Recovery (D)

hethmar

Could someone help please. On "My computer" I have a Recovery drive (D) which seems almost full up. I dont even know what its for?

When I explore it and click on files I get several back up files, sets? All modified within a couple of minutes of each other back in July and all about 250 kb?? Can I delete these or what are they please?

cooltt

oh come on the drive is exactly as it says, a recovery drive. You can restore your system back to it's original state using this drive if you pc goes nuts.

If you have a recovery dvd with your pc then you don't need this recovery drive.

Sublime_2

If you haven't got a recovery disk, make sure you create one, before deleting this.

hethmar

cooltt, I cant see how you could actually access it if your pc goes nuts though? Ive never been able to use system restore since I got VISTA. If this recovery drive is adding on stuff all the time so its nearly full, surely thats going to cause me probs?

The point being it has a bunch of big files all made within minutes of each other - surely they must just be duplicated? Cant I delete them?

Sublime I have the Dell VISTA disc.

davb

It will be a system recovery partition that will restore your system to how it was when you bought it. It won't update at all, that's the idea - it will get the system running if it is broken due to something changing.
You normally access it by a key sequence when the computer its turned on - it's nothing to do with system restore in windows. You need to be aware that a factory restore is a last resort, and will erase ALL of your files and programs.

hethmar

Thanks dav. Trouble is as Im a dumbo I think back in July when I was trying to back up my docs to a disc unsuccessfully I clicked on this back up button which was for this recovery drive thing. So I think Ive sort of copied it over and over and thats whats taking up the space.

Absolutely ignorant, but if its the system on there, could I not delete all the "sets" except one of them? Or have I got completely the wrong idea

Sublime_2

My mum's got a Dell PC, I think her partition was a few gb, although I can't quite remember. Info about the Dell recovery drive is here.

If you really want to delete it, here's some info here, and here.

4743hudsonj

hethmar wrote: »

Thanks dav. Trouble is as Im a dumbo I think back in July when I was trying to back up my docs to a disc unsuccessfully I clicked on this back up button which was for this recovery drive thing. So I think Ive sort of copied it over and over and thats whats taking up the space.

Absolutely ignorant, but if its the system on there, could I not delete all the "sets" except one of them? Or have I got completely the wrong idea

you have the wrong idea, as explained the recovery partition is a completely different thing to windows recovery. Leave the system alone. full stop. It wont cause you any problems, it wont change, it wont get bigger.

In effect, a partition is splitting a single hard drive up into sections, that an OS (windows) picks up as two separate drives. In other words it looks and basically is that you have 2 hard drives. The recovery drive has a set memory. This cannot be changed without good knowledge how to do so. So even if you did delete these files. it would only create space of the recovery HDD and not your normal HDD that you save everything in

Only way to change this is to format whichever drive appears second in diskmgmt and merge it back to the first drive. And you dont want to do this as either way you lose data that is better kept safe.

Sublime_2

I wouldn't delete it, just in case, but its your decision.

Esqui

As it's a Dell, I would advise against deleting this. Yes, you have the disc, but the recovery partition performs a complete recovery and gets it running again.

If you use the OS disc, you have to run that, then stick in the driver disc and load each driver onto the computer, then stick in the Dell utilities disc and load all of those on. It takes about twice as long, and is really annoying.

hethmar

Thanks guys. The problem is I appreciate it isnt like system recovery (which hasnt worked on VISTA) but the fact is IT IS getting bigger - LOL. As I tried to explain I think I believed I could back up my docs using it to a cd and I have inadvertently copied whatever was on that drive several times. It now has very little space on it. So I thought I could delete some of the sets which are copies and it wouldnt be a problem.

I wasnt going to delete the drive, just some of the "sets" of files that are apparently duplicated on it