Recovery disk full

[glad rag]

So can I please ask how to recognise the stuff to delete to make some more room....or even increase it's % of the partition

[green granite]

Download yourself CCleaner and run it, if you need to retain some cookies for auto-logon purposes you can do so under the tools>cookies section.

CCleaner - Download (http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download)

Come back to us when you've done that.

[Milo Minderbinder]

what on earth are you doing?
the recovery area is a bespoke partition which simply holds the original recovery image. Nothing more, nothing less. Writing anything else to the drive will probably cause any future recovery to fail
I strongly suggest you leave it well alone

[Loose rivets]

That's interesting. Did it just fill itself, or as Milo suggests, put other stuff in it?

I simply will not buy a Laptop that has a visible recovery that eats up D drive in the list of logical drives. There's some nice units out there that are spoiled by that.

Is there a way to keep a recovery drive - by this I mean fairly current Windows updates - on a DVD and be able to do what you want with the HD?

I always have C D and E drives and dedicate C to the system and entwined programs. That seems to be most of them these days.:(

[glad rag]

It filled up, until it was overflowing.

I have removed some items, namely microsoft "games" and regained some 379 Meg of 14 Gig.

It seems to fill up & I don't how or the reason it should do so unless it's stockpiling reset markers in whole.

I actually have 50% of the C drive "left" is there any way I can increase the partition values to eck out another years peace and quiet.

Also !!!! windows update is failing to update properly. Now, after 5 years I suspect it's the one downloading updates that "don't" and NO I'm not formatting and starting again, if I can increase the partition slightly.

thanks for the replies folks

cheers

glad

[Milo Minderbinder]

OK, a number of things

First, Rivits
Microsofts licencsing agreements with large scale manufacturers insist that the recovery image be on the primary hard drive. How exactly that is done is down to the PC builder, but it could be a hidden partition, or sometimes a visible one. Either way you're going to be losing part of the hard drive, in some cases you'll be aware. In most you won't.

glad rag
these "Microsoft Games". Are these products you've downloaded and installed? Sounds like you've set the downloads folder to be the d: drive. Next time you download it, change the destination to something like "c: \downloads", and use that as the storage folder
Leave the D: drive alone!!!!! Do not use it for storage.
As for changing the partition sizes, why? The C: drive is 50% full, you won't need to worry about performance issues before you get to over 75% full. Leave well alone.!!!!
Finally, the updates
Try selecting and installing them one by one. You'll find that either they all work doing it that way, or else you get a specific error message. Please give us that exact error

[green granite]

Sorry I read it as recovering a full disc, my apologies.

[Loose rivets]

is down to the PC builder, but it could be a hidden partition,


Yes, I had a look around the disc of my Sony Vaio, and it was indeed hidden. This leaves me with the option of partitioning C D E etc., which I have become used to. The thought of everything on one drive totally fazes me.

[Milo Minderbinder]

"This leaves me with the option of partitioning C D E etc., which I have become used to. The thought of everything on one drive totally fazes me"

Partitioning the drive isn't going to help. If the drive fails - then the whole drive fails. The answer is to get an external drive and copy backup files to that. No amount of messing or partitioning the c: drive is going to give any security.

[Loose rivets]

Oh, not to gain some sort of security, but simply to make a logical separation between things like letters and in particular, photos. I have formatted and reinstalled the OS in the past without having to copy a 100 GB of photos in two directions.

What gripes me is - HP in particular - the recovery disc putting everything back to square one. Getting rid of HP-itis is bad enough, but then I find they've kindly removed my partitions.

As mentioned, is there any way to make a recovery DVD of the current state of the HD?

EDIT to say. I have a Seagate Blackarmor network drive, but I have no way of knowing if it will do its stuff in a crisis. In fact, apart from being a backup for all the computers to see, it spends most of its time doing nowt.

It was supposed to be accessible from afar, but when in the UK I always power down the house, so no help - and this is apart from the fact forums say they have problems making that software work.



..

[Bushfiva]

You can clone the partition/partitions/entire drive, and make sure whatever tool you use can create a bootable recovery disk or USB drive, so you can copy the partition back when you need to.

[mixture]

Oh my god Loose rivets.... are you trying to pull our legs or what ? :ugh:

What gripes me is - HP in particular - the recovery disc putting everything back to square one. Getting rid of HP-itis is bad enough, but then I find they've kindly removed my partitions.


Well yes, the point of a recovery partition is to recover the partition to the "out of the box" state. Want more than that ? Use a third party solution... there are plenty out there that will take your backup in the form of a snapshot clone if that's what you want.


EDIT to say. I have a Seagate Blackarmor network drive, but I have no way of knowing


The old adage goes, don't bother doing backups if you're not going to bother doing test restores. A broken backup is of no use to anyone.