO and in doing so freed up 15GB over my previous (original) attempt (902GB free of 953GB). Was worth doing as only took a matter of minutes.

 

Great!
What do you think was the issue in the past attempts?

 

One of the two partitions that I was unable to delete during my first attempt was the recovery partition which was 12.4GB, the other was a much smaller one 628MB which doesn't exactly total 15GB but it's not far off.

 

OK, did you change anything since the previous attempt that you think would have allowed you to delete these two partitions this time?

(Just asking to allow future readers to figure out the solution if they experience similar issues)

 

I used Diskpart via command prompt which allows you to do pretty much anything you want with existing partitions. Posted full details on the Clean Install thread.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...tall-guide-custom-iso-download.789769/page-38

Post #375.