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Recovery Drive, can I trim it down?

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I’m running Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit, and besides the hidden drives I can’t access normally, I have my C: drive and my D: drive

my D: drive [name is designated as RECOVERY (D:)] is apparently used for computer backups, but I see its almost full; is there a safe way to clear that drive out so I can free it up for some fresh backups, also, since I already know how to use the Drive Manager to trim some free space off of my C: drive and turn it into a digital Hard Drive on my computer, can I use the method of trimming some free space off of my C: drive and giving said free space to my Recovery D: drive?

also, its been a LONG time since I’ve been on here, and I’m glad to be back……….or something

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Clarifications

In reply to Recovery Drive, can I trim it down?

Clarifications

the recovery partition

In reply to Recovery Drive, can I trim it down?

is the equivalent of windows install discs. the contents of that partition should stay exactly the same, from when the hard drive is inserted at the factory, to when you throw the computer out (unless you choose to erase it)

long story short, the drive should be perfectly fine the way it is 😉

Well assuming that this is an Off the Shelf System

In reply to Recovery Drive, can I trim it down?

You have one HDD with a Recovery Partition and the remainder of the drive is split into 2 partition the C & D Partitions.

Depending on what you are using to do the Backup’s I would imagine that they create a Image of the C Drive and with you doing more than 1 Backup you get a different copy to the D Drive/Partition. If that’s the case all you need do is delete any Old Backup’s as they are now old copies which are out of date.

However you’ll need to make sure what is exactly happening here. Ideally you should be doing a Complete Backup on each Occasion but it’s possible that you have done a Complete Backup on the First Occasion and then Incremental Backup’s from then. If that the case you’ll need all of what has been saved to the D Partition if you ever need to recover from a Software Failure like getting Vista infected to the stage that it needs rebuilding.

If the above is what is happening here you’ll need to delete everything on the D Partition and do a New Full Backup and then perform Incremental Backup’s from that point on till that Partition Fills up again, or better still use an External HDD to backup to and unplug it and put it away when it’s not in use. After all having more than 1 Partition on a HDD with a Backup of the OS and Data on the same Drive is not really a backup as when the HDD fails you have not got anything to recover from and have lost all of your Data.

Also when you ask questions like this you should tell us what software you are using to perform the backup’s as different software works in different ways and it’s not possible to give a definitive answer if we do not know what it is you are using. 😉

Col

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In reply to Well assuming that this is an Off the Shelf System

this isn’t an off the shelf system, when I got my computer originally, It came pre-installed with everything

Reponse To Answer

In reply to Well assuming that this is an Off the Shelf System

@ haxdnoob

That is what off-the-shelf means.

Recovery partition

In reply to Recovery Drive, can I trim it down?

I’m going to assume that your harddrive has just 2 partions, the C: (primary) and the D: (Recovery). That’s the way my HP was when I got it 3 years ago. My D: drive has a 8gig partition, or thereabouts. It is NOT a backup drive. It is basically an “image” of the factory build. The D drive should stay as it is, untouched. Untouched only if you want to ever restore your PC to it’s factory image. If you’re like me, I DID NOT get any software media with my PC. It’s all on the D: drive image. There’s probably a selection in your Start Menu where you can create Recovery disks. Do it. It’s a life saver.

My hard drive failed this past weekend. I always have backups of my data. I had bought a smaller 2nd drive an used it for nothing more than a backup drive (using Robocopy, Thanks Greg!). I bought a new hard drive, replaced it, and on boot I selected the recovery/rebuild from the boot screen. stuck the first of the 2 DVDs and my PC was back up and running in about an hour. All I had to do was install the programs that I had added, and I copied my data back and it was good as before the disk failure.

Maybe even better than before since I didn’t reinstall all the extraneous software that I had installed and uninstall over 3 years.

That isn’t for backups.

In reply to Recovery Drive, can I trim it down?

It is the factory image for installing the OS and whatever drivers, support, and apps the OEM configured the system with.

If you want to free up space, clean out junk (CCleaner is good for this) and have a look at System Restore. If the max SR points space is set high, it’ll just keep growing. You can delete old restore points and shrink it. (Edit – you can do this right from CCleaner as well as the normal Windows interface.)

And the last question of yours; don’t.

In reply to Recovery Drive, can I trim it down?

Don’t try to expand the D: logical drive.

Reponse To Answer

In reply to And the last question of yours; don’t.

ok, thanks anyways for helping me guys; and I also learned a little bit more about my PC that I didn’t know…………the more you know

[Author]

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