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leojclarke

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8212

December 6th, 2007 13:00

Unknown Partition on C:

Hello folks!
 
I have a mysteriously missing 3.5GB on my local hard drive parition. It's listed as "Healthy (Unknown partition)".
 
Could anyone tell me if this is something to do with Dell?
 
What can I do to make use of that 3.5GB? As I only have a 30GB hard drive, that extra 10% would be much appreciated...
 
Or... does anyone have any hot tips on hard drive upgrades for Dell Inspiron 510m.
 
Many thanks,
 
 
LEO
 
 

jcn77056

667 Posts

December 7th, 2007 16:00

Dell typically sets up one of 3 things on the machine as a second or hidden partition:
  • Media Direct - Plays DVDs without booting Windows.  I don't think that's what you have
  • Diagnostics - If you press F12 (or something), it will boot into the diagnostics and allow you to diagnose hardware problems without booting Windows
  • Recovery partition - A clean copy of the original software distribution files for the PC. 

Since this is a 2005/6 vintage laptop, I doubt it's media direct.  It's probably the diagnostics.

As for replacing the hard drive, any 120Gb PATA drive or smaller will do fine.  Depending on what you use the machine for, spending $50 for a 60-80Gb drive (5400rpm or 7200rpm) might be a good investment for your laptop.

You can either copy the contents from your existing hard drive using disk imaging software or my recommendation would be to install a fresh copy of Windows and your applications on the new drive and put the old drive in an external enclosure.  Dell or Newegg are good sources for the hardware upgrades.  Shop around and find a good price from a good vendor.

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