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D400 HD partioning
I've been asked to help a friend to partition the HD on their Latitude D400. This is "refurbished" but taken over with a 14GB (approx) C: drive and the rest of the space on a 40GB drive - 24.something GB marked "Unallocated". It seems a faily normal Dell installation as far as I can tell and runs XPPro SP1. Although I have partitioned several of my own laptops, noe were Dell (I do have Dell desktops). I am always a bit nervous of partitioning somebody elses notebook without knowng if there is likely to be a hidden partition. For the moment the XPPro disk management application doesn't seem to show anything in that unallocated space but I'm not all that well acquainted with how such a partition might - or might not appear. Can anyone please advise me if it is safe to use the XP tool to divide the unallocated portion into 2 further partitions for data and applications? I'm very new to this Forum so if I'm in the wrong place or it is a common question, I will happily accept redirection.
@woochman wrote:
The 55 MB partition before the C drive is the diagnostics partition. This allows you to run the Dell diags before the OS loads. The larger "Unallocated" partition after the C drive is the system restore partition. This is used to return the system to a factory shipped state in the event of OS corruption.
Thank you beryu much for that - it ties in, partly, with what I have seen using Ghost to do a back up. There are 2 partitions imaged which would match the diagnostic and C: ones. The 24 GB one that follows *seems to be empty and, I gather, my friend was told to make an image before installing anysoftware as there was no restore data - this notebook is rather seconhand! I shall take things very carefully. Thanks again
@dunwedy wrote:
@woochman wrote:
The 55 MB partition before the C drive is the diagnostics partition. This allows you to run the Dell diags before the OS loads. The larger "Unallocated" partition after the C drive is the system restore partition. This is used to return the system to a factory shipped state in the event of OS corruption.
Thank you beryu much for that - it ties in, partly, with what I have seen using Ghost to do a back up. There are 2 partitions imaged which would match the diagnostic and C: ones. The 24 GB one that follows *seems to be empty and, I gather, my friend was told to make an image before installing anysoftware as there was no restore data - this notebook is rather seconhand! I shall take things very carefully. Thanks again
Just for the record, after several backup images and boot floppies just to be careful, I found that this notebook (D400 ex-corporate use) had had it's hard drive wiped (presumably to clear old data and the XP installation licensed by the original corporate user)and, although there are some Dell tools available, it was supplied with a Restore DVD as well as the XP Pro one. Having installed Partition Magic, I could find noting suggesting that the 24GB unallocated part of the drive had anything in it and so used PM to make 2 new partitions. Everything went to plan and everything that was there at the start is still there. Thanks for the advice, 'though - very welcome - it did serve to warn me of what to look out for.
woochman
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Posted May 28th, 2007 11:00