Recovery Hard Drive partitions are not needed, other solutions are better

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Recovery Hard Drive partitions are not needed, other solutions are better

1010 points posted to Accessories (Keyboards, etc.), Sales Strategies, Laptops by carganegativa18 04/22/07

When I ordered my laptop, I selected the 120 HD, thinking it would be enough for my school work and photography. To my surprice when the laptop arrived, I only had 85 gigs available. I then took a look at "my computer" and wala, there it was

1. A ten gig partition for Recovery purpuses:
Althoug there are times when one really needs to have a computer back to its factory setting, I think its unfar that the user has to give up 10 GB of disk storage.
POSSIBLE SOLUTION
1. Give the consumer a DVD of the recovery ISO,
2. Give the consumer the option, either have it installed or have a DVD for it, I rather pay for DVD, than pay for a larger HD.

2. There are tons of pre-installed software that takes up huge amounts of disk space. Some of that stuff we don't need it, and sometimes we dn't know how to get that software out of our systems.
POSSIBLE SOLUTION
1. Ship installations CD's to consumers, and let the consumer deside which software they want to install. Hence allowing consumer enjoy more HD space.

2. Advice the consumer when they are buying the laptop/pc of how much "possible" available HD is going to be available upon arrival of laptop. Had I known I was only going to have 85 gigs left, I would have gotten a bigger HD.

I hope this gets promoted, and I hope that many people feel the same way, that we want what is adverticed (120 gigs, not 85 when the laptop arrives)

cosh 04/22/07	Agree wholeheartedly. It's downright lying when they nick your hard drive space for files you don't use. Plus its easy to accidently delete it (for some people). Then, you've no recovery media at all.
alphanumericone 04/23/07	I agree 100%. You can request install disks, and they will send them to you so you can start from scratch and eliminate all junk installs and recovery utility.
claypidgeon 04/23/07	I think recovery Disks (not install disks which don't give the dell drivers) are in the works. I like the recovery partition, but would also like a recovery disk incase the HDD junks out (i'd pay extra for it).
premcv 04/23/07	Oh yea, When I order for a 40gb hdd and it shows that some space is being used up I want to know how and what is there on the hdd that uses up space. A forward about what is the size and what occupies how much space is a great thing to have.
claypidgeon 04/23/07	There is an asterisc on the HDD selection page that says: "*Hard drive: For hard drives, GB means 1 billion bytes and TB equals 1 trillion bytes; actual capacity varies with preloaded material and operating environment and will be less. On Dimension, XPS, and Inspiron systems, for Norton Ghost 10 and Dell DataSafe users, up to 25% of the stated hard drive capacity may be utilized by your system as dedicated backup space." It may not be prominent, but it is there and very readable. Again, I like the idea of getting the recovery media (not the installation media).
peyre 04/25/07	That's "voila" (or "voilà"), not wala. Good idea though--I'm promoting it.
premcv 04/25/07	Come to think of it, surprise is not spelt surprice either, eh? Where is FireFox? :)
luisr 04/25/07	shouldnt be very difficult for dell to send an image restore (just like the one on hdd) on a dvd (dual layer). maybe they havent do it because os license agreement with msft
lordcobol 04/25/07	Think of all the times when a recovery partition won't do it, and you really need a CD or DVD.... ... your HD died outright, taking the recovery partion with it. ... your PC is infected and you want to wipe the HD and reinstall everthying, but you don't trust the recovery partition or ANYTHING on the HD because you fear a really sneaky rootkit might have done something to it too.
premcv 04/26/07	Yes, think of all the times the recovery partition was deleted too!!!
claypidgeon 04/26/07	Exactly. This would probably add a a few dollars per computer multiplied over the millions and you see why it isn't included but I think it should be at least a purchasable option.
premcv 04/27/07	Yes, I agree, should be a purchasable option.
cosh 04/27/07	Should be a default option. How much does a CD/DVD cost to mass-produce? Dollar? Euro? Banana?
premcv 04/27/07	Peanuts?
cosh 04/27/07	That's the one.
premcv 04/27/07	:) yaah!
chewd 05/01/07	I have a friend who keeps accidentally activating the recovery system which immedately wipes out all his data & makes him start all over. Ive been trying to figure out how to disable (or complicate) this "feature" so i wont have to go through his system and remove all his bloatware every week. In my experience the recovery partitions cause much more problems than they solve.
claypidgeon 05/02/07	sorry chewd, but ahahahaha, you cannot accidentally start dell's recovery partition. It is so touchy that it takes me a few tries just to get it to work and I know what to do. You can rid yourself of the recovery partition - altho i would NOT recommend removing it as it will also remove the diags and such but is ultimately the customers choice.
chewd 05/02/07	"It is so touchy that it takes me a few tries just to get it to work and I know what to do." Yea I know what you mean, i figured there was a shortcut to it in the control panel or something. I have no idea how this guy keeps doing this to his system. I wanted just to remove whatever shortcut, popup, or error message he was clicking on to trigger it, that way the partition itself would still be in place, but ill be darned if i can find it. The only thing i can figure is maybe its been embedded into the startup error screen.... "your machine did not boot properly last time, would you like to, A. Boot normally B. boot safe mode C. boot to dos prompt D. destroy all data and reinstall all the factory bloatware" with option D being the default. I have no idea how to alter that little menu, or even if thats where hes triggering it, but im sure ill end up figuring it out sooner or later. It would have been much better if he had a CD that did all that & then all id have to do is hide the CD.
claypidgeon 05/02/07	You can also start the restore at bootup (ctrl-f11) when you see the blue bar with dell.com and then you have to click i agree, continue, and click i really-REALLY do agree. You really can't "accidentally" restore the system. You can kill the blue bar but it is not dell recommended and I won't say how to on a dell website. Try another forum and someone should be able to help you out.
chewd 05/02/07	its all good, thanks... the point i wanted to make was that these things can cause more problems than they solve.

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