Blowing Away the Recovery Partition...Advice?

Brian K wrote:
Daddy,

We seem to disagree about the MBR. If you are going to keep your Dell
Utility partition then you need the Dell MBR. (Although I don't have a Dell
MBR I can boot into the Utility partition with BING). Why do you want to get
rid of the Dell MBR? I'm curious.

If you don't have the Utility partition it shouldn't matter if you have a
Dell, a standard or a Win7 MBR. Some computer brands need a Win7 MBR
although I don't think this applies to Dell.

"Windows 7 has tied the MBR code to the kernel loader such that a normal
standard MBR may not allow Windows 7 to boot on certain machines."


I think you misunderstand me, my friend. I'm fully aware that the
Diagnostic partition (and the Recovery partition) need Dell's modified
MBR to be accessible. It's only if I was to completely do away with both
those partitions...for example, if I was to remove /all/ partitions and
start with an unpartitioned, formatted hard drive and then restore my
backed-up system and data partitions...in that case a plain vanilla
Windows 7 MBR would work. (At least, that's what I think, and that's the
question I asked in the SP forum.)

Clearly Dell has gone out of its way to make it very difficult to tamper
with its partitions, and this is entirely justified. If I understand
correctly, the MBR is actually located in the Recovery partition, and it
looks to see what's in the keyboard buffer before deciding where to send
the user.

Keep 'em both or nuke 'em both, that's the easy decision. If I want to
keep just one, well, that's do-able but it will take some learning on my
part. So many angles, so many ways to work it. It's something I'll
actually enjoy studying, and when I make my move, I'll publish the results.

Daddy

"Daddy" wrote in message
...

If I understand correctly, the MBR is actually located in the Recovery
partition, and it
looks to see what's in the keyboard buffer before deciding where to send
the user.


Ah, I think I understand your concern about the MBR. The MBR is not located
inside any partition. So even if you deleted all partitions from your HD and
manually reinstalled Win7, you would still have a Dell MBR. The MBR is
located in LBA-0. The first sector on the HD. The first partition, the Dell
Utility partition, is typically cylinder aligned and starts at LBA-63. Out
of interest, here is a Dell MBR with the customized Dell boot code outlined.

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b1...l-mbr-code.gif

And here is a Win7 MBR

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b1...e/MBR-Win7.gif

And here is a Standard MBR

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b1...R-Standard.gif

And here is a BING MBR

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b1...e/MBR-BING.gif



Don't get me wrong. If you delete both Dell partitions it doesn't matter
which MBR you choose. Your Win7 will still boot. One MBR won't work any
"better or worse" than another. (Except for the issue mentioned in my
previous post).

Brian K wrote:
"Daddy" wrote in message
...
If I understand correctly, the MBR is actually located in the Recovery
partition, and it
looks to see what's in the keyboard buffer before deciding where to send
the user.


Ah, I think I understand your concern about the MBR. The MBR is not located
inside any partition. So even if you deleted all partitions from your HD and
manually reinstalled Win7, you would still have a Dell MBR. The MBR is
located in LBA-0. The first sector on the HD. The first partition, the Dell
Utility partition, is typically cylinder aligned and starts at LBA-63. Out
of interest, here is a Dell MBR with the customized Dell boot code outlined.

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b1...l-mbr-code.gif

And here is a Win7 MBR

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b1...e/MBR-Win7.gif

And here is a Standard MBR

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b1...R-Standard.gif

And here is a BING MBR

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b1...e/MBR-BING.gif



Don't get me wrong. If you delete both Dell partitions it doesn't matter
which MBR you choose. Your Win7 will still boot. One MBR won't work any
"better or worse" than another. (Except for the issue mentioned in my
previous post).



Aha! I think I get it now.

I always thought that the MBR was located at sector 0, and that the
first partition usually starts at sector 63 (the beginning of the second
track).

In Windows 7's Disk Management utility, the Recovery partition is
labeled Boot - among other things - so I thought that Dell somehow
'moved' the MBR into this partition.

Therefore, I reasoned, if I remove the Recovery partition, I won't boot.

Now I don't know why the Recovery partition is labelled Boot, but if the
MBR is still at sector 0, I'll still boot even without the Recovery
partition.

