Recovery Partion (D:) 1.99 GB

[diabsoule]

I have a Latitude D830 with Vista Business 32bit at home and a Optiplex 745 at work with Vista Business 32bit. Both machines show a second partition called Recovery (D. This partition on both machines is 1.99 GB. I have talked to Dell about this partition but could not get a satisfactory answer. One Dell person I talked to said that the partition was created by Vista not Dell, which made me laugh. I then quit talking to that guy because he obviously did not know what he was talking about. I figure there must be some reason for it if they bother to put it there. Does anyone know what it is for? Currently the Optiplex shows 1.41 GB free, not sure about the D830 but it is about the same.



I know Dell has 10 GB recovery partitions that contain a ghost image so one could restore the computer back to an out of the box setup in a matter of minutes rather than using the cds/dvds to reload windows.

 

[Dzomlija]

I have a Latitude D830 with Vista Business 32bit at home and a Optiplex 745 at work with Vista Business 32bit. Both machines show a second partition called Recovery (D. This partition on both machines is 1.99 GB. I have talked to Dell about this partition but could not get a satisfactory answer. One Dell person I talked to said that the partition was created by Vista not Dell, which made me laugh. I then quit talking to that guy because he obviously did not know what he was talking about. I figure there must be some reason for it if they bother to put it there. Does anyone know what it is for? Currently the Optiplex shows 1.41 GB free, not sure about the D830 but it is about the same.

It has been my experience that most after-sales support "techs" at companies that sell pre-built computers and laptops usually don't have a clue about what they're saying, and usually end up making the problem worse, or telling you to just format the PC.

No surprise there that the Dell people where no different.

I know Dell has 10 GB recovery partitions that contain a ghost image so one could restore the computer back to an out of the box setup in a matter of minutes rather than using the cds/dvds to reload windows.

You've answered your own question. This is exactly what it's used for. In many cases, you need to press some kind of hotkey during POST to boot from that partition and access the recovery tools. In some cases, a Window utility is also provided to copy the Recovery partition to backup DVDs incase the HDD fails and the recovery partition is itself not accessible.

 

[diabsoule]

My machines don't have the 10 GB partition they only have 1.99 GB partitions. That is not big enough to store a ghost image to do a restore. Plus the amount of free space changes it is not always 1.41 GB free.

 

[tanuj_chadha]

Try to open & check what all files are listed in that partion.

 

[diabsoule]

There are a lot of empty folders, some .dll and .mui files.

 

[Chappy]

That is a rather small Recovery partiion, usually a Vista recovery partition is in the 4.9G range, not 1.9G so this is rather strange. Also, recovery partitions are usually Locked from access and will give you "ample" warnings that you shouldn't do anything to it, again it's weird that you didn't get that (did you?).

As "Dzomlija" aptly states, most initial Help Desk personnel are rather (for lack of a more Politically Correct term) st00pid, and "Reformat" is their usual fix, but even they should have known what the "Recovery Partition" was, who put it there (Dell) and how to use it properly. (you would think anyway....)

It's quite possible tho that this partition simply contains only the files needed to get the machine to properly access the disks that Dell sent for recovery, which may contain the ghost OS image on the disks themselves, and the empty folders are there for data swap.
That's what I would surmise from the contents you say is in the recovery partition but to verify this you would need to start a Recovery reinstall, or talk to a smarter person over at Dell.....Good Luck with THAT one...

 

[diabsoule]

The recovery partition is not locked at all.

I have wiped this partition out on other computers and then reloaded windows from the Dell disk back on to the computer that has no recovery partition without any problems.