Media Direct, Partitioning

I just got a Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop with Media Direct and I have some questions:

I was wondering if it is safe for me to delete the MEDIADIRECT partition from within Disk Management. Also, if I do that, I'm assuming I might mess up my computer if I press the MediaDirect button. Is there a way to disable that button or reassign it to do something else?

My second question is, if I decide to reinstall Media Direct after deleting its partition, can I install it to the C: drive instead of its own partition? I assume this won't let me press the MediaDirect button to boot into Media Direct when my computer is off, but I don't care about that. I just want to be able to access it in Windows.

Basically, it would be perfect if I could get rid of that MEDIADIRECT partition and then re-install Media Direct to my C: drive, allowing me to access Media Direct from within Windows by pressing the MediaDirect button, and assigning the button to do nothing from a computer's off state. But even if I can't do that, I would still rather just delete the MEDIADIRECT partition. Is it safe?

Also, is it safe to delete the Dell Restore partition (I'm aware of what it does and I don't want it)?

 

-BUMP-

I would also like to know, I'm leery as to uninstalling it, but I'd like to get the HD space back because I feel as though MediaDirect is useless. It's identicle to MCE, just not as useful and I'd like to delete it forever.

-Josh

 

Here's some opinions:

Is it "safe" to delete the MD partition? Yes - your laptop won't stop working or anything, but of course you lose the MD function / features as you'd already know. Nothing else bad will happen, no hardware will "break". I deleted that partition as well as the restoration partition using "Partition Magic", but there are of course other ways to do it. I've used the Disk Management systool to change drive letters and other things, but not for deleting or combining / resizing partitions. I don't know if it's got those abilitites. I do know that without MD installed, my computer used that button as another "on" button. It wouldn't power down Windows but it would turn the laptop on, just as the power button does. So it still keeps some functionality. I don't know about remapping it. I imagine it's connected through the motherboard and have no idea myself how you'd go about such a thing. There's nothing in the BIOS that I saw regarding it.

MD is very picky about how it installs. I tried a lot of things and read a lot of posts, here and elsewhere. There appears to be just one way to do it (*I used MD 3, I do not know about version 2). For MD3, you have to boot from that repair disc (reboot, hit f12, choose to boot from cd/dvd rom). It asks if you want one or two hard drive partitions (meaning a C drive only, or a C and D drive both if you wanted one for OS and one for data or backups or whatever). You choose the size of the C partition (only if you asked for 2), and it takes it from there. It then makes and fills a small utilities partition, makes your C drive (partition I should say), and then "prepares" a 3rd partition for the MD program. I do not know if it touches your Dell restoration partition - I had already deleted mine. If you still have one, it may leave it, it may wipe it, I do not know. The MD disc does it's job pretty quickly. Afterwards, you reinstall Windows via whatever your favorite method and routine is (or see the sticky post Southern Girl wrote in the Dell forum here). Once you are in Windows, you put the MD disc in again, it will autorun, you hit enter, and it drops the program onto the end of the hard drive.

From what I saw, and am quite certain about, MD3 anyhow MUST be installed this way. It's not a "normal" program that can just go onto the C drive. It insists on it's own partition that is set up in a very atypical manner.

Personally, I like the MD function, I use the laptop for that stuff anyways. The MD is not only fast, but you can leave your O/S with a password and the MD program without one (you can password protect it as well but I chose not to). Then it's real easy to be comfortable with others using your machine to watch a movie or listen to music (friends, relatives, nieces and nephews, whatever. They can have fun and you know they can't really hurt anything (aside from dropping it). Also, it gives some function to that button. I don't know about you, but I'd be annoyed to have the button and no use for it. Even if I did not use the program, I'd rather have it there and "working correctly". But - I'm a tweaker and I'm like that. Others wouldn't care. And lastly, with the sizes of drives these days, for me the 2GB or so is peanuts. I'm never even close to filling my notebook drive. My main rig at home, yes, but the notebook, not even close.

If you want to keep your Windows install but gain the extra space from the ends of the hard drive, I know that Partition Magic will do it. I don't think the systools will, but may be wrong on that. If you are considering reinstalling Windows from scratch, then all you need to do is delete those partitions shortly into the install process and make them all one large drive. Not much to it that way.

 

So are you telling me that the MediaDirect CD is responsible for creating all those partitions on the HD (C:, MEDIADIRECT, Dell Restore, Dell Utilities)? If I were to format my computer and use just the Windows CD, it wouldn't create any partitions aside from C?

Well anyway, I think I will keep the MediaDirect partition. I'm probably going to delete the Dell Restore or Dell Utilities partition. Which brings me to my other question -- wouldn't Dell Restore be useless without Dell Utilities and vice-versa? We already know that if you do not have the Dell Restore partition, you will of course need to use the Windows CD to get the computer running properly if something goes wrong. Now here's a quote from http://www.goodells.net/dellutility/index.htm that seems to be saying that you need the Dell Utilities partition if you want to use Dell Restore without any CDs:

And here's another quote from http://www.goodells.net/dellutility/custom.htm that also seems to support this "theory:"

Seems to me like there's no sense in deleting just the Dell Restore partition or just the Dell Utilities partition, and that I might as well just go ahead and delete both of them. Am I right?

