what? 10gb recovery partition? Do I need this?

So my hard drive on my new HP is only 80gb and it looks like HP would like about 10gb of it for 'recovery'. Not too mention that my old DELL simply included a recovery CD...

So can I recover this 10gb? Can I just make my own recovery CD? If so can you point me to directions as to how?

Thanks.

 

I deleted it. If the system goes wrong, just re-install it.

 

WHEN GIVING ADVICE LIKE THIS, MAKE SURE YOU MENTION THAT YOU NEED TO MAKE THE RECOVERY DISCS FIRST!!!

If your system didn't come with them, you need to burn them. Look in the manual that came with your system on how to do this.

I also recommend that you verify that the discs work by doing a full recovery before you really get into using the system:

Step 1: open box
Step 2: burn recovery discs
Step 3: restore your system from the recovery discs
Step 4: now you can start playing with it, moving over your data, etc...

 

yeah, HP allows you to burn you own copies of this recovery partition. just ONE set though. it's quite simple. then you can go ahead and delete the partition and send that space over to your C: drive. it will require 4 dvds. i'm not sure how many cd's it would take. i think something like 9. gotta have enough room for all that bloatware. wait...come to think of it, i used the recovery disks once and i i'm not sure ALL the bloatware returned. it was weird. i can't remember though.

Programs > Recovery Manager > Recovery Disk Creation

 

Wow, when I did it on my dv9000t, I only needed 2 DVDs. I hope there's more good stuff on there now. After I burned them, I also made ISO images and keep them on my drive/external drive. Then you can burn them again if they go bad, you lose them, etc... (BTW: you need DVD+Rs to burn. won't work with RW)

Also, you can skip installing all that bloatware using my guide.

 

Thanks for all the advice. Forgive me if this is an ignorant question, but I've just got done getting things setup up like office, CS2, all of my files, etc. After I do the restore will I have to redo all that?

Fortunetly this is the nw9440, and being the business line I'm not seeing much bloatware at all.

 

edit: duh...nevermind. i didn't realize they gave me an Anytime Upgrade DVD. shows how much i pay attention, haha. i think i'll go ahead and try out your guide for a clean install.....after i burn my recovery dvd's of course

 

When you do a restore from the recovery discs, your laptop will look exactly like when it came out of the box. Any data or programs you installed will no longer be on the system. That's of course a good thing to ask before going ahead with it .

When you burn the recovery discs, it will do a verify, so you should be pretty safe even if you don't test them.

 

Glad I asked. I can of course hunt for this information, but could one of you point me in the right direction in creating these recovery discs?

 

weiser701 gave you this information above

 

Duh...looked right past it! Thanks a ton!

Do I then just delete the recover partition drive? Anything special to do there?

 

Backup your C:\SWSETUP folder while you're at it.

The recovery partition could be reclaimed for Linux, if you're so inclined. Fedora 7 is supposed to come out next week. I never did install Linux on mine.

 

What's SWSETUP?

 

C:\swsetup holds all of the drivers and additional programs that are installed on your computer. If you were to do a clean vista install, then you would need those files so you could reinstall some things, like the quickplay buttons, dvd software, etc...

However, if you are just making the recovery discs, all that software is on there too, so there's not need to make a separate backup of it, unless brianstretch knows of another reason you might need it.

Also, I think the recovery disc tool will allow you to delete the partition, then expand your C: drive to fill that space. I haven't tried that, but it's nice if you want to avoid making another drive letter.

 

On my new DV6500T, there's onLY 85 gigs left of the 120.
I said the same thing in the Owner's Lounge thread, what a joke. I burned the recover discs, burned off the SWSETUP folder, and eventually I'm going to wipe it clean and start over.

If you're not going to start over, then you'll need to buy the bigger hard drive.
The other idea would be to start with the 80 gig, and then install a bigger 7200 RPM drive, but that's kinda technical for most.

 

yeah, i think the general rule is you'll get about 90% of your advertised space because of formatting. then of course you've got the recovery partition, OS, and all the bloatware. once a guy burns his recovery discs, removes the recovery partition, and clean installs the OS, he won't be any worse off than ANY other laptop out there, regardless of the manufacturer. and i'll definitely take the bloatware if means i get a cheaper laptop. funny how Apple (and the Apple fanboys) brags about not preinstalling all that stuff, yet they basically cater to a niche user, which have become more computer oriented over the years compared to the average PC user and would be more knowledgable in reinstalling a clean OS. instead they'll just pay a few hundred dollars more for a computer that's no better than the one i got. in fact, the specs will likely be worse.

oh man you wouldn't believe how ticked off i was when i received my previous laptop and noticed i had something like 65% of my advertised HDD space. i thought HP screwed up and gave me the smaller HDD, lol.

 

Dont forget to grab your preactivated key and copy the files from C:\Windows\OEMCert so that you can do a clean install using the anytime upgrade dvd without first having to use recovery discs or call Microsoft for activation.

 

Wow...am I glad I tried the full recovery!

As I was moving some of my files over and making some minor adjustments, the system just wasn't acting normal, not letting me delete some programs I had just installed, etc...so I decided to do a full recovery.

It formatted the drive, went through the recover and now I can't boot my system...says it can't modify the registry, something to do maybe with updating The Microsoft Explorer...

I just received it on Thursday so it's going back to HP on Monday.

I am willing to give HP one more try. I just love the size and the keyboard of the HP...hopefully the next one will be stronger. What a pain!