G51J Dual Drives / 4 Partitions Question

The G51J comes with two seperate drives and Asus splits each one into 2 partitions. Is there any reason for this? It seems a little odd to provide 4 seperate partititions like that. Ideally, I'd prefer a single partition on each drive.

If you create the restore DVDs (4 in all), is one of them the Windows 7 DVD? If so, can the drives be setup for one partition each and then the OS reinstalled from the restore DVD clean?

 

I can't fathom their reasoning for cutting the second HDD into 2 partitions, but ues, you can use the win7 DVD to format the OS drive as 1 partition and do restore (full install of the OS) then you can use disk management in win7. (control panel, administrative tools, computer management, disk management. rightclick on the HDD you want to format and choose the partition scheme)

 

So one of the 4 DVDs the computer has you create will be the Windows 7 installation DVD?

 

oh there was no DVD that came with it? I guess I read wrong. they should all 4 be a recovery system.

 

Yeah, you get a driver DVD and then the system asks you to create restore DVDs, 4 in total.

 

Im also wondering this.

They also labled them strange.

C D and F drives are all Labled Local Dscs and are 149GB's. Then they labled E DATA and it is only 134GB's for some reason.... Any insight?

 

it could be the express gate partition that takes up ~10 Gb, i believe. If you go into disk management you ought to be able to tell whats taking up the space

 

expressgate does not take up 10GB lol. its tiny.

 

Alright, so what if you just wanted to blow away all of the partitions and do a clean Windows 7 install? Can you do that with the provided DVDs (the driver DVD and the 4 restore DVDs)? Or are the 4 DVD's just a drive image spanned across the DVDs? Is one of them a Windows 7 install DVD?

 

Don't know exactly, with the G51 we had 2 recovery disks, 1 recovery for the OS and one for drivers and the like. Yours sounds like a previous HP I had which recovered everything, bloatware included. You should be able to use Disk Management in win7 and delete/merge the two partitions on each drive.

 

The only DVDs I received with it were a drivers DVD and a DVD player DVD. I was under the impression that there was supposed to be a black Windows 7 DVD as well, but I didn't get that one.

Did anyone else with a G51J receive the Windows 7 DVD?

I do have a copy of Windows 7 Home Premium. I wonder if I could use that if I wanted and apply the license key from the sticker on the machine, or if being OEM if it's a different product code, preventing it from accepting the key.

 

i got a power 2go, windows 7 recovery media ( im assuming this is the reinstall disk) and a driver & utility disk

 

It is strange how they partition the drives. I usually keep the D drive and repartition the other drive as one drive. Since there is no data on that drive, there is no worry of loosing anything. Any partition program should work, including some free ones.

 

You don't need a partition program. Windows Vista and 7 have a built-in partitioning program. Disk Management, as I already mentioned in a previous post.

 

eiemnet can you explain how to make the 4 drives into 2 again without loosing data? I cannot find the disk management program... Also does any1 know which drive splash top is located in?

 

Ah, well then I'm missing the Windows 7 recovery media disk then. Hopefully a call to Asus will fix that.

 

That's what I'm going to try. If I understand you correctly, I should be able to delete the 2nd partition on both drives and extend the primary partition to the full drive size. I just wasn't sure if Windows was going to let me do that to the primary (boot) partition or not. It sounds like it will, which is great.

 

yes, it should. It'll even in most cases allow you to shrink your primary partition and extend out some unallocated space. This is how I dualboot.

 

I see. do you mean to delete the F: and E: drives and then format the unallocolated in the C: and D: drives?

 

not format, extend. when you right click on the partition you want to extend it should give you an option to "Extend Volume" and give a new data size. so delete the other partition(s) and make the size of this partition the size of the entire drive.

 

ok here i took a screen shot. Any idea why E: is the only logical drive? Also anyone know what the 14gb partition is for? Im assuming express gate or something?

 

the 14GB partition is most likely your Recovery Partition. You'd delete partitions E and F and extend partitions C and D

 

Oh ok, where is express gate located then? just on the C: drive?

Also, why is E: the only logical drive? shouldn't F: be aswell as it is also technically no a real drive.

 

expressgate, as far as I know, is not a partition. it is a program just like any other. the separate button just loads it from a different position on the drive. I have express gate, but I have zero partitions dedicated to it.

 

ok and the logical drive?

 

no idea about the logical drive..


definition:

A part of a physical disk drive that has been partitioned and allocated as an independent unit, and functions as a separate drive altogether. For example, one physical drive can be partitioned into drives F:, G:, and H:, each representing a separate logical drive but all still part of the one physical drive.


so I guess it is just how they decided to format it..no real ideas there

 

ok thanks alot for the help + rep