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    Dell studio xps 16. 4 primary partitions, want to delete one.

    Discussion in 'Dell XPS and Studio XPS' started by muminboll, Jan 19, 2010.

  1. muminboll

    muminboll Newbie

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    I want to run dual boot with windows 7 and ubuntu. The problem is that i already got 4 primary partitions, even tho I only use one myself.

    One partition is an OEM partition of 39 mb. One is at 797 kb, and I have totally no clue what this partitions is for. Ive tried googling for hours, but I cant find anything. And then I have the 100 mb partitions created by windows 7.

    What of those partitions can I delete? All of them? And do anyone know what the 797 kb dynamic data partition is? It just blows my mind!

    Thnx in advance for any answers!
     
    muminboll, Jan 19, 2010
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  2. Unreasnbl

    Unreasnbl Notebook Guru

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    on my M1530 ...

    The first partition was a Dell diagnostics partition. It's a small partition, probably the 39 meg on yours. You can delete it because you can download the diagnostics and you may have even gotten a disk with them on it.

    The second partition was my C: drive.

    The third partition was an image of the factory install. I think mine was about 10 GB, but only part of it was actually used. Should I have wanted to make my M1530 like new again (software-wise), I would boot into the diagnostics and have it wipe my C: drive and replace it with the image. You can delete the image because you received a Windows disk with the machine, and it's a real Windows disk, not the pre-installed bloatware install.

    The last partition was the Media Direct partition. I think it was 2.5 GB or maybe 3.5 GB. I chose to delete this partition, as well. I think you can re-generate it with the Media Direct disk, but I have never tried it.

    I suspect your system is similar.

    I installed a new, larger. faster hard drive and installed Windows 7 clean on the single partition.
     
    Unreasnbl, Jan 19, 2010
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  3. muminboll

    muminboll Newbie

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    Ok, thnx man! Im gonna do a clean install too I guess.

    Would still like to know what the 797 kb partitions could be, anyone :)?


    Also, I removed the 797 kb partition and created an ext2 partition for ubuntu. Before I went ahead with installing ubuntu, I rebooted the computer to see that windows was still working. And no, windows gave a bluescreen on startup and rebooted the computer. So I booted from an ubuntu live cd and removed the ext2 partition, and then windows could boot again! Anyone know why this could be?
     
    muminboll, Jan 20, 2010
    #3