Hard drive partitions

donny-gal

Well the good news is I have got my laptop up and running with SSD and a new version of Win10 and Microsoft Office 2010. I found a bit of free software from Nirsoft, which found my Product Keys for me:o just loading what I need before doing a Reflect Backup just in case I need it.
However on the old HDD, the was a partition just 25gb with no drive letter called Recovery, and I am presuming all the Asus files I may need are on there. Looked at it under Windows and says Healthy Primary Partition. Is there a way I can give it a drive letter so I can copy what is in there before wiping the disk?
DG

Fellwalker

I would suggest that the old partition is useless since you have upgraded to Windows 10.
If it is like my Dell, it had the ability to recover your laptop to the state it was in on delivery.

It might have the drivers for your original operating system and components. I don't know about you, but I don't ever want to go back to Windows 7 now, good as it was. None of the components on my PC have Dell provided drivers, so nothing from that partition was of any use.

Windows 10 can be given a fresh install so long as it has been installed once on your computer. There are options in the boot menu if it fails to load 3 times, or you can go to the Microsoft site on a different computer and download a file to be installed on a USB stick, with which you reboot and install without the ASUS bloat.


If your laptop came with Windows 10, and therefore might have valid drivers, I would suggest that the Asus forums would be a better place to ask as they might know about the way the information is stored.


SSDs make SUCH an incredible difference, don't they? I swapped my HDD for an SSD a couple of years ago, and my 6 year old Dell is still going strong. Good luck.

stragglebod

This site shows you how to hide a recovery partition, just do the reverse:
https://www.howtogeek.com/348168/how-to-hide-a-recovery-partition-or-other-drive-in-windows/


I happen to use Minitool's free partition manager app to do the same, either will do fine.


Like Fellwalker says though, will you really ever want to go back? And even if you do, I'd expect a vanilla Windows 7 installation would detect all the hardware and install drivers anyway just without all the bloatware.

Frozen_up_north

If you have a proper backup of your fresh install, you don't need a recovery partition. Just keep the original backup, that way you have your own "restore".

arciere

Fellwalker wrote: »

I would suggest that the old partition is useless since you have upgraded to Windows 10.

No it's not useless now. If the recovery partition lies before the main Windows partition, deleting it will corrupt the MBR/GPT as the disk will no longer know where the operating system is located.

Uxb

Some of these compressed factory restore/recovery partitions require a special boot up script sequence which the manufacture put on on the computer to enable access them - usually you press a certain Function key during the boot
If you put a new OS on the computer, while the partition is there, access to it is sometimes now impossible.

Heedtheadvice

At this stage you are up and running on ssd and win 10.


Unless you ever wish to revert to a prior version of windows then the hard drive stores are now worthless excepting any data you want to keep that you should ensure is copied and backed up.

Drivers are available to you; any dell software you might desire that is worth anything can be downloaded from them -if you ever need it; programs must be reinstalled (unless you cloned them accross in the process of upgrading) and you might wish to research if any of them have settings files you wish to maintain or their own data saved in their allocated directories.


At this stage the most important aspect is to use Reflect to create a rescue disk from your ssd (in case of startup failures) and a backup of your current win 10 system and if you have space somewhere a full ssd backup. I assume you have a virus checker and firewall on. You are then in a position to recover from most software dissasters.

If you are going to use your hard drive as a data store once you have progressed to your final set up it would be worth buying another usb drive (for local backups) and using another 'device' for a second backup. Running your virus checker scan, malwarebytes and then creating a new rescue disk and backups (windows, ssd in total and data hard drive) so you can recover to that known 'clean' state.
All that might seem overkill but should the worst happen at some stage you can get back to a working system easily and quickly.
It should go without saying you should scan, backup and set restore points (it is turned on?) frequently -appropriate to the frequency of changes on your machine.

donny-gal

It is an Asus N55SF and they haven not updated the drivers from the Win 7 release. Only thing I am struggling with atm is sound, which I am downloading the realtek latest driver release to try that. for Win 10 64bit
DG

esuhl

donny-gal wrote: »

It is an Asus N55SF and they haven not updated the drivers from the Win 7 release. Only thing I am struggling with atm is sound, which I am downloading the realtek latest driver release to try that. for Win 10 64bit
DG

I came across this possible solution, which seems to have worked for some people:

[STRIKE]

1-right click on ''this pc'' and click ''advanced system settings''
2-Click ''hardware'' tab and click on ''device installation settings''
3- Choose ''no, let me chosee what to do'' and ''never install driver software from windows update'' save changes and ok.

after this step I uninstall the soundcard driver from my laptop and restart it. after restart I can listen to music from my speakers without any installation about sound driver. Don't know how but it works. then I download and install the driver from asus website. the driver for windows 7 but its ok. it works well now.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum/insider_wintp-insider_devices/installed-windows-10-on-a-asus-n55s-laptop-and-no/091acb20-fb98-422a-be21-95bbf44b8e6a?auth=1[/STRIKE]

EDIT:
Ah! Apparently the above option has been removed in Win10. There's a new solution which involves changing a folder's permissions:

https://www.tenforums.com/drivers-hardware/10067-realtek-hd-audio-non-sound-after-win-10-upgrade-2.html

donny-gal

One other question, I am always very wary of updating Bios, as I know if it goes wrong the PC is duff, but should I be considering updating it?
DG

arciere

donny-gal wrote: »

One other question, I am always very wary of updating Bios, as I know if it goes wrong the PC is duff, but should I be considering updating it?
DG

If your computer is working fine, no need.