Blowing Away the Recovery Partition...Advice?
in [Dell]
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From: Daddy on 22 Mar 2010 09:58 Brian K wrote: > Daddy, > > We seem to disagree about the MBR. If you are going to keep your Dell > Utility partition then you need the Dell MBR. (Although I don't have a Dell > MBR I can boot into the Utility partition with BING). Why do you want to get > rid of the Dell MBR? I'm curious. > > If you don't have the Utility partition it shouldn't matter if you have a > Dell, a standard or a Win7 MBR. Some computer brands need a Win7 MBR > although I don't think this applies to Dell. > > "Windows 7 has tied the MBR code to the kernel loader such that a normal > standard MBR may not allow Windows 7 to boot on certain machines." > > I think you misunderstand me, my friend. I'm fully aware that the Diagnostic partition (and the Recovery partition) need Dell's modified MBR to be accessible. It's only if I was to completely do away with both those partitions...for example, if I was to remove /all/ partitions and start with an unpartitioned, formatted hard drive and then restore my backed-up system and data partitions...in that case a plain vanilla Windows 7 MBR would work. (At least, that's what I think, and that's the question I asked in the SP forum.) Clearly Dell has gone out of its way to make it very difficult to tamper with its partitions, and this is entirely justified. If I understand correctly, the MBR is actually located in the Recovery partition, and it looks to see what's in the keyboard buffer before deciding where to send the user. Keep 'em both or nuke 'em both, that's the easy decision. If I want to keep just one, well, that's do-able but it will take some learning on my part. So many angles, so many ways to work it. It's something I'll actually enjoy studying, and when I make my move, I'll publish the results. Daddy
From: Brian K on 22 Mar 2010 14:48 "Daddy" <daddy(a)invalid.invalid> wrote in message news:ho7t27$17g$1(a)news.eternal-september.org... > If I understand correctly, the MBR is actually located in the Recovery partition, and it > looks to see what's in the keyboard buffer before deciding where to send > the user. Ah, I think I understand your concern about the MBR. The MBR is not located inside any partition. So even if you deleted all partitions from your HD and manually reinstalled Win7, you would still have a Dell MBR. The MBR is located in LBA-0. The first sector on the HD. The first partition, the Dell Utility partition, is typically cylinder aligned and starts at LBA-63. Out of interest, here is a Dell MBR with the customized Dell boot code outlined. http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b16/bjkdegree/dell-mbr-code.gif And here is a Win7 MBR http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b16/bjkdegree/MBR-Win7.gif And here is a Standard MBR http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b16/bjkdegree/MBR-Standard.gif And here is a BING MBR http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b16/bjkdegree/MBR-BING.gif Don't get me wrong. If you delete both Dell partitions it doesn't matter which MBR you choose. Your Win7 will still boot. One MBR won't work any "better or worse" than another. (Except for the issue mentioned in my previous post).
From: Daddy on 22 Mar 2010 16:57 Brian K wrote: > "Daddy" <daddy(a)invalid.invalid> wrote in message > news:ho7t27$17g$1(a)news.eternal-september.org... > If I understand correctly, the MBR is actually located in the Recovery > partition, and it >> looks to see what's in the keyboard buffer before deciding where to send >> the user. > > > Ah, I think I understand your concern about the MBR. The MBR is not located > inside any partition. So even if you deleted all partitions from your HD and > manually reinstalled Win7, you would still have a Dell MBR. The MBR is > located in LBA-0. The first sector on the HD. The first partition, the Dell > Utility partition, is typically cylinder aligned and starts at LBA-63. Out > of interest, here is a Dell MBR with the customized Dell boot code outlined. > > http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b16/bjkdegree/dell-mbr-code.gif > > And here is a Win7 MBR > > http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b16/bjkdegree/MBR-Win7.gif > > And here is a Standard MBR > > http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b16/bjkdegree/MBR-Standard.gif > > And here is a BING MBR > > http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b16/bjkdegree/MBR-BING.gif > > > > Don't get me wrong. If you delete both Dell partitions it doesn't matter > which MBR you choose. Your Win7 will still boot. One MBR won't work any > "better or worse" than another. (Except for the issue mentioned in my > previous post). > > Aha! I think I get it now. I always thought that the MBR was located at sector 0, and that the first partition usually starts at sector 63 (the beginning of the second track). In Windows 7's Disk Management utility, the Recovery partition is labeled Boot - among other things - so I thought that Dell somehow 'moved' the MBR into this partition. Therefore, I reasoned, if I remove the Recovery partition, I won't boot. Now I don't know why the Recovery partition is labelled Boot, but if the MBR is still at sector 0, I'll still boot even without the Recovery partition. That being the case, do I understand you correctly to say that I can just delete the Recovery partition (I have it backed up anyway) and I'll still boot just fine? And I'll still be able to boot into the Diagnostic partition? The only difference is that if I try to boot to the (absent) Recovery partition, that nothing will happen? Daddy
From: Brian K on 22 Mar 2010 18:49 Daddy, Have another look in Disk Management. The Recovery partition is not the Boot partition. It is the System partition as it contains the booting files. I know that doesn't sound correct but that's what Microsoft call it. Win7 is the Boot partition as it contains the Windows folder. So if you delete the Recovery partition, Win7 won't boot. You will get this error.. BOOTMGR is missing Press Control Alt Delete to restart That's because you have deleted the booting files that were in the Recovery partition. The procedure I described earlier is to copy the booting files from the Recovery partition to the Win7 partition. This will allow Win7 to boot on its own without needing a second partition containing the booting files. Does this make sense? Having booting files outside of the Win7 partition is going to cause problems for some folks when restoring images to a new HD (say due to a HD failure) as two partitions will need to be restored to allow Win7 to boot.
From: Brian K on 22 Mar 2010 18:52
I omitted.... You can delete the Recovery partition and keep a functioning Utility partition. |