Unknown partitions

done4now · 07-01-2011 1:51pm #1

I want to format and old Dell Dimension 4700 and when I went to do it last night I found that there was 4 partitions but I have only been using one. Is it safe to delete the other ones as I have no idea what they are.

Odaise Gaelach · 07-01-2011 2:18pm

They could be backup or recovery partitions. It's impossible for us to really say. But you definitely should find out what they are and what's on those partitions before you delete them.

done4now · 07-01-2011 3:55pm

Any idea how I can do that? As you can see from the below image I cant exactly just go into My Computer!

woolymammoth · 07-01-2011 3:55pm

the first one is a boot partition.
second is your C drive.
third is likely a recovery partition for restoring the pc to a factory state, accessible through some options made available with the boot partition.

If you have a Windows CD and don't care about any of the above, delete them all then create one new single partition to install Windows on.

woolymammoth · 07-01-2011 3:57pm

done4now wrote: »

Any idea how I can do that? As you can see from the below image I cant exactly just go into My Computer!

you can right click on the 3.5gig FAT32 disk there and assign it a drive letter, then you will be able to accessit in explorer.

done4now · 07-01-2011 4:12pm

woolymammoth wrote: »

you can right click on the 3.5gig FAT32 disk there and assign it a drive letter, then you will be able to accessit in explorer.

When I rick click on it the only options made available to me are Delete and Help

Would I not need to keep the boot partition or is it safe enough to delete that?

woolymammoth · 07-01-2011 4:26pm

done4now wrote: »

When I rick click on it the only options made available to me are Delete and Help

Would I not need to keep the boot partition or is it safe enough to delete that?

oh well..

You don't need to worry about the boot partition, it has particular uses for different situations. What are you installing anyway, XP? I can tell you i've done that a thousand times, all you need is one blank disk! As long as you have your data backed up, format the lot

done4now · 07-01-2011 5:52pm

Yeah its XP.

Ive done it before but this is the first time I have come across multiple partitions before. So will I delete them all or just leave C and then format that?

woolymammoth · 07-01-2011 5:54pm

done4now wrote: »

Yeah its XP.

Ive done it before but this is the first time I have come across multiple partitions before. So will I delete them all or just leave C and then format that?

if it were up to me, personally, i would delete them all.

ressem · 07-01-2011 7:58pm

Just to explain what these other partitions are for.

If you have everything backed up then don't format, just restart the computer.

A blue bar on a black screen should appear while booting the computer.
While this is displayed hit F11 and it'll give the option to restore to factory settings, windows XP with all the drivers and probably the useless Norton trial or whatever trialware people paid dell to include on the machine.

If you have all the CDs drivers and the time to reinstall them all after installing XP then deleting the extra partitions frees up a little space.

Make sure that your XP cd recognises your hard drive when you boot from it before deleting the partitions. You might require SATA controller drivers on a floppy disk otherwise.

done4now · 07-01-2011 9:43pm

I would have done this last night but I was unsure about deleting the partitions as I didnt know what they where for. So much so I will now have to wait till next week to format the machine.

I have everything backed up 40GBs worth. I have the original CD's that came with the machine and the first attached image was from me Booting from the CD.

So you are staying if I have the CDs and time to just delete everything and not bother doing the System Restore?

Unknown partitions

Comments