Partitioning Cautions

I got tired of Vista's bugginess and used its nice partitioning tool to shrink the Vista partition and create some 11 gigs of free space on my hdd. So now I've installed XP (making three partitions--Vista, XP, and Dell's recovery partition, which will stay there until my warrantee runs out this coming May).

So far the partioning part has been good. I've had to be very careful about drivers (this hardware was designed for Vista), but I think I've got almost everything taken care of.

I do have one general question--is there anything about partitioning that can come back and bite me in the behind later on? This is teh first time I've done it, and I really don't want to pay a heavy price later on down the road. I am using my docs on the Vista partition (in fact, I've already changed the target for XP's My Documents to the Documents directory in my Vista partition)--so I'm installing a few programs that I know I will need on this smaller, XP partition. Anything I need to be leery of? I suppose I should have asked this before, but why be hesitate when I can just hack away and take care of any problems with the advice of you guys?

 

Oh yeah I made a DVD of all my files--I like to do that every month anyways, so that wasn't much of a hassle.

As far as the recovery partition, I believe I've heard Dell reps tell me that if you reformatted your hdd or partitioned it, that they were no longer liable to support any problems you have. As the years go by, I call Dell less and less, but in the event of a hardware problem, I'd like to be able to restore my repartitioned hdd to just the way it was when I got it, just so they can't void my warranty. As far as a true recovery, I'd rather just use the OS disc that I got with the laptop, then use Dell's partition and then have to clean up all those 90-day offers and other junk that would be on it.

I don't know if that is misinformation or not--not sure where I picked up that idea--I believe it was from a Dell rep.

 

OMG LOL...Thanks for the laugh, but either you had the misfortune of getting the dumbest "tech support" guy/girl when you called in, or Dell's warranty is designed to never be used. LOL...

Steve...haha...post #4...consecutive threads at that. lol...So psaulm119, as Steve said, 11GB are not really worthy of their own drive letter.

I would consolidate the "Dell partition" with the one you use most. It's the first thing I do with every new Thinkpad I buy. If you're super worried, create a recovery CD/DVD set for your peace of mind, or, as Steve said, ask Dell to send you a set. Dell may attempt to charge you for it, though. IBM/Lenovo does, but there is a way around that charge. If Dell's support is anything like IBM/Lenovo, a simple "OMG, my HD is dead, but I have another one, so can you please... ", etc. and they'll overnight you a set.

Oh, and the rescue disk set that you made the minute you got your laptop, because you're a loyal and responsible Dell customer is...umm...nowhere to be found/dog ate it and died/fiance broke it and tried to kill you with it. Something subtle like that. Be creative...

 

Hey thanks for questioning that opinion. I just got off a chat session with Dell (transcript will be saved) denying that--that it voids the warrantee.

OK now I've got 10 more gigs to play with.

As far as the size is concerned, yes its small but given that all my data was on another partition, after installing the programs I use (a codec pack was substituted for all those media players) I still had a good 5 gigs left of empty space.

Thanks again.

 

Well Crunch Dude since you're in the mood for laughs, I kid you not this is true--I called Dell once when I had a question about WinDVD Player software. B/c it came with an OEM DVD recorder, the software maker told me to contact Dell, so I did.

Dell told me that they wouldn't answer my questions, b/c WinDVD Player was made by Microsoft. I kid you not. I couldn't believe my ears and challenged that, only to be informed that the "Win" in the name refers to "Windows..." It was almost worth the laugh to be denied the support. Almost...

 

Not "Almost" LOLOL...File that one both in classic, and super stupid. lol...Who is in charge of hiring these people?

So you have a 5GB codec pack??? Did I read that right? Ever tried VLAN?

Glad it worked out for ya.

 

Oh no not that much...Its Klite mega, which has even Real Alt codecs....a bit less than 40 megs. Out of 11 gigs of space, after installing the OS and all the other programs, I have 5-6 gigs left. But the next time I boot into Vista (which will be no later than the release of SP1--and I don't mean beta, but the actual release), I'll use Vista's partition manager to merge that into my XP 11 gig partition--unless I need those extra 10 gigs beforehand.

I did use VLAN for a while, but I forget why I uninstalled it.

 

VLAN is awesome. That thing plays everything!

 

Yeah I heard good things about it, but given that I don't have any OGG files, and I rarely use media players on my laptop, WMP really does pretty much everything I ask it to. I'm the kind of person that will stick with the stock program until it goofs up (which is why I surf with Mozilla, read pdfs with Foxit, etc.) In the early days I was a freeware addict, but found that constantly installing stuff clogged up the start menu and gave me too many choices to look at, so in a sense, nowadays, small is beautiful.