10GB "recovery" partition on Asus w3v

Hi Everyone,

I was looking at the free space that was left on my w3v drive, and noticed that the total space was less than the expected 60Gb. I opened up the computer management console and it tells me that there is an extra 10GB partition called "recovery" which has the status "healthy (unknown partitition)".

I assume that asus put some recovery software on there. Can I safely delete it though? There's only ~1Gb (out of 10) used on this mystery drive, thus I think that it is a huge waste of space (especially when your drive is only 60Gb).

Any info is greatly appreciated,

Thanks!

 

The partition is hidden and useless to you unless you reformat, but I wouldn't waste the time unless you need the space. That partition includes everything on the two recovery discs........ so you have an entire windows xp pro cd...... plus all the drivers and needed software..... plus the automated program to install them. It's a safe bet to keep them, but you can delete them because you have them on disc............ but if you're on vacation and need to do a reformat - if you don't have the discs you're screwed....

 

Well, if you don't think you will use the recovery partition at anytime, then it is fine. The recovery parition is a partition, when "F9" is pressed upon bootup activates a recovery process that will overwrite the current Windows partition and reset it back to it's factory condition and all of what was on the Windows partition will be lost. IF you don't think that you would need, then its fine and delete it. I have left mine on just in case. I do not want to work with the supplied CD's as that would take decades to recover compared to the one on the hard drive. It is the same as the ones on the CD's, so if you do not need it, then use the extra space for something of more use.

EDIT: Justin got to it first.

 

Be careful though. On my old Asus M6800N the recovery partition was physically BEFORE the active PRIMARY partition (c: ) where the windows were. I tried it recovering without the full repartitioning and formatting, and ended up with a dead comp. I reinstalled fresh windows and everything was fine, but I would recommend backup all your data, and prepare yourself for a brand new installation of everything.

Cheers,

 

Thanks for the speedy replies! I have a few more questions about the recovery software...

1) Suppose that I press "f9" at bootup and begin the process. Will the recovery only rewrite onto the "c:\" drive on which windows is installed? I usually store all of my important files on the d:\ drive so that I can reformat and reload windows without losing anything.

2) Can I adjust the size of the recovery partition, say using partition magic, without any adverse effects? I really can't see why that recovery partition is 10Gb in size when it seems like ~1 GB is all that is needed.

Thanks!

 

1. corrrect - the only way to get rid of it would be to format the drive with another copy of windows.

2. partition magic could do it, but the hidden partition should only be like 1gb....... other than that, there are usually 3 partitions made.. one that 1-2gb that you can't see, one that's about 10 that is just for files.... and the rest for the os and programs........ they do that so you could put your files on the other partition and if you had to format, you could format just the OS drive........... and not lose your documents and pictures, etc.

 

Oddly enough, this is the partition breakdown on my laptop:

1) 10.77GB hidden recovery partition (of which only 1.41Gb is used).

2) 14.65GB system partition (the c:\ drive)

3) 30.47GB file partition (the d:\ drive)

I wonder why they used 10 GB for the recovery partition ???