The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    HP Recovery Partition -- Needed?

    Discussion in 'HP' started by hessdesigns, Sep 6, 2006.

  1. hessdesigns

    hessdesigns Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    11
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Hey all,
    Just got my wife an HP dv8000z (she'll mostly be on Word, and doesn't need the X2, and we got a geat deal on it.) Anyway, got it home and noticed that 13 GB are taken up by the "HP Recovery Disk" as a partition. Do I really need that? The main drive then only has 60GB, and it sure would be nice to have the extra space. I've always owned a custom-built desktop, so I've never had a recovery partition -- just recovery disks. Could I delete all that, un-partition and go on my merry way with regular recovery disks?
    Thanks!

    PS: I've done a partition before, but I forget what application I use. Could somebody tell me please? Thanks again!
     
    hessdesigns, Sep 6, 2006
    #1
  2. springr

    springr Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    41
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    springr, Sep 6, 2006
    #2
  3. gearhead

    gearhead Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    5
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    There are instructions from HP on how to create recovery disks from the recovery partition. After creating the recovery disk it is safe to delete the partition. You can use winxp's disk management to recover that space and format it to ntfs.

    If you plan to install another flavor of winxp from the home edition that came with your laptop, don't forget to copy the swsetup folder for it contains the drivers and softwares if you want to do a clean install.
     
    gearhead, Sep 6, 2006
    #3
  4. hessdesigns

    hessdesigns Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    11
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Thanks for your help guys... As always, forums (and not HP) to the rescue.
     
    hessdesigns, Sep 6, 2006
    #4
  5. hessdesigns

    hessdesigns Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    11
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    ok, one more question... I've deleted the partition and reformatted to ntfs. However, I can only make it a new drive (D:, or otherwise), or, when I delete it, it just sits there as "Unallocated." How do I allocate it back into the C: partition?? Thanks again!
     
    hessdesigns, Sep 6, 2006
    #5
  6. miner

    miner Notebook Nobel Laureate

    Reputations:
    1,326
    Messages:
    7,137
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    205
    You will have to use a third party utilty like Partition Magic or if you do not want to pay for the software, then try sing the restore disc's and do a non destructive recovery. This is not ideal but it should get rid of your retore partition(it certainly did on my V3000). As always before doing this create a backup of your data and most likely you will have to re-install all your programs and delete the unk software.
     
    miner, Sep 6, 2006
    #6
  7. MasturB

    MasturB Notebook Geek

    Reputations:
    1
    Messages:
    96
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    This will work with my dv5000t right?

    I'm going to burn recovery disks in a few days and I want the 14 or so gigs that were used up.
     
    MasturB, Sep 8, 2006
    #7
  8. JM

    JM Mr. Misanthrope NBR Reviewer

    Reputations:
    4,370
    Messages:
    2,182
    Likes Received:
    8
    Trophy Points:
    56
    It should indeed work.

    I just did it on my HP s7400n, which is a desktop, so I think that removing the partition is universal to all HP computers, at this time.
     
    JM, Sep 8, 2006
    #8
  9. kcoreht

    kcoreht Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    7
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    I have a DV5000T and I recently removed the recovery partition. My Free space is only around 75 gigs (100 Gig Hard Drive) even though I dont have much installed. I followed the HP instructions and made disks. Did I need to do something else? I no longer see drive D: so I assumed it returned that space to drive C. Is it normal for that much space to be used by the system?

    Also, do I need to save the SWSETUP folder to disks (DVD) if I bought the "Genuine Windows XP Media Center Edition Backup CD" from HP? Is this folder ok to delete once backed up? I see it is around 6 gigs and I would love to have that space for other things.
     
    kcoreht, Sep 10, 2006
    #9
  10. eric06

    eric06 Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    253
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    I would keep the SWSETUP folder even though you backed it up. That is just me though.
     
    eric06, Sep 10, 2006
    #10
  11. kcoreht

    kcoreht Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    7
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Ok. Thanks. I thought it might be best to keep it. I wasnt sure though since I thought I read here it is ok to delete once backedup.
     
    kcoreht, Sep 11, 2006
    #11