Multiple Recovery Partitions on Windows 8 Laptop

[Wuu]

Hi, Everyone,

I have a Dell Inspiron 15R Special Edition laptop with Windows 8 64-bit pre-installed.

I did notice right after I received the laptop that there were multiple recovery partitions on the single hard disk drive, and those partitions had no driver letters associated with them. I didn't care since there was enough drive space for my need at that time.

Now the situation has changed, and I would like to be able to make adjustments to the partitions. But before doing that I would like to know a bit more about what these partitions really are, besides their similar names.

P.S I did do some googling, the results aren't satisfactory.

Thanks

 

[Wuu]

The link is for a screenshot of my hard drive partitions.

 

[linney]

You are probably better off leaving things well alone, there is not a lot of space to be gained from removing any duplicate partitions. The risk of doing such a thing is not worth taking.



What is the System Reserved Partition?

http://4sysops.com/archives/what-is-the-system-reserved-partition/

If you want to regain space on the other partitions see if these help.


Delete files using Disk Cleanup

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-au/...nup#delete-files-using-disk-cleanup=windows-8

Regain hard disk space by using Windows Update Cleanup in Windows 7 and 8.x

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/wi...g-windows-update-cleanup-in-windows-7-and-8x/

How To Resize Your Windows 8 Partition

http://www.tweakhound.com/2013/01/02/how-to-resize-your-windows-8-partition/

How do I increase C:\ drive partition size in Windows 8.1?

http://www.quora.com/How-do-I-increase-C-drive-partition-size-in-Windows-8-1

 

[Wuu]

Hi, Linney,

Thanks for your info. However, I am really concerned about reclaiming a tiny amour of hard disk space by deleting some recovery partitions.

I am more interested in combining adjacent partitions together to form a single larger partition on which I could save some big files. But somehow windows 8 put recovery partitions in the middle of the hard disk, not all at the beginning or end of the disk, like previous versions of windows did. And it is not just one , but two such partitions which got stuck in the middle of my hard drive, causing me to waste a lot of space, not in the sense of the space those partitions actually occupy, but in the sense that a lot of space has to be wasted simply because the remaining space, even though still larger, is not large enough for the type of files I am dealing with.

So I would like to know if it is possible to somehow move, not delete those partitions.

Thanks

 

[dilettante]

If you deal with large data files a lot you will be far better off acquiring an additional, separate drive for data storage.

The Inspiron 15R SE was meant as a media consumption device and was not designed for serious use anyway. As such it lacks amenities such as eSATA ports but you can probably make do using a USB 3.0 port and compatible external drive enclosure. Without spending much money you may get even better performance than with the relatively slow internal hard drive.

But a laptop, much less this one, just isn't deal for tasks such as media transcoding on any large scale if that's what you have in mind.

End users should not screw around with boot drive partitions, especially since the kinds of changes made beginning in Windows 7. But end users are not supposed to be using this web site anyway.

 

[goombawaho]

That is the most complicated partitioning scheme I have ever seen on a laptop that came from the factory. I would have no idea as to what you could safely remove or what the partitions are from the view of the disk management. You'd probably have to contact the manufacturer to find out exactly what they were trying to do, but I doubt they will help you because you are trying to manipulate things and they don't want you to do that.

I would say the best thing you could do would be to get an image of the original drive and build a recovery thumb drive. Then you could nuke the whole drive and load just pure Windows 8 on it taking the entire disk. Better yet would be to put the original drive in a drawer and get a larger (possibly hybrid) drive for more storage space and load Windows on that from scratch. A hybrid drive would give you more performance and still a lot of storage.

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[linney]

How to Transfer Windows 8/8.1 to New Hard Drive with AOMEI Backupper?

http://www.backup-utility.com/windows-8/transfer-windows-8-to-new-hard-drive.html

 

[goombawaho]

^^Something like Linney mentioned is a possibility. Just realize that if you delete the wrong thing, you can have a non-bootable system in a big hurry, so if you're going to play around have at least a backup of your data if not an image of the entire drive.

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.