Dealing With Factory State Partition Schemes

Hard Drive Partition Scheme – HP Pavilion dv7 3085dx Notebook PC

For many of us, finding our new computer hard drive divided into four primary partitions is a surprise say the least. In my case it was a HP Pavilion dv7 3085dx Notebook with a partition scheme as such: SYSTEM, OS, RECOVERY, and HP_TOOLS.

It’s not so much how the hard drive comes from the factory, those of us who create our own partition schemes, for our own reasons, know how to customize our drives to meet our personal needs. But add in the new recovery method used by most manufactures these days (recovery partition with an option to make a set of recovery disks) along with the fact that most of the programs and utilities on the other partitions are of some value and our options become confusing and limited.

What the recovery disks actually do.

My main questions were: Do the recovery disks I created restore all aspects of the computer back to the original factory state, including the partition scheme? Making the recovery partition disposable. Or, will the recovery disks expect to see the original partition scheme and get hung up? After a lengthy online search, which surprisingly turned up no definitive answer, I had a productive talk with HP support and the answer was as I suspected. The recovery disks will completely restore the computer back to the original factory state, including the original hard drive partition scheme.

Okay, this meant that I could partition the hard drive to my liking, and the worse thing that could happen was that everything would go back to its original state if I had to use the recovery disks. Whether or not you would want to do a full recovery this way after repartitioning would depend on your reasons for customizing your partitions in the first place. Files can be backed up and restored. However a more complex scenario such as dual booting operating systems would be another story.

You certainly would not have to recover your system with the default restore disks. You could simply create your own recovery option using hard drive slash partition imaging or cloning software. Keep your files backed up along the way and your good to go.

Dealing with it.

Personally I decided it was not worth the hassle (for now anyway) and came up with my own solutions to meat my needs. NOTE: If you decide to remove the RECOVER and HP_TOOLS partitions be sure to backup the SWSETUP & HP folders on C drive. And even though the recovery disk set you make (you did or are going to make them right?) will restore all partitions, you may also want to Backup the RECOVERY and HP_TOOLS partitions if it is convenient.

Problem 1:
I prefer keeping data files like my documents and pictures on a separate partition from Windows and programs. This has to do with ease of recovery from a Windows repair, how often files are accessed and differing fragmentation re-occurrence with different file types. I also feel that large files such as video, virtual hard drives and such, should be kept on separate partitions. I don’t like large video and virtual machines being tossed around the hard drive every time Windows needs to be defragmented.

Solution 1:
There was nothing I could do about keeping one type of file separate from another since I was stuck with this huge partition containing the operating system and everything else. However I happen to use Diskkeeper 2010 (no affiliation). Anyway, Diskeeper has an option to exclude files and folders you don’t want to be defragmented. This helped me with only one aspect of this problem but it was good enough for me.

Problem 2:
I use Linux as much as I use Windows. Since I decided to avoid repartitioning my hard drive, I could not run a dual boot system.

Solution 2:
I went virtual using VirtualBox. I loose some of the benefits of running Linux but it suites me for now.

There are other options in dealing with factory state partition schemes. Some obvious and some not so obvious. Hopefully this post has helped someone in some way. I was happy just learning what the recovery disk set actually did, so there would be no surprises.

FTC Compliance Disclosure: There is no connection between me and any product listed in this post. I have not been paid or otherwise compensated. These are my own opinions.