V570 - Has too many partitions - Can I nuke one? I need a separate Data Partition!

[-Jim-]

Dave,

I've used both Ghost and Acronis back-up solutions, but mostly Ghost. I don't know who wrote the OKR product, but most OEMs sub out these type of packages, and then "Brand" label them. For example, did you know Microsoft contracted it's defrag plug in for Win7 to Diskeeper? So if MS is doing it, you can bet it's very common.

If you use a smaller HD with Ghost it advises you of the fact, and if the permissions were not set before the back up was made to restrict it, you can downsize as long as the full partition(s) are not bigger than the drive. For example, if you have a 60 Gig "C" partition on the back-up image which is 50% full (30 Gigs) , you can't use a 20 Gig Drive. But if it's only 25% full (15 Gigs) it will restore to the smaller 20 Gig Drive with no issue.

I hope I explain that well enough as I'm doing this in the Quick reply box and I'm windy. Lol...

[ElectricHead]

EDIT: I should probably have looked at timestamps before quick replying as now it's all confused.

Dave, that's great, thanks for trying that out.

We are running different subversions of OKR, but I expect that is probably not significant.

When you ran the recovery discs, just to clarify, you booted off them? Do you have 2 or 3 discs? (The software says it needs 3, but often seems to only require 2 which is also true in my case).

Now my curiosity is again piqued and I'm tempted to image my drive and have a go at this also just to confirm... but the flipside is it looks painless if mine also works this way!

EDIT: OKR (or the core at least) seems to be written by Cyberlink

[topmahof Community Moderator]

Jim,

Thanks for clarifying that.  

I use an Apricorn Drivewire to clone with and and the software pretty much takes over and resizes partitions according to the size of the drive and what's on each partition, unless I manually choose the sizes.  I'm not familiar with Ghost or Acronis.  The restore software is Cyberlink.

ElectricHead,

Yeh, I booted from them.  It took me awhile because the discs don't like my Memorex DVD drive.  I had to use a slow no-name drive to do this with.  It took about 1 1/2 hrs. to restore with the discs. I have 3 discs but the 3rd one burned real fast, so I don't think there's much on there.  I understand that if it only burns 2, that's okay.  

I was kind of suprised that there were no surprises.  

Dave 

[dragnoak]

The number of OKR discs required (2 or 3) when creating a "Factory Recovery" set, has been a mystery for many users.

To me, it appears to be a matter of "when" you create the discs. If you create the discs, right out of the box, before you start deleting programs, and other things you don't need, the Factory Recovery set requires, and will write to, 3 discs.

If you create your OKR discs, after you have "messed" with, and deleted what you consider bloatware, it requires, and will write to 2 discs.

Before you say, well Duh... I'm just sayin, if you "really" want to create an image of the factory shipped software, and drivers, you should create the recovery discs ASAP. You can always create another set, after you have made your mods. If some other expert, knows that this reasoning is wrong, please set me right, and let all of us know why.

I created my Y470 recovery discs, on the first start up boot, and it wrote to 3 discs. I've compared my 3 discs structure, to another users 2 discs, who didn't write his discs until after he deleted some of the bloatware.  The only difference between 2, and 3 discs, were the number of Backup.### files contained. The 2 discs in his recovery set contained less than Backup.080. Mine had up to Backup.108, which required a 3rd disc.

Here is my 3 disc OKR Factory Recovery structure:

Disk1

File Folders:

                       BOOT

                       EFI

                       SERVICING

                       SOURCES

Files:

                       Backup.000 through Backup.038

                       Backup.wsi

                       Backup0000.dsi

                       backupInfo.oki

                       BOOTCTG.BIN

                       BOOTIMG.BIN

                       Bootmgr

                       Lang

Disk2

Files:

                     Backup.039 through Backup.080

                     Backup.wsi

                     Backup0000.dsi

Disk3

Files:

                     Backup.081 through Backup.108

                     Backup.wsi

                     Backup0000.dsi

                     And one file with a number code, containing 0Kbs

I hope this helps explain why some users have 3, and others 2 discs.

DragonRider

[ElectricHead]

DragonRider,

As far as I remember, I created my factory discs as literally one of the first things I did and it still only required 2. I didn't delete any software until much further down the line after I'd played around a bit, restored, set it up from fresh and then created a user backup afterwards.

I'm fairly sure when I recovered from the factory discs I didn't actually boot off them, so perhaps that makes the difference as to whether it re-partitions or not.

There still seems to be some nuances to this process that I'm not clear about or seem to be inconsistent between models. I think I'll try and get into a position where I can repeat Dave's procedure just to check everything does indeed work the same way. The factory discs seem like a much more useful utility this way.

As an aside re: Acronis, my Z570 has a Western Digital drive and there's a free WD version of Acronis True Image. I believe it's basically the same but will only work on WD drives (sort of, you can save a compressed image which handles free space intelligently to an arbitrary external, but you can only restore the image to a WD branded drive.) Might be worth a look if your laptop also has a WD drive as it's a powerful tool ...and it's free.

[Shingo]

I went through most of the thread and here's my question. If the repartioning operation can be dangerous, lead to some errors then what do you recommend to do?

An over 650 GB system partition is ridiculous. What if I will have to restore the system because of some serious problem? What will I do with all of the data stored on the drive? Just forget about the 500 GB's of data? Buy an external HDD for backup? There's no way I will do that ofc.

I'm open for any suggestions.

[topmahof Community Moderator]

Hi Shingo,

There's no easy answer to your questions.

Hard drives fail, sometimes with little to no warning.  The safest way is to burn a set of restore discs and save a full backup to an external hard drive.  Doing a backup on your internal hard drive is fine, but what if the drive fails?

There's a big thread stickied at the top of this board about repartitioning and OneKey working and not working.  There seems to be some solutions, but I haven't tried any of them. You might want to check that out.  

Dave

[oLNutJob]

I realize that the average person tosses away the DVD's with the box or is just unable to figure out a reinstall, but......

Half of ths forum is related to issues with hidden recovery partitions. The first thing I did after unboxing my IdeaPad was burn recovery disks, and for bad karma, it didn't work.

Those included, silver coasters of yesteryear that used to be OEM, would save a magnitude of time & headache.

[fiesta]

As an other fellow member has posted regularly,

Allow me to quote:

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

There's a reason for everything being there and as it is, and when the issues start rising,

your warranties are not gonna like

these "adjustments".

These aren't ikea build it yourself products, a lot of intelligent people put these products together, i have reason to believe they know what they're doing...

Just sayin'.

[countrywise]

Hi Fiesta,

up to a point, i would totally agree,

HOWEVER,

Where on earth or rather what is the logic of the current setup of the partitions.?

Which bright spark at Lenovo and elsewhere,thought it to be totally appropriate,

to give the majority of space to C:,

while giving a pittance to D:?

And as if that wasn't enough,then they make sure that OKR,

will give you headaches,if you try to redress the balance!

İntelligent people my foot!

Just sayin..