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Dimension 8400 partitions and the MBR
I have a Dimension 8400 bought in 2005. It has a hard drive with both the Dell Diagnostic function and the Dell Restore function along with of course the operating system - xp.
I have just used Dell Restore to bring the pc back to its factory settings. I did this for two reasons, one being I thought it needed tidying up because of some years of use, and the second reason, due I think to fitting a second hard drive for me to try out various Linux operating systems, I noticed two extra partitions had been added to my primary hard drive. Normally when trying a new os on the second drive I disconnect the primary drive so as not to corrupt the MBR, but I must have made a mistake and forgotten somehow.
I had to repair the MBR using DSRFIX (kindly linked to on these forums) but I notice that it hadn't touched the two extra partitions when I restored the pc to its factory settings.I'm losing about 46GB of hard drive capacity with these (empty) partitions.
So I have a couple of questions if someone can help.
Is it normal for Dell Restore not to remove the extra partitions when it's used? Can I remove them now (somehow) and will I still be able to use the Restore if needed in the future?
Thank you for any help.
speedstep
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June 17th, 2011 10:00
It is possible to remove the restore partition but you will not be able to use restore in the future if you do so.
Its normal for the Restore partition to remain on the drive.
Its not a lot usually 4 to 10 gigs max. There is usually also a 50 meg diag partition at the start of the drive.
Me personally I would clone the drive to a bigger one and keep that one in a safe place for recovery from total hard drive failure.
RoHe
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June 17th, 2011 13:00
PC Restore only works on the C: partition.
You may need partiioning software to remove those 2 partitions without damaging the MBR. Something like Partition Magic, or maybe a freeware utility...
Ron
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June 17th, 2011 13:00
Apart from the normal 3 partitions (Restore ,Diagnostics and the op. system) there two extra partitions . The size of the partitions are 44.61 GB and 1.95 GB. According to xp's Disk Management these are two healthy but unknown partitions. I am 99% sure that both are empty. As I said above I suspect they were made by Linux during my trials with a couple of their distros.
I would like to remove these two partitions as long as it doesn't mess with my Restore partition. Also, is it normal when restoring the os to its "as bought" condition for restore to ignore those two partitions? I thought I would get my hard drive back to the condition it was in when I bought it - with three partitions only.
RoHe
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June 17th, 2011 13:00
On my 8400 with a 160 GB hard drive, the diagnostics partition is 39 MB, the PC Restore partition is 3.5 GB and C: is 145.5 GB for a total of less than ~150 GB. And that's normal, because some space is used for formatting the drive etc.
Are you sure that sectors haven't been locked out because they're bad so it appears that you've so much space?
Ron