Dell OEM recovery partition on boot: Needed?

[dg27]

My Dell Studio XPS 9100 came loaded with Win 7 Pro and configured with a 10 GB "recovery partition," which is designed to recover the system to "factory conditions."

I use Acronis for the system backup and Cobian Boletus for data backup, both to several external drives. I also used the OEM software Dell provided to back up the OS settings to a thumb drive the day I got the machine.

Under these conditions, do I really need that recovery partition on the boot? It bugs the crap out of me occasionally because once in a while it will assume the drive letter of one of my externals. I know how to fix it in disk management, but it's annoying.

I also think it's a weird feature because whenever I've had a huge problem it was usually related to HDD failure (so this partition might not even be accessible).

Can and should I get rid of this partition?

dg

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

i deleted mine on my 960 and got a pro disc from dell!

 

[Jonmor68]

Consider if some time in the future you may want sell/give away your Dell it would be handy to be able to restore it to factory settings before disposal.
The 10GB of hard drive space you gain, is it worth it with new large hard drives at very low prices.
If you have an Acronis image of the whole drive it's no big deal to restore it if need be, so go for it.

 

[dg27]

Thanks fir the replies.

got a pro disc from dell!

As did I. That allows me to reinstall the OS.

it would be handy to be able to restore it to factory settings before disposal

That's why I used the Dell backup software to save the factory setting to a thumb drive.

Not concerned about the space; it's just annoying that sometimes it grabs a drive letter randomly and I have to go into disk management to fix.

Sounds like I really don't need this partition.

dg

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

cool the disc is always better!

 

[dg27]

Best answer selected by dg27.