That being the case, do I understand you correctly to say that I can
just delete the Recovery partition (I have it backed up anyway) and I'll
still boot just fine? And I'll still be able to boot into the Diagnostic
partition? The only difference is that if I try to boot to the (absent)
Recovery partition, that nothing will happen?

Daddy

Daddy,

Have another look in Disk Management. The Recovery partition is not the Boot
partition. It is the System partition as it contains the booting files. I
know that doesn't sound correct but that's what Microsoft call it. Win7 is
the Boot partition as it contains the Windows folder.

So if you delete the Recovery partition, Win7 won't boot. You will get this
error..

BOOTMGR is missing
Press Control Alt Delete to restart

That's because you have deleted the booting files that were in the Recovery
partition. The procedure I described earlier is to copy the booting files
from the Recovery partition to the Win7 partition. This will allow Win7 to
boot on its own without needing a second partition containing the booting
files.

Does this make sense? Having booting files outside of the Win7 partition is
going to cause problems for some folks when restoring images to a new HD
(say due to a HD failure) as two partitions will need to be restored to
allow Win7 to boot.

I omitted....

You can delete the Recovery partition and keep a functioning Utility
partition.

Brian K wrote:
Daddy,

Have another look in Disk Management. The Recovery partition is not the Boot
partition. It is the System partition as it contains the booting files. I
know that doesn't sound correct but that's what Microsoft call it. Win7 is
the Boot partition as it contains the Windows folder.

So if you delete the Recovery partition, Win7 won't boot. You will get this
error..

BOOTMGR is missing
Press Control Alt Delete to restart

That's because you have deleted the booting files that were in the Recovery
partition. The procedure I described earlier is to copy the booting files
from the Recovery partition to the Win7 partition. This will allow Win7 to
boot on its own without needing a second partition containing the booting
files.

Does this make sense? Having booting files outside of the Win7 partition is
going to cause problems for some folks when restoring images to a new HD
(say due to a HD failure) as two partitions will need to be restored to
allow Win7 to boot.



Alright now, get ready: Daddy's going to eat crow.

The whole premise behind my original post was my recollection that the
Recovery partition was labeled Boot in Disk Management. On your
suggestion, I checked again.

Guess what I discovered?

So forget all that convoluted stuff about the Master Boot Record; make
like it was an entire season of Dallas.

The key to success in removing the Recovery partition is knowing that
/it/ contains the boot files, and not the C: drive...that's what you've
been trying to tell me all along!

Daddy

Dallas was a great series. In its day. I loved JR.

On Tue, 23 Mar 2010 00:49:02 -0400, Daddy
wrote:

Brian K wrote:
Daddy,

Have another look in Disk Management. The Recovery partition is not the Boot
partition. It is the System partition as it contains the booting files. I
know that doesn't sound correct but that's what Microsoft call it. Win7 is
the Boot partition as it contains the Windows folder.

So if you delete the Recovery partition, Win7 won't boot. You will get this
error..

BOOTMGR is missing
Press Control Alt Delete to restart

That's because you have deleted the booting files that were in the Recovery
partition. The procedure I described earlier is to copy the booting files
from the Recovery partition to the Win7 partition. This will allow Win7 to
boot on its own without needing a second partition containing the booting
files.

Does this make sense? Having booting files outside of the Win7 partition is
going to cause problems for some folks when restoring images to a new HD
(say due to a HD failure) as two partitions will need to be restored to
allow Win7 to boot.



Alright now, get ready: Daddy's going to eat crow.

The whole premise behind my original post was my recollection that the
Recovery partition was labeled Boot in Disk Management. On your
suggestion, I checked again.

Guess what I discovered?

So forget all that convoluted stuff about the Master Boot Record; make
like it was an entire season of Dallas.

The key to success in removing the Recovery partition is knowing that
/it/ contains the boot files, and not the C: drive...that's what you've
been trying to tell me all along!

Daddy


How much space do you gain?

On Mon, 22 Mar 2010 22:52:56 GMT, "Brian K"
wrote:

I omitted....

You can delete the Recovery partition and keep a functioning Utility
partition.



And / or use Acronis to more or less do the same.

"RnR" wrote in message
...

How much space do you gain?


About 10 GB. I think the recovery partition is that size.