Should I format Recovery (D:)?

[Jack Johnson]

I recently installed Windows 7 onto my PC (therefore wiping the computer clean), and noticed my Recovery (D: ) drive has only 1.12 GB free of 6.25 GB. Should I go ahead and format Recovery (D: ), seeing as to how all the files on it should be from the old operating system? Thanks for your time and consideration.

 

[spooky2th]

If there's no data on the recovery drive, you can format it and use it for extra storage. Is this d drive a partition on your boot drive or is it another single drive all together? Either way you can still use it for storage.

 

[Spiritos]

I recently installed Windows 7 onto my PC (therefore wiping the computer clean), and noticed my Recovery (D: ) drive has only 1.12 GB free of 6.25 GB. Should I go ahead and format Recovery (D: ), seeing as to how all the files on it should be from the old operating system? Thanks for your time and consideration.

If you simply installed Win7 on your C:\ drive and haven't made a manual backup image your D:\ drive is definitely from the old OS and you should format it and make a new recovery drive from the new OS.

 

[Jack Johnson]

Okay, I formatted the Recovery (D: ). This may seem like an odd question, but how do I turn it back into a, I guess an "automatic" recovery drive. Prior to formatting, it had folders in it obviously designed for recovery purposes (example being, you try to open it and it gives you a warning stating this file is used in recovery). Is there perhaps an option in Disk Management?

 

[Spiritos]

Go into configurations - system & security - make a backup from this computer.

You should do this either manually or from there you can create a schedule.

 

[Jack Johnson]

Go into configurations - system & security - make a backup from this computer.

You should do this either manually or from there you can create a schedule.

It says "The disk your backups are being saved on doesn't have enough free space." It has 6.25 GB, and that's never been an issue before.

 

[Spiritos]

Go into configurations - system & security - make a backup from this computer.

You should do this either manually or from there you can create a schedule.

It says "The disk your backups are being saved on doesn't have enough free space." It has 6.25 GB, and that's never been an issue before.

You probably came from XP? In any case Win7 obviously requires more space so you should increase the volume of your partition then.

 

[Jack Johnson]

Go into configurations - system & security - make a backup from this computer.

You should do this either manually or from there you can create a schedule.

It says "The disk your backups are being saved on doesn't have enough free space." It has 6.25 GB, and that's never been an issue before.

You probably came from XP? In any case Win7 obviously requires more space so you should increase the volume of your partition then.

I came from Windows Vista, and before I formatted I had 1.12 GB free of 6.25 GB. Would Windows 7 really need that much more data?

 

[Spiritos]

Appareantly it does. Personally I don't use winbackup but another program and I put it on an external HD (which is always better and recommend by Microsoft cause if your disk dies you can't access the D:\ partition either ^^)

So if you have an external disk I'd stronlgy suggest you put your backup there and create a bootdisk.
Otherwise, I'm guessing if your clean OS install is about 20 GB you'd need about 12-15 GB since Win7 backups both the system and the files.

 

[Jack Johnson]

Appareantly it does. Personally I don't use winbackup but another program and I put it on an external HD (which is always better and recommend by Microsoft cause if your disk dies you can't access the D:\ partition either ^^)

So if you have an external disk I'd stronlgy suggest you put your backup there and create a bootdisk.
Otherwise, I'm guessing if your clean OS install is about 20 GB you'd need about 12-15 GB since Win7 backups both the system and the files.

I don't have an external hard drive as of right now, so I'll just attempt to expand the Recovery (D: ) drive and back it up there. One note, though, on the "Backup and Restore" page, it says the Backup size is only 852.84 MB. Is that referring to something else?

 

[spooky2th]

That backup size is probably the whole C drive, OS, apps and data included.

You can delete D drive and then expand C drive to use the extra space. Then set up windows System Restore to create snap shots of the C drive.

Maybe get an external HDD and clone windows to it.

And to create a windows recover disk in windows 7:



1

Click the Windows “Start” button and select “Control Panel” from the menu. Click “System and Security,” then select “Backup and Restore.”
2

Click "Create a System Repair Disc." If you have more than one optical drive installed on your PC, choose your preferred CD/DVD burner from the drop-down menu. Place a blank CD or DVD in the drive tray and click "Create disc." A progress bar displays on the screen.
3

Click “OK” when Windows reports that the process is complete. Creating the recovery disc should only take a few minutes.

 

[Spiritos]

Honestly I have no idea as I have never used the windows feature. It could be that the process that requires to make a backup needs more space than the actual backup but it would seem a lot..
I have read about some issues involving making backups in win7 though (like there are always issues with everything and everyone 😉) so you might want to google those. Otherwise I can't help you any more than this.

You could look at the total amount of storage on your C:\drive that's taken so you know how much space is in use at the moment. Obviously the backup is going to be a little compressed but it could give you a good idea.

I hope it's just the size of the partition. Good luck!