FULL RECOVERY DRIVE(D:)

THE HELP MENU STATES THAT AS THE RECOVERY DRIVE GETS FULL THE OLD BACKUPS ARE
AUTOMATICALLY DELETED BUT IT'S NOT HAPPENING ON MY VISTA SYSTEM. HOW DO I
DELETE THE OLD BACKUPS TO MAKE SPACE ON MY RECOVERY DRIVE? CAN ANYONE HELP?

 

First of all you calm down and stop shouting, or in other words, turn off
the Caps Lock key. Posting in capitals make you question hard to read and is
considered by many to ba the same as shouting.

Next you tell us what the make, model, and type (laptop, desktop) of machine
you have. With that information some one here in etherworld may read your
post and be able to offer a solution for your problem.

 

Hi;
I am having the same problem and posted this question earlier but have not
received a responce. So Here goes. D drive is almost full and I would like to
know which files have to store in the D drive. Also, I would like to free up
the D drive without affecting my computer. I am using Vista Home Premium on a
dell desk top 410. The D rive reads Recovery D 3.42 MB free of 9.99GB. Does
the old recovery file get deleted each time a new recovery file is saved?
Thanks for your time.
Jim

 

My guess is that your D drive is a recovery drive for going back to the
original "Factory Settings" on your computer. So it is not intended as a
place to store your Vista Backups. Furthermore, it is probably just a
partition of the only "physical" hard drive in your machine (the same
physical drive as your C: partition) and as such is not a good place for
storing the backups anyway, since if that hard drive fails the back up will
be lost.

You should also read the documentation for the machine to see if you need to
make a restore disk in case of a hard drive failure, since often times the d:
partition is used in place of computer manufacturer's sending an
install/recovery disc with your system.

 

Piook's guess is probably right. But if you need to delete file backups,
follow the instructions here:
http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Wi...50-fe33-41a0-b7f6-233d7fe4460a1033.mspx#ESAAC

If you want to delete all but the most recent Complete PC Backup (keep in
mind that the backups will be gone for real) you can follow these steps
below:

Disk Cleanup -> Files from all users on this computer -> Select volume where
backups are being saved -> More Options -> System Restore and Shadow
Copies -> Clean up ...

Eduardo

 

I'm going to confirm your guess, Piook.

This is the recovery drive to do a system restore to factory new.

IT SHOULD NOT BE DELETED, FORMATTED, OR MESSED WITH IN ANY WAY! Unless of
course you have full install disks for all the software that came with your
system.

Dell will provide complete disks, but they usually expect you to pay for
them, so make the recovery disks that it should be bugging you to make and
leave the D: drive alone.

In the past Dell always marked this drive as hidden but for some reason on
the Vista pre-loads they haven't.

Mic

 

Mic, I think you may be wrong.
I to am having trouble Freeing space on my rcovery drive. Vista explians to
delete old restore points but does not tell me how. With this drive full my
system is crawling.

 

Is it a Dell?

If it is, this IS the recovery drive.

This is a partition that has a compressed image of the C: drive in its
original, from the factory, setup. OS, drivers, software, etc.

If your system is 'crawling' there is something else causing it. A
non-system partition should have no effect on your system performance as
long as there is plenty of space for the swap file on your primary
partition.

Dell has been using this method of recovery for quite some time, on XP
systems the partition is hidden.

I have recently worked on a few Dell systems (Vista pre-installed) adding
RAM, simple setup, etc. and noted on each of the three machines I worked on
there was a D: partition present, and it was almost full, and it did indeed
contain the recovery information.

http://www.dellcommunity.com/suppor...=vista&message.id=30298&query.id=80290#M30298

Have a look at the above post on the Dell forums, it confirms what myself,
and piook have both said about the D: partition on Vista loaded Dell
computers.

Thankfully, it also explains WHY the partition is visible

Mic

 

Thanx Mic for your input, it has been helpful. Now if I could just get vista
to stop whining about this drive being full.

 

If you don't want the disk full notifications, go to Control Panel >
Administrative Tools > Computer Management > highlight Disk Management, right
click on the Recovery Partition, choose Change drive letter and paths, click the
Remove button, then click OK.

This will not damage the data on the disk, and should you need to access the
disk later, you can reassign a drive letter.

 

Usually when the recovery partition is created the MBR is modified to permit
recovery via a function key, such as " Hit F11 to...." - deleting the
partition (if possible) does not "remove" the MBR modification.
Some OEMS, HP for instance, provide an utility to create recovery disks with
an option to remove the partition and MBR modification.