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Studio XPS 435MT Dual 500GB Hard Drives
I have had my new computer for less than a month. I think I understand how the dual hard drive works but I have some questions. What is the recovery and should I be worred that there is only 6 GB free of 14.6 GB? Also, shouldn't one of these drives be mirroring the c: drive and be the same? I may not have understood how this dual hd works.
OS (C:) 345 GB free of 451 GB
Datapart1 (D:) 461 GB free of 465 GB
Recovery (E:P) 6.00 GB free of 14.6 GB
FreeAgent Drive (L:) 298 GB free of 465 GB <--I have an external HD with lots of old backups etc...
Thank you in advance for anyones explanation.
mpo
398 Posts
1
March 15th, 2009 07:00
For dual 500GB hard drives, you have two choices:
1) Keep them as two separate drives, as you have them now. Your system recognizes 1TB of space.
2) Format them in RAID, Two common RAID formats are RAID0 and RAID1. RAID0 splits the data up to each of the drives for greater performance. RAID1 mirrors the data from one drive onto the other. In both of those cases, your computer acts as if there is only a single 500GB drive in Windows Explorer. In your manual: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/xlob/dtg/en/drives.htm#wp1223133
To set your drives in a RAID array, you will have to reinstall Vista.
The recovery partion stores changes to your registry, drivers, etc. It allows Vista to quickly roll back to a previous date, in case you have trouble such as driver conflicts. It fills up quickly in the first month (I was shocked when I lost 1GB in a day). If the recovery partion gets too filled up, you can delete restore points.
Neither RAID nor the system recovery is a substitue for making external backups. Since you are already doing that, you are on the right path.
kkathy
26 Posts
0
March 15th, 2009 06:00
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kkathy
26 Posts
0
March 15th, 2009 12:00
Thank you for your explanation. The way you explained it to me makes it more understandable. I will watch the recovery drive and hope that I can figure out how to delete restore points. Thanks again! :emotion-1: