Partiion question re System/Boot - same vs different partition

The 47 meg partition is FAT16 oem diagnistics.  The 12 gig is the recovery partition.  The rest is the C: drive which is actually the 3rd partition.

When you Press F8 the bios changes the 12 gig recovery partition into the boot partition and it Boots from there.

If you press F12 and select diagnostics then the tiny 47mb partition becomes active and it boots DOS and runs the Diagnositcs.

The XPS system doesnt have VISTA/WIN7 on it and or uses the CTRL F11 Norton recovery  OR it has been reformatted deleting the recovery partition.

If you don't mess with that and buy a 16 gig or larger USB Flash drive you can backup everything onto that so that you can recover

your diag, recovery, and Dell factory installed partition by booting from the USB Flash.

If you alter the partitions the recovery becomes broken and cannot be recovered.

Appreciate your attempt to analyze and explain what's happening, but I think the wires got cross along the way . You mention that "The 47 meg partition is FAT16 oem diagnistics.  The 12 gig is the recovery partition.  The rest is the C: drive which is actually the 3rd partition" .....but the 47mb and 12 gb partitions on on different machines. So I kinnda of lost your well meaning explanation after that. Also you mention that "The XPS system doesnt have VISTA/WIN7 on it and or uses the CTRL F11 Norton recovery  OR it has been reformatted deleting the recovery partition.". Not following that one at all. Both machines are Win7 only.

People have been wondering about this situation for a while.  I still don't use Windows 7 normally, but my investigations have led to the fact that if you have a blank disk, and use the Windows 7 DVD to start a system installation from scratch, you wind up with at least two partitions normally.  The extra partition is around 100 MB and is used to support Bit Locker among other things.  Dell seems to have taken this a step further and uses the extra partition to help coordinate the process of restoring the back-up image should that become necessary.  According to Microsoft, the only way to get a single partition for the system drive is to begin with a disk that already has a single partition.  Windows 7 should install in a single partition just as we have become accustomed to happening with Vista and earlier Microsoft operating systems in that circumstance.

Getting to a single system partition once you already have a system on the disk gets a little involved.  A member known as zceb90 posted this to a thread last year.  Perhaps you will find it helpful.

Posted by zceb90
replied on Tue, Dec 28 2010 9:28 AM

There's a much easier method of transferring the boot routines from the Dell Recovery Patition to the Operating System Partition. Firstly I'll explain why I wanted to get rid of the Recovery Partiion.

I've a new Dell XPS which shipped with a small hard drive (did not specify larger disk as they are much cheaper purchased online independently). Firstly I backed up everything to an external USB drive using Paragon & Recovery Suite 10 and restored the complete disk / partition images to the new hard drive. As the new hard drive was large I wanted to make 3 separate partitions - 1 for the OS and program files and the other 2 for data files. Unfortunately the Dell pre-loaded Utility and Recovery Partitions count toward the limit of 4 partitons per disk hence I only had 2 partions available were I to retain both Dell partitions. Having first checked that the Dell Recovery Partition was backed up externally and in duplicate I then deleted the partion via Paragon but quickly found computer would not boot. Undeleting the Recovery Partition via Paragon did not fix the problem, I suspect because I did not perform the extra step of marking the undeleted partition 'Active'. I then booted from the Paragon recovery CD and restored the Recovery Partition from backup on external USB drive. Computer then booted fine. It may sound a bit messy but I was on a 'learning curve' and the whole process of restoring a working boot partition took less than 30 minutes.

I still needed to get rid of the Recovery Partition, not because of space concerns but due to the partition limit of 4 described above. The way I did it was simple and did not require any downloads, burning a BING cd or use of Regedit. Btw I'm using Windows 7 64 bit edition but I understand process for 32 bit ver of Win 7 and Win Vista is very similar:

From the start button type 'Command' in the search screen and click on the command prompt option to display a DOS type screen.

From the resulting command prompt type:  Bcdboot c:\windows /s c:

In above example, assuming the operating system partition is drive c: and the boot routines are located in the default location (C:\Windows) it's assumed user requires the c: drive to become bootable hance the 'c:' following the '/s'. Help on syntax is available by typing: Bcdboot /?

Next step is to use the Disk Management Utility to mark the Operating System partition (factory set to C: on my new Dell) to 'Active' which will also have the effect of marking the Dell Recovery Partition as 'Inactive'. Disk management can be invoked in Win7 via  Control Panel - System and Security - Administrative Tools - Computer Management - Disk Management or (shorter) by using the start button and typing  DISKMGMT.MSC in the search line.

After changing the active partition check that the computer will boot successfully with the Dell Recovery Partition inactive. The unwanted recovery partition can then be removed. The whole process using Bcdboot and Disk Management only took around 5 minutes.

As a general comment I feel that the Dell Recovery Partition is only really useful during the first few months of using a new computer as its use is very destructive of data and user modifications, at least for those who have not created an additional partition to separate data files from the operating system. In effect it's performing a 'factory reset' on the computer thus anyone using this recovery option months or years 'down the line' will then have to spend many hours re-installing customized software, downloading patches and recovering any data files held on the OS partition. Far better, imo, to run regular partition backups to an external drive and restore from them. One hint I could offer in this regard is to retain old hard disks when upgrading disk or replacing a pc and buy a cheap disk enclosure (aka disk caddy) to mount the old hdd as a USB drive, great for storing backups and should be detached from computer after backup has run (and preferably stored in another room, ideally in another building). In this way it's relatively quick and easy to recover from a failed hard disk or corrupt OS. There are a number of relatively inexpensive backup programs which generate complete disk / partition images including 2 I've used - Paragon and Acronis. Whichever backup program you choose ensure you create a 'recovery CD' so that system can be booted and the backup software ran without a working operating system.

JackShack

Thanks for a great collection of information.

I think I am concluding the following

MACHINE 1 SETUP -  This was my original Vista machine that I upgraded to Win 7. This setup for me works fine and I create several images of the  C: drive ( and 13GB each) and store them on a second drive, and on a external drive

MACHINE 2 SETUP -  This is my Win 7 machine as ordered from DELL, and the one I am toying with removing the RECOVERY partition as I don’t really need it ( ie no need to ever go back to factory settings)- at worst would only go back to a backed up image. I want to delete the RECOVERY image not simply to free up 12 GB of space...but to avoid having to backup two images every day given the "system" files on the RECOVERY partition. Would much rather have the MACHINE 1 setup where system and boot files are on the same partition and thats the only partition that needs the image backup.

NO NEED FOR DELL PARTITION - I agree completely with zceb90 that this 'recovery' partition is only really of use in the early stages of use, but once the system ahs been setup the way you want, there is little value in ever going back to factiry settings. As stated, it is far more desirable to do proper image backups (I used Acronis in the past, now use EaseTo Backup) and restore back to those.

COMBINING THE SYSTEM AND BOOT PARTITIONS .  zceb90 notes that "There's a much easier method of transferring the boot routines from the Dell Recovery Partition to the Operating System Partition(C:). ".  That’s fine but that’s not my scenario, I dont have the boot  routine on the Recovery portion, I have the System files on the Recover partition. So I dont, yet, have clear instructions for the method of transferring the System files from the Dell Recovery Partition to the Drive (C:). I am therefore reluctant to do anything. Seems I may be better off just leaving good enough alone, and upon the next failure, then reformat everything so I can end up with a Machine 1 setup.