Understand partitioning

[Astoria]

Hi,

I hope this message is in the correct location.

I'm new to the forum and only turned my new G570 on this afternoon.  I've not owned or used a Lenovo before.

Please can someone explain the partitioning setup for the machine and answer the following questions.

• In the 'Disk Management' program I have 4 harddrive volumes - 14.75MB 'OEM Partition', 200MB 'System, Active, Primary Partition', 552.22GB 'Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition' (C and 29GB 'Logical Drive' (D.  In My Computer only the C: and D: appear.  I understand Windows is located in the C: but what does the D: contain and what for?
• On my old laptop I had a C: for all the Windows files and a D: where I installed all my programs (work packages, games, etc) and stored all my document files, music and photos.  Whenever I reinstalled Windows to factory defaults it only ever touched the C: (Windows files).  Can I setup my new system in the same way, if so how do I do it?  If I add a new partition for installing my programs to and saving my personal files will this be affected by the OneTouch restore system?

Thanks for any help you can give.

Astoria

[topmahof Community Moderator]

Hi Astoria and welcome to the community,

Here's a Knowledge Base article on how to make a set of recovery discs and what is on those partitions.

Don't change anything until you burn a set of recovery discs.

Dave 

[Astoria]

Firstly, sorry for the smilies in my original message, I don't know what happened.

Thanks for the speedy reply Dave.

[Astoria]

I have another question!

I've created the factory recovery disks as per the article recommended.

I'm not particular computer confident and the second part of the article, starting "If you want a bigger sized harddrive" didn't make a great deal of sense.  I still want to change the partitions as per my original question (above).  What is the best way to do this?  In addition, if i use the OKR or factory default disks will it overright or erase the new partition (personal files and programs) that I want to create?

I hope this makes sense.

Thanks for any more help you can provide.

Astoria

[topmahof Community Moderator]

Hi Astoria,

First of all, at the top of this forum, there's a stickied thread that has to do with changing the partitions, deleting them, and using OKR.  Most of what is in there has to do with OKR not working anymore because of changes in the partitions and the members didn't burn recovery discs.  

There are actually four partitions on your hard disc.  The three that you saw and a fourth hidden partitions which contains part of the recovery process.  D: has your drivers and applications and it also has hidden files that are part of the recovery process.

I played around with the recovery discs on a U160. I'll have to find that thread for you.

Changing the partitions will cause OKR to not work anymore, but there are workarounds for that.

Using the recovery discs will put the partitions back the way they were and you will lose the data in your data partition.  There is also a thread here on that also, I'll try to find that stuff for you.

Dave

[Astoria]

Hi Dave,

I briefly saw the thread at the top but wasn't sure it applied to my type of machine.  Having a quick glance at a couple of posted it looks quite scary.  Do you think, with your knowledge of the subject, I should leave the partitions alone and just work with the situation?  NB It seems like quite a big problem that Lenovo's have, yet my old Acer solved the problem fantastically by proving a 'D: Data' for personal files and when the factory restore disks were used it only affected the other partition 'C: Windows'.

Not knowing what your answer to the question in the previous paragraph might be, I would still like to look through the topics you mentioned in the last message.

Regards,

Astoria

[topmahof Community Moderator]

Yeh, the onekey recovery is pretty much the same across all the IdeaPads and the 3000 series.

I found the thread where we were experimenting with the recovery discs and the partitions.  It explains pretty well what the partitions are and what's on them.  When I was messing with it, I didn't touch the hidden Lenovo partition, I just messed with C: and D:.  

There are some threads here where people resized their D: and C: and onekey still worked, but they will be a little harder to find.

As long as you don't mess with the hidden partition and the small partition at the beginning of the drive, (Windows system files), and you  have the recovery discs, (and they are made sure to work), you can mess with the partitions.  

Another way to do it is to use cloning software.  Once you change the partitions around and get your data on the drive that you want, you could clone an image of the drive to external media and restore from that if something gets messed up. 

If things get too messed up, you always have the recovery discs.

Dave

[Astoria]

Firstly, I've got to say a massive thankyou for taking the time to write all the replies and putting up with my ignorance about a topic that seems to be constantly repeated.

I looked through that thread and although much is technically above my head, i've definitely got the feeling it's best to just leave the partitions as they are. I've burned factory default disks (2 DVDs) using the OKR button (I hope they will work if/when I need them). I've decided I'm going to start installing all my programs and moving all my personal files into a "My Files" folder I will create on the C:. To ensure I don't lose any important files I'm going to continue regularly backing up onto my external Seagate drive.

Thanks for all your help. I'll definitely be back on this forum.

Feel free to ignore this last question.
Is there a set of first time user processes I should perform to do the best thing for my laptop and for future maintainance?

[topmahof Community Moderator]

Trying to pick the meat out of some of these monster threads can be a nightmare at times.  I like to explain things to people as I would like it to be explained to me, (which doesn't happen all too often).

One thing you might want to do is go into Control Panel, backup and restore and burn yourself a system repair disc and a system image disc before you install all your programs.  Also, you should boot from the recovery discs you made and make sure they boot.  It will take you to a recovery panel where you have a choice to restore from a backup, (which you're gonna make), or from the default image that's on the discs.  It would be a drag if the discs won't boot.  The system repair disc might come in handy if you ever have to to a Windows repair. The system image disc would wipe the drive and install Windows on the whole drive, so you don't really want to use that.  That's just like having another way to install Windows.  

Also, don't be too quick to update your drivers and such.  If everything is working as designed, you could install a buggy driver where it won't.  The driver pages for these machines have drivers with dates that might be later than yours.  Those dates are usually the dates that the driver was posted, it might be an older driver than what you have.  A new machine will probably have drivers that are newer than the ones listed on the site anyway. Lenovo is in the process of combining ThinkPad and IdeaPad driver sites so everything is on one site, but that's going to be awhile yet.

Enjoy your new machine.  Any problems, post back.

Edit:  Don't be too quick to install the optional hardware updates from Windows Update.  (optional updates).  There's some nightmares around here where people did just that and things stopped working.

Dave