Asus Recovery Disk Questions.

I have a 32-bit vista recovery disk that i am hoping to use sometime to recover my laptop as i have unwanted junk etc.

When i put it in and reboot my laptop and press ESC it says "select a partition option and click next". Then gives me 3 options:

1. Recover windows to first partition only. this option will delete only the first partition, allowing you to keep other partitions, and create a new system partition as drive "c".

2. Recover windows to entire HD. This option will delete all partitions from your hard disk drive and create a new system partition as drive "C".

3. Recover windows to entire HD with 2 partition. This option will delete all partitions from your hard drive and create two new partitions "C" (60%) and "D" (40%).

Would someone be able to tell me what each step does and what is recommended. Could someone also please tell me what a partition is as i am not a computer expertise.

And i also don't care if i lose all my files like music, videos etc i just want my computer back to what it was like when i bought it with vista going fine.

Thanks.

 

A partition is a section of your HDD, just like a room is a section of your house.

The options don't make much of a difference. Assuming that your computer came with a C: partition, a D: "data" partition, and a recovery partition, option 3 would get you to factory settings.

 

Yeah my computer hardrives are "C" which has vista on it and "D" for data.

So if i picked option 3 it would everything to when i first bought it?

 

Actually it does make some of a difference, primarily in seek times.

1.) As you run your system the defragmentor tries to keep the files to the front of the partiton of the respective drive. the page file and mainly system recovery are kept toward the middle of that partition, unless you know how to tweak them. If you need to access the page file the head has to move to the center of the partition, A smaller partition means less time to move to the extremes of the partition, so the closer files means less access time.

2.) smaller partiton also means a file need not occupy too as large a block leaving empty space. meaning lots of small files take up less space overall and read faster as they stay on the same track and less empty block data to skip over.

3.) counter to this is as you store data on the second partition the head has to move all the way out to the second partiton for the data and back for system file access. This can severly increase average seek times for the system.

Since modern drives stream data so fast the best option is usualy a single partition as the access time is what slows the drive down. Now if you plan little to no access of the second partition then 2 partitons are best. IE archived data to the second partition.

Now I already know this isn't an exact science and can be explained in WAY more detail but this is the best lay person detail I can explain it in. I hope this helps.........