Did you format your Dell soon after receiving it ?

Did you format you Dell soon after receiving it ? Pls vote...I performed formatting on the same day I receive my Dell, trying to create 5 partitions when running Vista installation, but Vista said "you've reached the maximum partition for this drive" when I tried to create the 4th partition, meaning that the hard disk only can support maximum 3 partitions. This is the first time I encounter such problem, I used to have 7 partitions in my desktop machine.

 

that's a lottta partitions man

 

I think the problem is trying to create more than 4 "primary" partitions.
Using something other than the Vista DVD, you may be able to create extended partitions and use something like GRUB as a boot loader. I haven't actually tried this on the laptop though.

 

What's the point of so many partitions?

That's the most I've ever heard of on a consumer PC.

 

I use partitions to keep my stuf seperated and tidy and also smaller partitions may result in smaller block sizes and less wasted space.

4 primary partitions is the maximum you can have, but you can have an extended partition with I think a max of 64 logical partitions, you will need something besides windows to do that. Setup your main partition and get vista installed, then install a partition manager to create the other partitions.

Bear in mind that I have had vista crap out on me after messing with partitions before.... even ones that have nothing to with the OS partition.

 

I'm a partition freak

These are the partitions in my desktop machine (250GB Samsung HDD)

C:\ Windows - OS and programs
D:\ Prod - My software project (Production)
E:\ Derek - Contains all personal files and docs
F:\ Image - All digicam photos
G:\ Media - Songs, Movies, BT
H:\ Devp - My software project (Development)
I:\ Temp - Temporary files, Installer and etc

Planning to have more partitions after I get a drive with larger capacity, may create 10 partitions if I get a 1 Terabytes HDD

 

I'm a little curious as well.

I formatted my laptop the next day because of all the junk on it, however, after I did do it (I was happy that I did) I wish I hadn't because of the installations, drivers, programs, etc. The one thing that boggled me was that I couldn't get my wireless working for the longest time until I started searching for drivers, among other things to get it working.

By the way, good review there!

 

I formatted within the first week. Two partitions: one for OS, one for storage. Nothing too special there.

Folder organization is good enough organization to me... no need to create fifty partitions.

 

hell to the yeah...first day...20 mins after opening th box....vista is shiat imho...all the fancy visuals i don't need, etc...xp pro baby all the way...

 

Haha, 20 minutes...that's pretty fast, anyone has a better record ? say for example 2 minutes...haha

 

I didn't format mine at all.....I just cleaned the heck out of my M1330.....down to 36 processes......

 

Woah cowboy! You can mount drive letters to a folder pretty easily using the subst command, so there goes your separation logic unless you are talking about keeping the OS and data separate, in which case I wonder if you reformat and install your OS every 4 months to justify that.

Getting a good, intelligent defragmentation program like Diskeeper will help you out more than anything. It will move files that are frequently accessed to the outside to increase their read speed and move less commonly used files to the middle where they read slower. If you partition the drive, you are losing some this ability.

But to the question you posed, I'm all for a fresh install on a new system provided I have copy backup of the manufacturer's build so I can pull drivers over. Other than that, the timeframe is irrelevant. You are going to face the same troubles reformatting a week after getting the machine as doing it a year after. Making an image of the system after getting everything setup is a good plan in case you need to ever do a reinstall again. It will save a lot of time and frustration and usually can fit onto a single DVD.

 

I just had to - my 1700 came with Longhorn and I didn't want to bring Longhorn to Texas A&M... Besides, I know Gentoo too well to give it up...

 

Yupp... Opened, backed up system and wiped it within 10Min.

 

Within 1 week - 2 partitions. OS and software on one and documents, pics, videos, etc. on the other.

 

Your OS is Longhorn... ? Did you mean Vista ?

 

Longhorn is Vista.

 

Clean install as soon as I figured I had everything I needed. Already had the latest drivers downloaded waiting. C for system, D for documents and an external drive with three partitions - Data, Music/Video and Acronis TI harddrive images.

 

Haha thats a good reason to get rid of vista, I go to UCF and I think we gave the Long horns a run for their money in yesterday's game.

 

I never booted into the dell install: power on, install disc in, and go.

 

I played around with Vista Basic (wasn't gonna spend extra $ for Premium) for 5 minutes before installing XP Pro.

 

XP blows Vista away... been teetering back and forth but settling on Vista - the fonts/windows/taskbar are much easier to read on an WSXGA+ in Vista

 

I always reformat new notebooks: I don't trust the vendor to install it "right" and for the long term, intimate knowledge of your OS / drivers etc. is required to manage the machine (well, the way I do it). So rather than try to figure out what the heck they've done to my new baby, I just wipe it, download all the latest drivers, burn 'em to a DVD (on another computer while the OS is installing) and it's all nice and clean and fast.

 

Shld suggest to Dell to include additional option - let user choose whether they want OS preinstalled for them. So the user choose "No preinstall" may expedite the delivery time...and help Dell to save cost, their technician need to do less installation work and hopefully can pass on the cost saving to the consumes ... haha

 

I formatted my laptop literally as soon as I bought it; probably within 5 minutes.

As I had not used the laptop yet I lost nothing but time by setting Windows up just the way I like e.g. removing most of the startup programs, disabling services, cleaning the registry, defragmenting the hard drive etc.