Many partitions on hard drive

whatrymes
whatrymes Member Posts: 19 New User

I have a couple of questions.

1.Could you help me understand the different partitions that are on my hard drive.

               a. 600 MB Healthy (Recovery Partition)

               b. 300 MB Healthy (EFI System Partition)

               c. Acer (C)

               d. 18 GB Healthy (Recovery Partition)

2. If I wanted to preserve the ability to recover from the hard drive, which, if not all partitions are necessary to remain healthy.

I like to be redundant and I have created a flash drive to backup my drivers and applications and also a flash drive for a factory restore.

 

Thank you

Best Answer

  • IronFly
    IronFly ACE Posts: 18,413 Trailblazer
    Answer ✓

    Hi whatrymes,

     

    all the partition are necessary in case of a complete HDD failure:

     

    a) it's main Windows recovery partition, those are the same files that you have on the USB recovery media to boot in case that windows fails to boot from HDD

    b) EFI http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFI_System_partition

    c) is your system partition

    d) it's Acer/windows isntallation files needed to re-install windows to factory default

     

    if you want to be "bullet proof", i suggest:

     

    1) check if BIOS can read and boot from your USB recovery media (sometimes cheap USB pen can't be recognised)

    2) do a system image on an external HDD or a big USB pen:
    http://www.tomshardware.com/news/how-to-make-system-image-backup,26542.html

     

    in the worst case of a total HDD failure, you can change your HDD, use the USB recovery media to boot and re-install from the system image backup.

    I'm not an Acer employee.

Answers

  • IronFly
    IronFly ACE Posts: 18,413 Trailblazer
    Answer ✓

    Hi whatrymes,

     

    all the partition are necessary in case of a complete HDD failure:

     

    a) it's main Windows recovery partition, those are the same files that you have on the USB recovery media to boot in case that windows fails to boot from HDD

    b) EFI http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFI_System_partition

    c) is your system partition

    d) it's Acer/windows isntallation files needed to re-install windows to factory default

     

    if you want to be "bullet proof", i suggest:

     

    1) check if BIOS can read and boot from your USB recovery media (sometimes cheap USB pen can't be recognised)

    2) do a system image on an external HDD or a big USB pen:
    http://www.tomshardware.com/news/how-to-make-system-image-backup,26542.html

     

    in the worst case of a total HDD failure, you can change your HDD, use the USB recovery media to boot and re-install from the system image backup.

    I'm not an Acer employee.
  • whatrymes
    whatrymes Member Posts: 19 New User

    Thanks Ironfly!

This discussion has been closed.