This is a good guide for those of us who missed the boat so to speak and wound up with the 100mb partition. I would like to add that it is a good idea to make an image any time you do a fresh install.
is the benefit worth the risk? will this increase the performance? and what's the big deal to have 100mb partition there?
Bottom line is that the 100mb partition doesn't hurt anything but some of us just don't want it there. I removed it from my system because I use images to restore my computer whenever I screw it up and I did not want that 100mb partition restored every time I restored from my restoration image. By all means, if you are OK with that 100mb partition then leave it there.
benefit worth the risk? Depends on how you perceive the benefit. If you do it correctly and carefully, there is zero risk. Increase performance? Well, you'll have 100 mb extra disk space and a single partition for all OS files. I suppose in theory this might speed up boot time by a few milliseconds And there is no big deal, like it says at the top, this is for those of us who are anal about this type of thing. The same type of people who run CCleaner and scan for viruses on a daily basis, I suppose.
acronis true image 2009 is backing up also the 100mb partition so nothing to worry in case you want to restore the image (if it stays hidden it won't even bother me so no need to complicate things) and by the way,I made a HDD backup with acronis and with all my programs installed and configured,the image takes 2,7 GB of space with it's normal compression method (that is done in real time while backing up) so I don't know how you end up with a 25 GB image
Yeah I think it's pretty clear how obvious this is. Thanks for the brilliant insight. However, it's not the point. And yeah, my image is actually 18 gigs, but that includes a bunch of media that I have in my Libraries plus saved games that I copied over from my old Vista install.
I have absolutely no idea how you would combine all of this into a batch file. I have no experience doing anything like that. Also, I don't think it's possible because a few steps have to be done outside of windows. You can't format your disk while in Windows, for instance.
There might be, but I'm not the person who would know anything about it. Like I said I don't know how to write batch scripts...especially ones as complicated as this.
If you partition your drive and format it before installing win7 there won't be any hidden partitions
Nice tutorial but it seems like a lot of work and time consuming. Here's what i did. 1. Installed Paragon Partition Manager 2. Deleted the 100mb partition. 3. Extended my main partition to use up all the free space. All done within windows, 1 reboot required. Im sure other partitioning programs can be used.
How did you do that if all your boot files were stored on that partition? Unless Windows randomly chooses where to put its boot files...because my hidden partition had nothing but boot stuff and system volume information. Windows was a vegetable without those files. Also from what I've heard doing partition work such as extending on a partition that's full of files can lead to corruption and possible data loss. But if it worked for you, then that's good!
Now that you mention it i dont know, all i did was use the partitioning program. On my C i have a Boot and Recovery folder and system boots fine.
Interesting...well in any case, for me the boot stuff was stored on my system reserved partition, and Windows was not able to automatically repair anything, so as you can see I was forced to do it the hard way. I just wanted to help out those who may be in the same situation I was.
Dell Laptop hidden and locked uitility partition Used this to delete a Dell Laptop hidden (and locked) utility partition which is pretty much useless if you have the recovery CD (Win7) Few hassles getting any of the boot partition managers to "see" & delete the locked partition but worked out in the end... now have a Dell lappy with one large, contiguous boot partition... Great tutorial all round... thanks mate..
Nice post! But whats the deal with the 100MB partition? I mean it's there but it does not bother me at all. Are there any disadvantages to have it on the hard drive?