 

In a way MediaDirect is responsible, but you don't have to use it. You only have to use the MD reinstallation disc IF you want to keep MediaDirect. Otherwise, you can just use the XP partition.

And no, the restore and diagnostics partition have nothing to do with each other. If you delete the restore partition, your diagnostics will run fine. Most of us have our laptops set up this way. As for the restore partition, it is a bit picky. It likes to have your system the exact same setup as you received it in order to reformat. Yet, if you have the XP disc, chances are you will never need the restore partition.

Yes, the dell diagnostics can be run from a disc. It is on your driver's disc from Dell and you can create your own.

 

I think I had the wrong info on what the Diagnostics partition was all about (hell, I thought it was called the Dell Utilities partition, unless it has two names). Anyway, is there any point in having Diagnostics on a partition instead of just using the CD if I need it?

I saw on your sticky thread that you can burn a copy of the restore partition for later use, but then you also said that using the restore partition "will only work if you have not reformatted your laptop yet and the restore partition is still located on the hard-drive. " I can still restore if I use the burned copy though, right? If not, what was the point of burning it in the first place?

If there are no downsides to using the CD for diagnostics and I can restore by using a burned CD, I think I will just delete both the Diagnostics and the Restore partitions because I see no point in having them at all, unless I wanted to avoid using CDs/DVDs.

 

Not really. It is the same program. Same tests.

Yes, you can burn it to a disc, and you can restore the burned copy. I'm not 100% sure how to do it cause I deleted mine as soon as I got it.

If you leave the restore partition there, it is a bit picky or at least use to be. If you format or edit the partitions, the restore partition will no longer work.

Personally, if you are that worried about the restore partition, then make an image of your HDD using Norton Ghost or another software of your choice. This way, if something happens and you need to restore back to factory condition, all you have to do is restore the Norton image. You don't have to work about using the restore partition.

 

Yeah, making an image with Norton Ghost -- that was the original reason I wanted to get rid of at least one of my partitions because the program won't let me do any backups or clones if I have more than three partitions on my HD. I tried a similar program (DriveImage XML) and it wouldn't do it either. So I'm gonna have to delete a partition before I can use Ghost -- seems like the Diagnostic partition is the one I should get rid of first, what do you think?

 

For imaging a drive with multiple partitions, have you tried Acronis True Image?

 

You know, I've tried that program before, but I haven't tried it in this instance. I tried Ghost and it didn't work, so I looked up some free programs, since Acronis only gives you a trial. But if you're saying it works with multiple partitions, then I will definitely download that trial again.

 

WOW, I am impressed!!! I tried Ghost and a bunch of free cloning/imaging programs, and none of them would work for me -- they either wouldn't let me image my HD because it had too many partitions, or because I was imaging to an external HD, or because I was imaging to a HD smaller in size than my source HD, or whatever other reason. Acronis True Image didn't care about any of that! Not only that, but it has a bunch of other really sweet options that Ghost didn't have (unless the newest version has them). I am buying this program ASAP! I guess I didn't realize how awesome it was the first time I tried it. Thanks, zander!

Now I'm going to use Partition Magic to see if I can delete the Dell Restore and Dell Utilities/Diagnostics partition.

 

You're welcome, frugihoyi. I'm glad it worked out for you.

 

You will be able to, it won't be a problem. You can also "expand" the original C drive to cover the space recovered from the utilities. However... it's a whole 50MB, which to me was worth leaving alone "in case" it proved useful someday. But as I mentioned earlier, I personally don't come close to filling notebook hard drives, so 50MB is nothing worth worrying about for me. I have a rather small 80GB hard drive and 50/80000 = .000625 or 0.06%. I sacrificed that tiny space in case one of the utilities was actually helpful someday.

On the other hand, the restoration partition is a nice 5GB, which is valuable (more specifically 4.7GB I believe). *But this is at the end of the drive, with the MD partition in front of it.* You can not use Partition Magic to "move" (nor stretch or anything else) the MD info to the end of the drive. So when you delete the Restore partition, your only immediate option is to create a new 4.7GB partition in it's place. Pretty small straggler out there... So you either get that odd, outlying small drive, or you use the MD disk to go ahead and stick it all the way at the end, and go ahead and get that former Restore space merged in with the bigger partition.

I don't know exactly what you're looking to do, but off the top it's similar to me: I used Ghost to clone my "perfect" Windows installation (I had just reformatted that partition and reinstalled the bare O/S software, then added my own programs and done all my tweaks and settings, and didn't want to go through that again), so I ghosted it to an external hard drive. Afterwards I used the MD disc. I ended up with the miniscule utilities drive (fine by me), a large partition for Windows, and the small (1.5-2 GB, I forget exactly) MD info on the end. Then I restored my clone image to C and all is perfect.

Your scenario may be more different than I think, but hopefully that helps...

 

Thanks, but I already got everything fixed now.

 

What did you end up doing?

(Just curious, and it may help others in the future as well)

 

I ended up just using the MediaDirect CD to format my computer and re-create my partitions (it doesn't create the Dell Restore partition, so I'm happy with just three partitions now), then used the Windows XP CD to re-install Windows, then MediaDirect again, to install MediaDirect.

I just followed Southern Girl's directions pretty much exactly from her second to last post in this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=88032