Partition Table for Vista?

[Mini-Me]

Hi all.

Here is the partition table for a laptop with a 320GB hard-disk, installed with Vista:

http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/5896/vistadriveam1.gif

QUESTIONS:

What are the "Blank" partitions(partitions with no drive letter or name)?
These are the 71MB partition, and the 2.5GB partition?

This is how the laptop was returned to the client after the original hard-drive died.

I am not impressed with the replace and re-install, as they have partitioned the drive as a basic disk, with 4 primary partitions, and the 149GB of unallocated space therefore cannot be partitioned without deleting one of the other partitions, or otherwise juggling the partitions of the drive.

So, what I am wanting to know, is if anyone else's Vista install have these two little partitions(the 71MB and 2.5GB). If not, I can most likely delete the partitions, and create a new THIRD partition to use the rest of the space.

[Rick]

You don't need to delete anything

You can use the vista disk manager and extend the 2.5 GB to include the unused portion (unallocated)
Then change the properties to active and assign a drive letter to it

WHY is it setup like that?
It's anybodies guess ..
I'd say it was done by a teck who just didn't want to deal with it
Or they used a recover disk and ran it at the companies defaults
Defaults that didn't allow for or detect the larger than normal drive size

An After thought
It may be a good idea to check and change the 2.5gb partition to active and assign a drive letter before extending the partition
Just in case it has something to do with the boot process or loader

[Mini-Me]

Thanks, Rick.

If I right-click on unallocated, I can select NEW SIMPLE VOLUME.
I cannot do this in XP with a basic disk and 4 partitions, so things must have changed in the disk-manager for Vista.

I will follow the motions, and setup a simple volume, which should then give us access to the remainder of the drive - will keep the forum posted on how it turns out.

[Paul Komski]

The C: drive is marked as system and is therefore the current active partition. You shouldn't change this value to another partition or the system is unlikely to boot. The system (active) partition would normally contain the boot files: notably boot\BCD and bootmgr; they would normally be hidden system files.


It's hard to be definitive about the two un-lettered partitions without knowing their formats. The first small one looks like it could be a small Dell diagnostic partition or similar. What laptop make/model are you using? You should be able to run PartitionInfo (http://www.paulski.com/zpages.php?id=2103) under Vista if you want to dig out all the relevant partition information. It's GUI is buggish under Vista but you should be able to run it (you may need to RClick and run as administrator) and then copy the output to clipboard; that worked for me anyway.

There is a tendency for Vista, left to its own devices, to only create primary partitions. Since you have four already then expanding the fourth one is your only current option to utilize the remainder of the drive.

[Mini-Me]

I have not done the work yet - in fact, I have suggested that the guy just take it back to the guys who fixed the 1st dead hard-disk under warranty, and get them to fix the problem, argueing that it(the drive) was not correctly setup in the first place. In fact, this is exactly what I am going to do, not being a Dell agent, so if I do anything to it, that would actually void the warranty - perhaps.

Issues can get thorny like this...

[rakesh]

my laptop also has the same configuration. how can i remove the space for m C drive and create partitions.

Hi all.

Here is the partition table for a laptop with a 320GB hard-disk, installed with Vista:

http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/5896/vistadriveam1.gif

QUESTIONS:

What are the "Blank" partitions(partitions with no drive letter or name)?
These are the 71MB partition, and the 2.5GB partition?

This is how the laptop was returned to the client after the original hard-drive died.

I am not impressed with the replace and re-install, as they have partitioned the drive as a basic disk, with 4 primary partitions, and the 149GB of unallocated space therefore cannot be partitioned without deleting one of the other partitions, or otherwise juggling the partitions of the drive.

So, what I am wanting to know, is if anyone else's Vista install have these two little partitions(the 71MB and 2.5GB). If not, I can most likely delete the partitions, and create a new THIRD partition to use the rest of the space.

[Mini-Me]

Welcome to the PC GUIDE.

:)

What ended up happening, was the deletion of the 3rd unknown partition, and then creating a 4th new partition to include the 2.5GB one, and the remaining 149GB of unallocated space. The laptop runs just fine once this was done.

http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/801/vistadrive2rm3.gif

UNDERTAKE THE FOLLOWING AT YOUR OWN RISK!
Just because it worked for me, DOES NOT make it a certainty in your case, although there is a high degree of probability...

Only perform this, once you have backed up all(and I mean ALL) of your important data - you should NEVER tinker with the partition table of a working drive without backing up first. A mistake or unexpected result from the disk manager could be... unfortunate...

- Right-click the 2.5GB unlabeled partition, select DELETE.
- Follow the prompts to confirm your wish to delete, and delete the partition.
- Right-click the black-bannered UNALLOCATED drive space, and select NEW PARTITION.
- Follow the prompts to confirm and create the new partition Select PRIMARY PARTITION - Ensure NTFS is selected as the filesystem for the new partition, and that there is a tick in the box beside PERFORM A QUICK FORMAT, or it will take ages to long-format 100+ GB.

The previous assumes you have at least had to format a disk before, so they are instructions for someone who has done this kind of thing before. If you can't follow what I have written, reply and I(or another member here) will provide more explicit instructions.

In my case, I created an EXTENDED PARTITION as the 4th partition, instead of a 4th and final PRIMARY PARTITION, then created a logical drive inside the extended partition, but you don't have to do it that way - just selecting the defaults will give you a primary partition, but that will work just fine.

[Paul Komski]

Be aware that if you delete the 2.5 gig partition that you are likely to remove the ability to restore the PC to its factory condition using any enclosed image file in that partition. If that is important to you then make an image file of that partition onto CDs or a DVD before you do so using BiNG or ImageForDOS or similar.

That is the likely scenario if yours is a Dell partition. If you look at the format of such a partition it should be of type "Dell" being usually a specially marked FAT partition.