Removing recovery partition from SSD

Bradbury Keller

Honorable
Apr 20, 2013
5
0
10,510
I own a HP 14-074ca Ultrabook which I recently learned has a 28GB mSATA SSD as well as the advertised 1TB HDD (I assumed it should have a hidden SSD being an Ultrabook.,), but the SSD is used as a recovery partition instead as a swap drive.

My question is: "Is it feasible to partition the 1TB hdd and move the recovery partition from the SSD to the HDD then install Windows 8 (or upgrade SSD first) and use the partitioned HDD as the recovery drive as well as a storage drive."

What I am not sure of is:

1. If it would be better to forgo entirely the keeping of the HP recovery partition and instead make use of the Windows recovery disks or make a disc image and store it somewhere else. I would like to keep the free Adobe Premier 11 /Elements 11 that was included in the OS install...

2. If I choose to keep the HP recovery partition will it be able to do it's job from its new location on the HDD?

3. Will the computer operate properly booting from the mSATA SSD or is there a limitation on the BIOS from the manufacturer making this operation of the system impossible?

Any help on this issue would be awesome because right now the SSD is not being utilized to anywhere near its full potential in my Ultrabook.
 
Solution
Hey,

So I am going off of a whim here as I do not have the specs of that pc in front of me. I will do my best to answer your questions anyway.

1. Absolutely create an image no matter what, in my opinion. I would keep it off the machine though, like on a flash drive. This is just a precaution because if something goes wrong at all you will still have the image.

2. It should still do the trick because you should partition the HDD for recovery and storage.

3. I do not think there is a limitation from the BIOS, but check this thread out as it has some useful information regarding this. http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-envy-hdx/729085-envy-15t-j000-msata-ssd-hdd-fresh-install-msata-boot-drive.html

Windows 8 requires 16 GB for 32 bit...

mordax86

Distinguished
Feb 27, 2010
4
0
18,520
Hey,

So I am going off of a whim here as I do not have the specs of that pc in front of me. I will do my best to answer your questions anyway.

1. Absolutely create an image no matter what, in my opinion. I would keep it off the machine though, like on a flash drive. This is just a precaution because if something goes wrong at all you will still have the image.

2. It should still do the trick because you should partition the HDD for recovery and storage.

3. I do not think there is a limitation from the BIOS, but check this thread out as it has some useful information regarding this. http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-envy-hdx/729085-envy-15t-j000-msata-ssd-hdd-fresh-install-msata-boot-drive.html

Windows 8 requires 16 GB for 32 bit and 20 GB for 64 bit. I personally would not use the 28 GB drive for that as it leaves very little room. My opinion is to actually leave it the way it is for now, and at some point in time replace the smaller msata drive with a larger capacity drive. Then use the newer ssd for the os and the larger drive for data. The msata drive should be the same only it uses an adapter and I think it also runs at a slightly slower speed than the "standard" ssds.
 
Solution