Hi Everyone:
I just bought a new Dell Studio 17, (Vista 64 bit, 500 gig HD, dual core, 4 BG RAM) and it came with the Dell Recovery utilites and a 15 gig partition located before partition C on the hard drive, as shown in Disk Managment and Eausus Partition Master 4.0. There is also a small partition (78 MB) EISA before C and the Dell Recovery partition. It has no drive letter.
I don't need the recovery system because I back up my entire system with Acronis 11, and back up certain important files and folders online with Carbonite Online Backup.
Can I: 1) Delete the recovery partition, 2) move the OS closer to the beginning of the disk, where I have read it usually is, and 3) re-allocate the 15 GB to C: to gain more disk space.
I have Eausus Partition Master 4.0 to do the re-partitioning, so don't expect that to be a problem.
My only concern is that there may be something specific to the Dell configuration that might make problems for these changes.
Thanks in advance for your help.
ChristopherNls
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I second that - it should be safe to remove the recovery partitions. I currently use a Dell Vostro 400 and completely repartitioned it without any problems.
But consider that you might want to reinstall Vista one day. So unless you have something specific in Mind, I'd keep it around and actually backup it as well. Plus it might be a small bonus if you want to sell the machine later.
I recently go a dell studio and therecovery partition is there but also they sent the discs, so there is no problem re-installing.
But.... is it under warrenty? will you want to re-sell? do you have the vista discs?
an more importantly have you actually tried to recover using your third party backup system? I had a nightmare with norton and cloning drives - I would make sure you have use your backups the way you intend without any activation problems.
Do it with Paragon Partition Manager 10 Personal Edition: www.partition-manager.com
It has inbuilt backup feature that allows you taking backup of the system before you try anything else.
Then boot the machine from Boot CD or USB stick created with this Partition Manager and delete dell recovery partition. Allocate space to system or data partition. Program will update the registry itself to let the OS know where do boot from.
So you hit two aims here: repartitioning plus backup software.
If you did not get the Dell Recovery DVDs with the system, there s/b an on-board option to burn a set. Try START | recovery and see what appears. I would burn a set if possible; if you find that you need them later, you can purchase a set from Dell. I don't know their price, but HP ~~ $25-30.
Dell US Recovery Disc order center - http://support.dell.com/su
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by: Pete_ZedPosted on 2009-08-09 at 15:27:43ID: 25056233
From what I have read, removing the Dell partitions will not affect your system. Using Eausus Partition Master should do the trick for what you want in terms of moving and extending partitions. I think you may be able to move empty space as well.