Packard Bell All-in-one PC - restoring/wiping D: DATA drive.

[Frooby]

Hi.

This is a 2nd-hand PC (Packard Bell L5800) which is running a bit sluggishly and which I want to completely restore back to factory 'out-of-the-box' settings.

I've read up on this, know the procedure (via Packard Bell's own recovery management software) and have made a full set of recovery discs as well.

All set and ready to click 'yes' to 'Completely Restore Disc to Factory Defaults'!

Except - it mentions only the hard-drive's volume "C: Packard Bell" to be restored and not the 'other half' which is "D: DATA". In fact the D: drive is the one I really want to clear as it only has 114GB left of 458GB. (The C: drive has 320GB remaining of 458GB).

The drive is a 1TB jobbie 'divided' into two.

Question, please: if I go ahead and 'Factory restore' the C: drive, can I simply 'format' the D: section to empty it?

Or do you think the D: section will also be taken care of by this 'factory restore'?

Many thanks.

 

[popatim]

First I would make a second set of disk. Its cheap and you dont want to get 3/4 of the way thru this and find out you have a bad burn.

On to your issue. As I see it you have two options. I do not believe it will take care of D: for you; i believe the previous owner created it.

1: If you want a dedicated data partition then run the restore and if it doesn't take care of D; then you can simply format it from my computer/file explorer. to empty it.

2: If you want one big C: drive the Use My Computer/file explorer or another partition tool, to delete the D: partition and expand C: to take the whole space. I would run the Restore first. If it doesn't automatically take the whole space (I believe it will) then you can do the above afterwards.

 

[Frooby]

Many thanks, PopaTim.

Good advice - even tho' the Recovery Disc burns run checks on the burned data, it's such a painless process that it makes sense to have a spare copy.

And I think you may be right about your other info too - I've read on the PB website how to change the size of that D: partition, or even remove it altogether and make it all C:. I might do that second option first - make it all 'one' drive - and then do the restore.

That should see it gorn...!

Once restored, I can then set the new 'DATA' partition to whatever size I want again.

Many thanks - all set to go now 🙂