Recovery Partition Shrinking

Has anyone tried shrinking their recovery partition on their Gateway? I'm wondering if this is an alright thing to do and also if after I shrink it I'll be able to add the free space to my Vista partition.

 

I highly recommend leaving the recovery partition alone. If you are on a 7811FX and are talking about the second partition, then yes, that can be shrunk. But do not mess with the hidden recovery partition unless you really want to delete it.

 

Hm...I'm not sure exactly what you mean. I'm on the 6860 and the recovery partition isn't exactly "hidden" but I don't know if this is what you are talking about on the 7811. I'm talking about the partition with the Gateway Recovery Center and stuff on it; it's about 15GB and it only uses about 7.

Thanks.

 

Ok. Then no. Don't mess with it. That is unless you create your driver CD, have the gateway system recovery CD and just want to do away with it completely.

 

I shrank mine. It shrinks fine. You are right that it uses much less space then is assigned to it. That GB is just going to waste. I would recommend shrinking it...if you know what you are doing.

 

Have you tried using it since you shrank it?

 

If you shrank it, wouldn't that mean you don't want to use it? The first thing I did after a fresh install, was shrink / delete the whole recovery partion completely.

 

I vote for leave it alone. If 5 to 7 "wasted" gigs bother you that much maybe you should get a second hard drive. I have 640gb in my 6860 and even running Vista and Ubuntu i never miss that recovery partition.

Plus it never hurts to have multipule back ups of things like drivers; or any data for that matter [pets server lovingly]

 

Yes I have. It works.

 

I totally agree with Kamin. Just leave it as is, unless you're gonna completely do away with it.

 

Well, first thing I did when I unpacked both the M-6851 AND the P-6860FX, was to image the entire drive out (using Acronis) to an external 320GB USB drive. M-6851 was about 12.5GB standard compression, and P-6860FX was about 11.5GB standard compression.

When I went to send back the M-6851, I just restored it back, both saving them the trouble, and to overwrite what I had.

Well worth the 60-75 minutes, in my opinion.

I also created the "recovery DVD" whatever that is. I assume it's a disk with the drivers, and the bloatware.


T

 

It is, but you have a choice which drivers and which (if any) bloatware you want installed. Gateway is pretty cool like that.

 

Technically Gateway will also send you out recovery discs (drivers/apps cd + factory restore cd + vista cd) for free.

But I have yet to receive mine. They were supposed to come in 3-4 weeks ago.
Gateway says they are "back ordered".

 

Actually, I think they're charging for the recovery discs these days.

 

I was charged nothing.

And I have a order number to prove it.

I just have to get them in the mail -_-'

 

Heh - Lakjin - the ORDER NUMBERS are free....



I wanna hear about MEDIA!!

Dook - yup - thiis thingie is baaaaad...

As to the recovery partition...

When I first got that M-6851, first thing I did was boot STRAIGHT into Acronis, and image the entire drive out. THEN I booted into it, created the recovery DVD, for safety created the recovery .ISO as well...

and THEN I did a clean install...

Before I returned it, I put the image back, and worked 100%.

Moral of the story boys and girls: Image, and make DANG sure you make the recovery DVD, and the recovery .ISO as s secondary measure in case ya screw up the recovery DVD!!!


T

 

just do a total wipe of the drive and start from scratch

 

Mhmm Gateway also offered them for free to me, but I had to pay a $20 shipping and Handling fee.

1. How is this free? haha
2. $20 shipping for an item that weighs not even an ounce?!?! Give me a break Gateway.

 

I shrunk mine when I was going to install RAID on my laptop. Shrunk first, backed up to my WD My Book, installed RAID, and put it back on in its 8 GB slot at the end of my RAID Setup. Had to use the driver disk to get the chipset and eSATA drivers in, but for the rest I used the recovery partition. You should have no problems provided you use good software. (I use Acronis)

 

Here, here - I use the recovery media from Acronis True Image Echo Enterprise Server 9.1 - works awesome!!!


T