samsung r60 plus restore tool

i have just bought a samsung r60 plus, t5550 core 2 duo, 2gb ram. pretty nice.

when i turned it on for the first time, it did the partition i had read about and created a 'd' drive. my questions are...

firstly, the 'd' drive shows as no space used so i dont think the 'purchase point' back-up happened. also, it halved the hdd so each is about 70gb but i dont want the 'd' drive that big, i will only use it to house the backup that is created so can i resize this and how do i make sure the 'purchase point' backup was done.

cheers

 

Vista includes some basic HDD management tools. Right click on the My Computer icon and select Manage, then select Disk Management near the bottom of the list. This will show your HDD, the partitions and any free space.

Right click on a partition and you have the choice of shrink or delete. If you shrink D to leave space before it then you will be able to expand C into the empty space. Or, if you have put noting on D then it might be easier to delete it, expand C, then recreate D [I've never tried using this tool - I have Acronis Disk Directory].

However, I'm a strong believer in minimising whatever is on C and keeping all my files on D (and E, F & G in my case). If you ever need to restore the operating system then C is going to get wiped. It's only after that you discover that the backups don't contain everything.

John

 

cheers john, done that.
does this look right?
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That's fine if you want no D: at all. I wouldn't use that configuration myself because if you need to restore C: then you may lose everything that's in it.

John

 

thats fine as i always manually backup anyway. cheers for your help

 

Accoding to Samsung technical support you could take the hard drive out and put it back in and you will still be able to restore the operating system.

They also advised me how to do reduce the D drive, as I did the same thing, however another of their later told me that that this wipes the invisible partition where the image goes, hence I now can't create a user point image. Oh well. He did advise what John does though - just have the operating system on the C and all your files on the D drive. So my question is how do I know which files to keep on C and which can safely go on D. Just concerned I might put something on D that needs to stay on C. (Not an expert.)

I have the same laptop.

 

1. I think you may find that the Restore partition is not affected by resizing the other partitions. How much space do you think you have? Note that the actual size is always less than the nominal size, for example 160GB is actually about 149GB.

2. Basically, any file that you create is best saved on D:. Read Microsoft KB 310147 about how to change the default folder for your user files. This works for Vista as well as XP except that I find it is necessary to create the target folder first (eg D:\MyDocuments) then type the path to that folder into the Target box. That fix will apply to most programs / files although some programs may still try to save files on C:.

John

 

It's about 149 Gb. When you first switch it on you have to partition the drive how you want using a slide (it tells you this will be you will be your only opportunity, but gives no other guidance). It says the purchase point will be saved now, and a user point image will be saved later on the D drive, when you decide. Later the technician told me it was saved in an invisible separate something on the D drive (you could see the user image taking up space on there, before I formatted the drive to repartition.)

Thanks for the information, which should be useful. I do have Vista.

 

OK. Reformatting will wipe everything. Windows disk management should left you resize partitions.

John

 

Right. I've recreated the D drive, moved music, documents and pictures to it - now I seem to have the option of creatng a user image after pressing "Windows"+f6, though slightly worried it will overwrite my documents if it's created on D.

Acronis disk manager looks great, though pricey for one job, so looks like I'm going to leave it partitioned at 75Gb for each drive.

 

I would expect the image file to be a big file (or series of files) which would go in its own folder. If it overwrites whatever is there then you wouldn't be able to save multiple images.

However, I might be wrong.

John

 

Thanks for being so helpful. Maybe I'll have to wait for that one vital piece of information... There is a 10 Gb seperated off which seems to be to do with recovery, and it would be nice if it went there - but when I first made a user image space was taken up on D.

 

You were right - the back up has it's own folder (I copied my stuff back to the C drive first). It goes on the D drive, and leaves other files intact. I'm just not sure it was strictly necessary when I had the most important things on the D drive anyway.

 

Thanks for the update and feedback.

John