"recovery" partition in Dell Studio

In my new Studio, I see a 10 GB recovery partition (D drive). What is it for?

It must be something important 'coz last night I tried to shrink my C drive (220 GB before shrinking) and create a new partition. It worked well (except the fact that it could only shrink it by 100 GB and not 140 GB as I wanted), I renamed the recovery thingy to E and the new partition to D (just to have it next to C). After this I went on to install Office 2003 and it would just crash Vista the moment it started the actual install process (Did it twice and it crashed identically at the same point). So I "repaired" the lappy to factory state, which supposedly formats the disk. I was surprised to see that the C was still shrunk and the new partition was still there with the F Drive name (not the renamed D). After that the office 2003 installation went off well

So now I have C drive (OS), D Drive (Recovery), E (DVD) and F (Data). I can live with that although I still want it like C drive (OS), D Drive (Data), E (Recovery) and F (DVD).

Can this be done and 2) Can I shrink my C further (120 GB is too big for OS partition I think?)

 

what is the point of partitioning a drive when you are not dual booting or formatting it with different file formats? it's a waste of disk space. just keep things organized in folders yourself.

i have no idea what the recovery drive in vista is but i believe it has no actual point. if you want to keep yourself safe, use norton ghost. there is no need for a recovery partition.

 

I disagree. I always keep my OS and my data on separate partitions. If I have to reinstall the OS then I have to deal only with that (relatively) small partition instead of having to reinstall my programs and data as well. There's also the fact that some uses of a disk tend to cause fragmentation more than others. Why deal with defragmenting an entire disk when only one area actually needs it? My "media" partition rarely has anything deleted from it, only added. I can't remember when it last actually needed a defrag. My "data" partition changes a LOT. Stuff is constantly being added or deleted and moved around. Consequently it needs a regular defrag.

I imagine it boils down to personal preference, but there are other reasons people use partitioning schemes than simply to organize (although THAT'S a plus in and of itself).

I agree regarding the recovery partition, as long as you have a reliable image or recovery disk(s).

 

I think they just put in in there just for heck's sake since you have a recovery disk. So you might as well delete it.

 

I didn't see any indication that he has a recovery DVD.

If you in fact do have a recovery DVD then the recovery partition probably isn't needed. However, if Dell didn't give you the DVD itself, then it likely stores it to that partition. For example, if you recovered your system by pressing F8 or something rather than inserting a DVD, than that's the case.

It's always wise to make the recovery CD's from the partition incase of hard drive failure.

Additionally, don't bother deleting that partition just for the sake of it. It may contain the 'Vista Recovery' thing that lets you do a 'repair installation' as you just did. The recovery disc might lack that feature and only want to do a full install.

Also, if ever something were to happen to your recovery disc, you can make a new one anyway.

In regards to the partition sizes... Don't bother fumbling around with the partitions. I have yet to see any proof that altering your system partitions will make any great benefit. So only do it as needed. If it isn't broke, don't fix it!

 

In addition, you are probably not going to be able to change the drive letter on the recovery partition because, in all likelihood, the recovery application has a hardcoded absolute path to the recovery data which would include the drive letter - so changing it is going to wreck your ability to recover and, as you've just discovered, will also wreck your _Vista installation.

 

I still don't see the point. I keep all music and video files on a separate drive so i can take it with me or transfer it easily. MY main HDD is basically for installations. plus the defrag program i use is very good and organized all files on the drive very well. it's called disk trix. so i still don't see a need for a partition.

http://www.disktrix.com/UDIntroduction.htm

 

Well, as I said, it's obviously a matter of personal preference. You, evidently, see no need and have no use for partitioning. I, on the other hand, do. I don't think either of us can speak for anyone else in this regard. It's going to depend on her/his needs and practices.

 

Thanks a lot for the replies guys.

I do have all the recovery DVD's (in fact more than I could understand. eg.they have given me 2 Vista HP English DVD's, they look identical)

As people said, its a matter of personal choice. I too want to keep my "personal data" in a differently named disk but I can see where you are coming from strifriedsushi