I have ordered the recovery DVD from Sony. When they come, I want to reclaim the free space on my hard disk. What is the best way to delete the recovery partition so that I can reclaim the space?
If you don’t care of merging that partition with the rest of partition, you can always delete and reformat partition using computer management - disk management in the adminitrative tool section of control panel. You can either assign a drive letter to it or you can tell it to become a folder of one of you existing drive.
If you need to merge it with the rest of the partition, that is quite tricky. As that hidden partition position is in front of (before) the main partition. My experience is if I tried to merge it using software like Partition Magic, the end result of the merging process will destroy the boot sector of my main drive or at least make my computer not to boot in Windows. So I end up has to reinstall everything.
To get the free space back, I had to boot the TR from the Recovery Discs, which gives you an option to merge the C and D partitions into one big 37.2 GB partition, which also erases the recovery partition. Sadly, this erased all of my stuff on the drive, but the 5GB I got back from the recovery partition and the nicely merged C and D drives made it worth it.
[quote author=“cellery”]To get the free space back, I had to boot the TR from the Recovery Discs, which gives you an option to merge the C and D partitions into one big 37.2 GB partition, which also erases the recovery partition. Sadly, this erased all of my stuff on the drive, but the 5GB I got back from the recovery partition and the nicely merged C and D drives made it worth it.
when you did this did it erase all you stuff on c or d or both?
do you have to pay for the dvd recovery disk or are they free?
[quote author=“sillyrabbitt123”][quote author=“cellery”]To get the free space back, I had to boot the TR from the Recovery Discs, which gives you an option to merge the C and D partitions into one big 37.2 GB partition, which also erases the recovery partition. Sadly, this erased all of my stuff on the drive, but the 5GB I got back from the recovery partition and the nicely merged C and D drives made it worth it.
when you did this did it erase all you stuff on c or d or both?
do you have to pay for the dvd recovery disk or are they free?
THANKS!
Wabbitt
It erased all of my files and settings, and basically made the computer factory-fresh. The Recovery Discs are the ones I burned myself onto 8 CD-Rs following the instructions in the Recovery Wizard.
It erased all of my files and settings, and basically made the computer factory-fresh. The Recovery Discs are the ones I burned myself onto 8 CD-Rs following the instructions in the Recovery Wizard.
How about the recovery files on the hidden partition. Is it lost or save on different folder/directory
So I got my recovery DVD. I go to delete and format the EISA partition and I can’t. Disk management does not have any options for this drive. How can I access this partition?
[quote author=“dhend”]How about the recovery files on the hidden partition. Is it lost or save on different folder/directory
The recovery files are gone from your hard drive, and are now only to be found on the CD Recovery Kit you burned.
As far as deleting the recovery partition, I booted from the Recovery CD and IIRC you can pick a recovery option that lets you choose how to format your hard drive. You can do it like it was from the factory, with 3 partitions, or as one partition with no recovery. If you get to a screen with a pie graph, that’s the right place.
Unfortunately, it wiped out everything on the drive, but gave me 5GB back and got rid of the annoying partitioning scheme. I haven’t found a way to do a non-destructive repartitioning yet, nor do I think Sony put one in.
Just to check. If you use the recovery partition to combine your drives, the result is a computer like new, with none of the stuff one might of put on? Do you also though have to reinstall all the drivers to get the bits working again?
If i thought by using the recovery disc to combine my partitions that i would get my computer like new again without having to reinstall all the app, then i might give it a go.
If you use the recovery disc to conbine your partitions, are you still left with your windows xp installation? Or do we have to go and buy a new copy of windows?
[quote author=“Mrs Gadget”]If you use the recovery disc to conbine your partitions, are you still left with your windows xp installation? Or do we have to go and buy a new copy of windows?
You never need to buy XP again…your TR came with a Microsoft Reg #.
The recovery CD (DVD) has XP preloaded.
Technically combining the partitions would not uninstall XP.
Just to clarify: Just use the XP retail CD if Partition Magic or some other utility screws up your boot sector. It’s bootable and has a few useful command line utilites on it. The recovery CD will format your entire drive and reinstall XP. You will lose all the data on your drive but will end up with a brand new, bootable XP install.
