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What is the Recovery partition for??
Hi,
A few weeks ago I purhcased a Studio XPS 1645 with Win7 Pro x64 and a 256SSD GB. By today's standards, 256GB is decent but it's not a TON of space (I have a terabyte of movies and music my desktop PC), so every bit counts.
When I started playing around, I noticed a pretty significant portion of space missing, which after quick investigation in the Disk Manager revealed a partition called "Recovery". At first I got pretty excited, because what "Recovery Partition" means to me is a protected partition that contains an OS reinstall or maybe even an entire image of my factory install.
Well, I quickly dismissed this because out of the 14.6GB allocated, there are 14.5GB free...so there's like 100 megs of somethign there, but certainly not an OS reinstall.
So then I thought, maybe this is a partition that is meant to be used with Windows recovery options, such as System Restore or Windows Backup & Restore. Well that was nixed pretty fast too, because the partition is not assigned a drive letter, so it was not actually recognized as a mounted drive.
So, apologizing for the lengthy explanation above, what IS this partition for?? As far as I can tell, I'm wasting 14.6GB for no good reason. And if it IS supposed to be a separate drive meant to store backup and restore points on, why would it not have a drive letter assigned? (and yes I know its easy to on my own but that's not the point, I want to know what Dell's reasoning was).
Lastly, less annoying but confusing nonetheless, there is yet a 3rd partition called OEM with 100% of 39MB being free. So there is NOTHING on it.
Can anyone please explain to me, I would really appreciate it.
Thanks
- John
C3PO5
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March 25th, 2010 10:00
Hi John
I will do my best to help you !
The OEM partition is for the Dell diagnostics when you start your computer and press F12 when you see the Dell logo you will see it .
The 100 mgb is the new win 7 boot partitions without it your windows 7 will not boot !!
The Recovery partition is setup to recover your windows C:\OS and all of the preinstalled software ,if something goes wrong and windows will not start you would tap F8 just after the Dell logo goes away you will see the advances boot menus where all of the tools or for the windows\Dell recovery options .
I hope this has helped you a little !
Good Luck
C3PO5
2.7K Posts
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March 25th, 2010 10:00
Hi John
I am only guessing on this part i think the reason you see the recovery partition as not being used is all of the files\folders and the partition is hidden witch would show as not seen witch in fact the Dell factory.wim file is about 4 to 5 gigs are bigger in size by its self along with the other folders it the recovery partition !!
You can reclaim all of the disk space if you do a complete clean install doing a partition delete and a reformat using your win 7 DVD you may still have the 100 mgb boot partition after the clean install .
If you have any other question let me know !
johnlowenthal
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March 25th, 2010 10:00
Thanks for the reply! I'm still so confused though, why does the Recovery need to be 14.6GB in size, when only a fraction of that is actually used?