Other Norton Products

[afylot]

Hi,

I have a laptop (just one drive-160GB) with windows XP , and an hidden recovery partition from the manufacturer, and another apparently useless partition(only 39 MB !!) of which I ignore the reason - a total of three partitions.

As I will change partitions soon by resizing the main one and splitting it, I would like to know if the recovery partition will be still useful, and if I will be able to recovery the original system. I mean I am wondering if the recovery partition can be used after the partition structure has been changed.

I know that an analogue case has been treated in post

http://community.norton.com/norton/board/message?board.id=other&message.id=727&query.id=1357014#M727

but I am interested in starting the recovery from an hidden partition, that belong to the disk I want to recover, and I would like to know if there are any differences.

thank you, I am looking forward to your reply

[Brian_K]

afylot,

I assume you have a Dell laptop. Which type? Do you have MediaDirect? Dell laptops with MediaDirect are a special problem, but only if you are upgrading to a larger HD. I see you will be using the same HD.

I like the 39 MB Diagnostic Partition and so do the Dell techs. Leave it unchanged. I gather you are going to resize the OS partition and create another partition. Don't use the Split function. Along with the Merge function in Partition magic, it is unreliable.

Your Recovery partition will no longer work after you have done this. It can be fixed but if you have Ghost it probably isn't necessary to have a Recovery partition.

[afylot]

Dear Brian_K,

thanks a lot for replying so quickly. I would just like to have some clarifications.
In my previous post actually I was talking about a netbook, asus eeepc 1002HA.
But I have the same issue with a sony vaio, if I remember correctly this one has just two primary partitions - a windows vista one and a recovery one.
I didn't specify it because I though the discussion was largely independent from the specific manufacturer.
In any case I am not going to upgrade to a larger HD.

Coming back to my asus, I resized windows xp partition, then in the freed space I created an extended partition by using gparted, a tool that comes with the linux distro(eeebuntu) I have installed.
If I understood properly, asus just gave me a disk image and this recovery partition.
Do you confirm my recovery partition is useless now?
You say it can be fixed, how?
Is there something like a tutorial for that?
Can I still use the disk image they gave me?
 
For what concerns my vaio, they gave me an original version of the operative system with drivers and then the hidden partition.
I guess also in this case the hidden partition is useless, right?
 
Thank you a lot for your patience,
 
afylot

[Brian_K]

afylot,

It's not a Dell so forget everything I said.

I have an Asus 1000HE. Bought it 6 weeks ago and I love it. Strangely, mine came with four partitions. I had a data partition too. Win XP and the data partition were each around 80 GB.

The 39 MB partition is called ReadyBoost. It shaves about 5 seconds of the boot time. I found it a pain in the butt as it made it very difficult to access the boot menu and BIOS. WinXP would boot instead of showing the boot menu. I deleted the partition although you can disable BootBooster in the BIOS.

I don't know if your Recovery partition is still usable. That's another partition I deleted as I make my own backup images. You have a Recovery DVD which will return your HD to factory status so I wouldn't be concerned. If you don't have an external DVD drive you can just temporarily pull the DVD drive from your desktop and connect it to the netbook with a USB cable. $20.

I'm surprised how well the netbook functions. I have six OS on mine.