Dell partition setup

Guest2

Guest2

Guest2

Soldato
Joined
6 May 2009
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20,367
On a new dell latitude e7240 i have the following 3 partitions showing in disk management

A healthy oem partition - 39mb
Os (c) - boot, page file, crash dump, primary partition - 110.47gb
Recovery - system, active, primary partition - 8.73gb

What are the recovery and oem partitions for, how do i use them, what are tgey for and if they are not needed how do i get rid?

As its only a 128gb disk, 8.73gb may come in handy

However i dont want to have to reinstall windows as realised it comes with ni cd drive (i know i could put windows on usbstick but would need to get one)
 
bledd. said:
First thing I do with a new machine is format it. Quicker than messing around
Click to expand...

How when I have no CD drive and no drivers? Easy enough to put windows 7 on an 8gb pen drive I have but dont all the Dell drivers need installing in the correct order - system manager > chipset > network etc etc
 
The recovery partition generally contains a fresh image of windows when it was installed. Its so you can factory reset it without a disk by holding some key combo on start up. You can get rid of it, but if you need to reinstall, you will need to get hold of a disc or USB. It should be easy enough to download a partition tool, like minitool partition wizard, delete the partition then expand the windows partition to take up the space. It may be best to download a bootable usb tool like Gparted to do it.

There may be other ways to clean up a bit of space, check page file size and see if there is a large hibernation image.
 
Doesn't really matter what order you install drivers.

I typically do..

LAN
Chipset
Gfx
Audio

With a reboot after chipset, gfx

Download LAN driver beforehand, then get other drivers online.
 
hibernation is disabled and drive content indexing turned off as per this guide i have used with my main machine - http://www.overclock.net/t/1156654/seans-windows-7-install-optimization-guide-for-ssds-hdds

As its a laptop for my dad, instead of messing around with partition software I may just leave it as is now Otherwise I would need to put windows on a pen drive and find a large (i guess at least 128gb) pen drive / external hard drive to create an image of the current setup

I tried F8 on boot and then repair and with dell backup and recovery manager I can load a fresh dell os image. (im sure i got rid of dell backup and recovery manager but still, it seems to be in the repair options)
 
Guest2 said:
How when I have no CD drive and no drivers? Easy enough to put windows 7 on an 8gb pen drive I have but dont all the Dell drivers need installing in the correct order - system manager > chipset > network etc etc
Click to expand...

You can download them from the Dell website.
 
TheVoice said:
You can download them from the Dell website.
Click to expand...

God knows why they dont make it easier. e.g. basic drivers > enter service tag > download.

There's about 100 drivers, most of which are probably un-needed bloat drivers like the dell audio manager and wifi managers
 
Easier? It's one of the easiest suppliers to grab drivers from..

Remember Windows 7/8 and especially 8.1 will auto install a lot of drivers anyway, just make sure you have LAN/Wifi covered.
 
Yeh, dell are probably the easiest to get drivers for. What i would create is a single download for basic drivers and full drivers based on model (and seperate too) that wouldnt be too hard
 
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