Partitioning and Recovery

I am planning to partition my drive to a different scheme than what I received out-of-the-box (A8Js). However, I am worried if this may prevent or make it harder to use the recovery CD in the future...
Any opinions, personal experiences, or facts would be greatly appreciated!

 

Not personal experience but everyone on this forum will tell you there are no complications with the recovery partition when done properly and it's a lot safer in the long run should anything ever happen to your OS. I'm definitely doing it with my W3J upon receiving it. There's an excellent guide somewhere in the "for dummies" forum here.

~ Brett

 

Sorry, but what I meant to ask is:
Will re-partitioning my drive affect future use of the recovery CD/partition?

(I want to make more partitions, and I plan to keep the recovery partition.)

 

No, my fault - Obviously I didn't answer clearly enough - No as long as you leave the recovery partition in an untouched state. Even if you did through some crazy accident, the recovery CD has everything you need to bring things back to tip-top shape.

~ Brett

 

You don't need recovery partition if you have recovery CD's....

 

Great! Thanks!

 

No point in posting a new thread for one related question, so...

I've deleted the recovery partition on my F3Jc and repartitioned the whole drive into a smaller dedicated WinXP/installed programs part and 2 "stuff" parts - one bigger, one smaller. If I need to do a clean XP reinstall, I would gladly refrain from using the recovery disk and use an ordinary XP Home OEM install disk so I wouldn't have to repartition my disk and maybe even risk the loss of the "stuff" parts once the factory XP install is restored.
As I've heard, there is no other way other than to use the recovery disk as far as OS legality is concerned ?

 

NO it's possible to use, bit also using recovery CD and taking option install on first partition or something like that, leaves your partition system intact.

After I got W3j I deleted, partitions, made my own (about 6 or so) and installed without a problem....

 

I deleted my recovery partition a while ago. Is there a way to get it back? It's so much easier/faster using the recovery partition.

 

ok, so it isn't a good idea to reformat the laptop to be one large partition?
I was going to clean install XP Pro on my W3Jp when it arrives and get rid of the 2nd partition and have one NTFS partition running everything.
Is there a need for the second partition?

 

The first partition should be the recovery partition should you ever need to do a fresh install of the OS quickly. I'm not sure how a stock W3J arrives since I won't have mine for a week or so but I suspect there are two partitions, one for the OS and programs and another for documents and files. If that's not how it arrives, it's probably how you should set it up. The point of this system is that if any nefarious programs creep into the the OS itself, a reinstall of the OS and programs will not require the destruction of all your documents in the process.

~ Brett

 

PLANNING YOUR PARTITIONS is very informative and might help you decide.

 

Hi guys, I've done searches and read a lot of threads, but I was wondering if someone could help me out with a few questions.

1. I want to make a separate data partition, and I'm using Partition Magic. Do I want to make a "logical" partition or a "primary" partition? i've asked friends, googled it, etc. and my friends give different answers, and i'm just really confused.

2. I'm going to convert to NTFS, I think, on the basis of recommendations on NBF and from friends, and first "align Fat32 to 4k clusters" in partition magic, then "convert to NTFS". Anybody know if this is ineffective? i read a few threads that said they have heard Partition Magic wastes spaces, etc..

3. If I convert to NTFS, does that make the recovery partition useless? should i delete it in that case? Or is it still useful even though it's Fat32 and my other partitions (OS/programs and data partitions) will be in NTFS?

Thanks !

 

Disclaimer: I don't own Partition Magic and I haven't done this for a while so this is all based on theory...

1. It shouldn't matter. That distinction only affects the partition's use when the OS is on it, which I gather yours is not.

2. I've also read you should use 4k clusters - PartMag is a pretty trusted program so I can't imagine it doing anything stupid like that...

3. No, the recovery partition is not reformatted, from what I understand, since you only change the file system of that particular partition... so leave it alone - it could come in handy.

You might want a second opinion though since I haven't gotten my new computer yet and haven't attempted to do this kind of thing in a while.

~ Brett

 

Thank you very much, Brett! That helped a lot.

If you or anyone else wants to satisfy my unfamiliarity with computers, I'd like to clarify my question on the recovery partition a bit:

If I convert my OS and data partitions to NTFS, would the recovery partition (which was FAT32 and which I assume I shouldn't attempt to convert? and leave as is) still work, just formatting the OS partition back to FAT32 again, or would it be of no use while my other partitions are NTFS? the recovery partition is only 2gigs in size so it's not a big deal, but I figured if it is never going to help me, I should get rid of it?

Thank you again, in advance, to anyone who can answer my q.

 

Exactly what he said. If you have the recovery CDs, you don't need the recovery partition.

 

I am certainly no expert, but this is my understanding:

1. System partition should be primary; others, extended/logical.

2. I followed the instructions outlined in this thread to convert the system partition to NTFS, and everything went smoothly as far as I know.

3. Using a recovery disk reverts the file system to Fat32, just like the way it came when you bought it. (There is an option to "recover" only the first partition, leaving any other partitions you created alone. I do not have any first-hand experience of doing this though)

I hope that helps...!

 

Indeed it does help. Just the thing I needed to know Although have doubts whether recovering only the first partition reformats it back to FAT32 but also resizes it to original ~30GB size (my system partition is currently only ~9GB)? Where does this 21GB extra space come from? From the second (only 10gb free) so-called "stuff" partition, which has data I can't afford to lose (university lecture material).

 

The recovery partition will still work if you convert you other partitions to NTFS,dont worry about that. But i havent tried using it after resizing the partitions.

the recovery partition is usefull as it only take about 4 minutes to recover the PC and you dont need to incert any CD's for drivers etc.... it has all been 'slip streemed' into the XP installation.

insane

 

Trying to catch some questions that weren't answered before (sorry if the answer was given and I missed it).

* It's OK to use 'Recover to the 1st partition" after resize. It won't touch the size of the partition, it will just format it to FAT32 and install there.
* It's legal to have an XP installation from an OEM kit, if you use the S/N on the back of your laptop during installation. The only legally problematic part is during the installation when you are in possession of two XP kits while having paid only for one

I'd like to emphasize the fact that it's not a good idea to have your OS and data files on the same partition. It's so much easier like that to have your data files damaged or lost.

And a subjective opinion: I don't mind three hours of extra time lost when recovering Windows for the gain of using the recovery partition space, which otherwise would be wasted, for storing data.