15z HDD Partitions

I am looking at buying a 15z and I was wondering how the hard drive is partitioned? I'm assuming it has a recovery partition, but is the rest of the drive broken up? I want to get the 750GB hard drive.

Also, if it is partitioned, is it possible to remove it and just have one partition?

 

The Dell laptops I have seen don't normally have partitions on them, my l702 doesn't.
Well they do have a hidden backup partition but mine is only 14gb so not that bad next to your 750gb, and I imagine it can be removed if you wanted, and like I said it is hidden out of view.

 

Most Dell's I've worked on have at least two, and sometimes three partitions. My new XPS 15 came with three partitions:

- Dell Recovery partition, which was close to 20 GB. This was the Active partition.
- OS partition.
- OEM partition, 102 MB, which runs the Dell diagnostics.

I deleted the Recovery partition (after copying boot files to the OS partition and making OS partition Active) to free up that 20 GB of space.

 

I was thinking more of actual visible partitions, that seemed to me to be what the poster was asking. Most Acer laptops I have seen, for example, have had partitioned hard drives with an OS partition for the installed OS and then the rest of the hard drive for data. That is not done on Dell laptops.

 

It was done on Dell laptops (especially 1564 Inspiron) til people complained and it hasn't reappeared since.

 

Even hidden partitions towards the Windows limit per disk. IIRC, Windows has a limit of four partitions per disk. Those wanting dual boot or other multi-partition layouts may find that the two Dell partitions limit their flexibility. In my case, I wanted an OS partition plus two data partitions, which would not have been possible with both those Dell partitions intact. Plus, I wanted to make use of that 20 GB that was otherwise wasted on the Dell Recovery partition.

 

I was just explaining my answer and why I thought that is what they wanted to know not saying anything about your answer, I knew what you meant.

Also, you can actually have more partitions than that. The Limit is 4 primary partitions, but you can have one as an extended partition and then partition that into more logical partitions. You could have still had that setup with the original Dell configuration but if you wanted the extra space then fair enough.

 

Thanks for the replies, like I said in the OP, I figured there would be a recovery partition, I just wanted to make sure the rest of my storage wasn't split up. For example, 350GB on C: and 350GB on D: I was reading about the Samsung Series 7 and saw that the hard drive was partitioned similar to that, and I just thought that sounded really annoying.

I'm fine with a Recovery partition, OS partition, any small ones like that.

 

Even if you dislike a partition layout, it's not hard to change it to what you want. It shouldn't be a reason not to buy a particular computer, as it's easy to change.

 

Yeah I was just curious, I wasn't basing any purchasing decision off it.