about dell restore partion

I just reformated and installed windows xp. I think i forgot to delet the partion with the dell part installed. My question then is can this be done now and can i get that extra space back? Its not a huge deal i probably wont need the space but if its useless then why not.

 

You can use a 3rd party program like Partition Magic to delete the partion as well as use it to create/add space to your current partions. There are several programs out there that will do this, but I'm only familiar with Partition Magic. It is a bit expensive, but check out pricegrabber.com or buy.com cause they usually have vendors where you can pay and download it (it is a legal version) for around 20 bucks.

You can also delete the extra partition by using XP (right click on my computer-->manage-->disk management-->select the spare partition and click "x" on thet tool bar). The only this with this method is that I'm not sure if you can add it to your current partition using this method or what all you can do with the extra space when it is deleted.

SG

 

wait you could possibly lose space on your hardrive if you dont reformat right?

 

Like physically lose space? No... its kind of hard to tell from your question, so i'm not really sure what you are talking about.

Also another option that i just thought of... if you want to delete the spare partition, you can use your XP disk and pretend like you are reformatting. you go thru the same steps as you would be reformatting, but once you come to the partition, you delete the partition, and create a new partition with it (don't leave it as unpartition space because you won't be able to use it). Don't mess with your XP partiton because that will cause you to reformat. Once you create the new partition, you should be able to hit F3 two times to exit out of the XP setup. I'm not 100% if this will work because its been awhile since i tried this method, but if i remember right, i was able to delete my spare doing this.

SG

 

i mean is there anyway you can mess up reformatting that will make space on your harddrive unusable permanently?

 

Not to my knowledge unless somehow it got damage, but i've never seen that happen. Usually if space is missing, it is because it is unpartition.

 

You will get the space back but it will be its own partition now. You dont need a special app to do it either, all this stuff is built into windows. Under Administrative tools in control panel,. do a little searching. You can view and format the partion.

 

Thanks for the help but ive got the portion formating now its about 3 gigs but there is also a third that is 63 mb just wondering what this is

 

That partition contains a few "Dell Utilities" of unknown/dubious usefullness. If you have a Windows XP CD and have already deleted the Dell recovery partition, that small utility partition can go, too; you have no need for it.