paritions related question

[christy123]

I upgraded to a larger hard drive of my X61( with vista business) and used recovery disc that came with it. i noticed that it installed the windows on entire disc. I know i can shrink the size of the disc and create new partitions. this feature comes with limitations. I would like to create several partitions of different sizes and would also like to setup a dual boot. Ok..i know i can use partition manager to create the partitions ( BTW is there any better partition tool available?) . My concern is , after creating paritions, what if i need to use the recovery discs again..would it wipe all the partitions again? is there any solution to that?

thank you in anticipation

[mgo]

I upgraded to a larger hard drive of my X61( with vista business) and used recovery disc that came with it. i noticed that it installed the windows on entire disc. I know i can shrink the size of the disc and create new partitions. this feature comes with limitations. I would like to create several partitions of different sizes and would also like to setup a dual boot. Ok..i know i can use partition manager to create the partitions ( BTW is there any better partition tool available?) . My concern is , after creating paritions, what if i need to use the recovery discs again..would it wipe all the partitions again? is there any solution to that?

thank you in anticipation

Assuming the "recovery disk" you are talking about is the one from Lenovo, then yes, using it again will remove all other partitions and return your machine to factory original.

To avoid this, purchase a 3rd party imaging program, which will not remove your own partitions. Or, you can use the Vista backup program to create your image, but wait till after your have created your other partitions, or it will remove them during the restore process, since it remembers how your machine was set up before changing the partitions.

Windows Vista has a pretty good partitioning feature, that you can use to create what you need. You would shrink C:\ which would leave room for other partitions

[christy123]

Problem with vista is that it will determine how much it can shrink the drive. there is no flexibility.

So are u saying that after creating partitions , i can not use lenovo recovery discs if i wanted to preserve the new paritions?

thanks

[mgo]

Problem with vista is that it will determine how much it can shrink the drive. there is no flexibility.

So are u saying that after creating partitions , i can not use lenovo recovery discs if i wanted to preserve the new paritions?

thanks

I have had moderate success with partitioning using Vista disk management, but you are right, Vista limits the amount of shrinkage due to hidden files, etc. A third party (possibly freeware) may do the job for you.

On the second question, yes, the Lenovo disk rudely re-sets the drive to original factory spec. That happened to me years ago when I used it to recover a R52. Also, you obviously noticed that the recovery process is very, very lengthy.