Solved! Question about recovery partition

[skrave]

I feel dumb for asking this question, but I'm confused about the recovery partition on my Asus P50 laptop. I know what a partition is, but I'm not quite understanding a few things. My assumption was that there would be a c: and d:, one of the drives would contain the recovery files, other would be the OS and everything else installed on my own. However, looking at the drives I noticed the c: is labeled OS and has Win 7 files as well as everything I've installed since receiving the laptop. The d: is Data Drive and has nothing on it. The c: has 47GB free, d: has 208GB free. So, does this mean I should not have been installing my programs on the c: as this is the recovery partition and I should've put them on the d:? Once I run out of space on the c: will I need to be installing everything to the d:? I'm just not understand how the partition works, so hopefully someone can explain this to me.

 

[cklaubur]

I feel dumb for asking this question, but I'm confused about the recovery partition on my Asus P50 laptop. I know what a partition is, but I'm not quite understanding a few things. My assumption was that there would be a c: and d:, one of the drives would contain the recovery files, other would be the OS and everything else installed on my own. However, looking at the drives I noticed the c: is labeled OS and has Win 7 files as well as everything I've installed since receiving the laptop. The d: is Data Drive and has nothing on it. The c: has 47GB free, d: has 208GB free. So, does this mean I should not have been installing my programs on the c: as this is the recovery partition and I should've put them on the d:? Once I run out of space on the c: will I need to be installing everything to the d:? I'm just not understand how the partition works, so hopefully someone can explain this to me.

I would guess there's actually 3 partitions: your OS partition (the C: drive), a Data partition (the D: drive), and a recovery partition hidden from Windows. You should still be able to see all three using the Windows Disk Management tool.

As for how the partitions should be filled, there's no certain way to fill them. I would keep any music, videos, or any other data on the D: drive just for backup purposes in the event that you have to recover Windows. Any installed programs would have to be reinstalled at that point, so I'd personally just put them wherever you have the space.

Casey

 

[windows7guy]

Hello skrave,

It depends on the version of Windows 7 that you have. As a good rule of thumb a minimum of 30GB is recommended for Windows 7 *(possibly more for Windows Ultimate).
http/www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/get/system-requirements.aspx

If you want to run Windows 7 on your PC, here's what it requires:
1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

Some Additioinal information with regard to the "system reserved" Partition in Windows 7 setup:

If you do not want the 'System Reserved' partition to be created and existed, the best way is to stop Windows 7 installation process to create the partition when installing Windows 7.

In Windows 7, the feature (100 MB partition to store WinRE files) is installed on all computers if the OS is installed on hard disk with single partition scheme, or unallocated space (space which not yet been partitioned) on the hard disk drive.

Thus in order to skip or avoid the 100M partition to be automatically created during installation, here’s a few rules to follow when choosing where to install Windows 7 to:

1. Do not install Windows 7 to a hard disk that not yet been partitioned or to unallocated space (When install Windows 7 to unallocated space, no warning pop-up or confirmation is asked, and setup will straight away and directly create partition 200 MB of disk space as special partition without notification).

2. If possible, try to create all the necessary partition(s) and format the partition(s) before attempting to install Windows 7.

3. If you’re installing Windows 7 into a new hard disk, or a blank hard disk with no partition defined yet, or if you must delete all existing partitions to start afresh, chose Drive options (advanced). Delete (if applicable) unwanted partitions. Then, click New to create the single partition or multiple partitions according to your own preference.

When prompted with dialog box saying “To ensure that all Windows features work correctly, Windows might create additional partitions for system files”, click on Cancel button. Optionally, to be double confirm, Format the partition before selecting it to install Windows 7

Finally, if you want to do some research; there are also some great articles, instructional videos and such to help with your Windows 7, installation, migration and upgrade decisions located at our Springboard site:
http/technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/default.aspx

Thanks again and good luck!

John M.
Microsoft Windows Client Support