BleepingComputer.com: Recovery (d)

Genuine Windows Vista™ Home Basic
- AMD Athlon™ 64 3500+ (2.2GHz / 512KB L2 cache)
- 1024MB DDR2-533MHz(2x512)
- 160GB 7200 rpm SATA 3Gb/s hard drive
- 48x max. CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive (48x32x16x48x)

Ive had my new computer for about a week. Im not very happy with most of this experience. One thing I'd like to know is now that I have my system recovery cds. Do I have to leave that information on my D drive.
Im not seeing any reason that I cant delete that info since I have it on cd.

Ive tried to shrink the recovery drive and that didnt work.
Ive gone the the tutorials of the low disk error.

Recovery CD's got lost or damaged. I've seen it happen too often.

I'd leave it be as is now. You've a 160GB HD, that recovery is really just a small part of the whole.

From what my computer is telling me I have 857MB left on the the D drive.
Ive had nothing but problems since I got this... Ive been working with HP and have gone thru quite a few hoops. and nothing seems to work.
I do understand about lost disc. but Im not worried about that. Ive been pretty good about keeping them around. (notice I dont dare say 'I never loose them"...lol..
Im more worried about just cleaning that thing out.

The recovery partition on your hard drive should not be the cause of any major problems, and having a backup handy on your computer should give you an extra sense of security (especially if your cat is attracted to shiney objects). The recovery portion of your used space is certainly not large enough to be a cause for concern.
Perhaps if you could outline for us the kinds of problems you are experiencing with your new computer, it would help our Members to understand their cause.
Regards,
John

Well my first was that I couldn't do a back up due to the lack of space on my drive.
I then did a test and found I only had around 17% space left.
I guess whats setting a knot in my drawers is that its brand new and I expected that Id have more free space than I had on my old computer. And when I go to 'fix' it I'm asked to buy more memory.

This was my last test on this my new computer:
http://www.pcpitstop.com/techexpress.asp?id=PDHHHWJFL9WS114W

And this was my old computer that I had slllaaammed with tons and tons of unnecessary junk! :
http://www.pcpitstop.com/techexpress.asp?id=DR7ZFWZW8TWSFF4W

But comparing scores seems like Id been smarter to just get more memory on my old one!
maybe I'm being too sensitive but seems like a new machine would have more space before I even add anything.
But if there were files that I was able to delete off of D and still be safe to run this machine Id feel better starting out with more area to work with.
I also thought if I could rid myself of that then I could do a back up and start from there for recovery, as Ive already done quite a bit of work to delete files of programs that I didn't want nor need.

Hey Learninlady -

I believe you may be overreacting to what isn't an issue, the way I see it.

Going to your PCPitstop link, I find:

Description Drive C Drive D
Partition format NTFS NTFS
Cluster size 4 KB 4 KB
Drive label HP Recovery
Size 145758 MB 6866 MB
Free space 112914 MB (77%) 857 MB (12%)

So, on your primary HD drive C:, you have almost 113Gs of free space. That's more than reasonable on a fairly new system.

Your "Recovery" drive, drive D: is a 6.8G drive, with only 857M of free space. Using less than 7G of a 160G drive for the Recovery drive is also very reasonable - in that 7Gs is the 20-30Gs of original OS and programs that were on your system when you first got it, in a highly compressed format.

I would not worry about that 7G recovery partition at all. There are ways to delete it, and even add it to your main partition, but for the majority of us folks, it may not be worth the effort for the majority of users. If you ever get to where you could use that 7G, you probably need a bigger, or second, HD anyway.



Question - when you tried to backup, and got that "lack of space" message, how and where were you trying to backup?

If I am interpreting the data correctly at the link you provided, the recovery partition is 86 percent full (which is not a problem, since you will not be writing files to it), and your C: drive is is only 23 percent full.
If I am incorrect, let me know.
Cheers,
John

Just a bit more - you'll need the free space on the recovery partition (D drive) if you restore from it. The system will need the free space to do it's "thing" while restoring. Normally we recommend at least 15% free space on a drive - so 12% is reasonable.

Were you trying to backup to the D: drive? If so, I'd recommend against that. Not only is the free space needed there, but should the drive crash there's no assurance of your data remaining intact. External USB drives are rather cheap these days (as are CD's) and I'd suggest using them for backups as they won't be affected by any drive problems that may occur. But since you've got about 8 times as much hard drive space on your new hard drive as you had on your old one - I'd think you'd have plenty of space to do whatever you need.

You can always shrink the C: partition and create another partition in the unallocated space also.

While you might be able to use more memory - you've got Vista Basic which (IMO) doesn't require as much RAM as the fancier versions of Vista. I have a laptop with Vista Ultimate (and a bunch of tweaks) that works Just fine with only 1 gB of RAM. I've got 2 other cheap laptops with Vista Home Basic that work just fine with the standard amount of RAM that they came with.