Writing to Recovery Drive

Vyse

Bit of a weird problem. Got a laptop which was having a bit of a problem. Kept saying that the recovery drive was full so i deleted a bit out from it. Problem was it filled again. I then realised that windows was writing to the Drive and not the C: Drive.

Anybody know how to chnage this? The latop is using vista by the way.

Dan_Solo

Writing what exactly? Do you need to move your "My Documents" folder to the non-operating system drive?

Vyse

If I try to install something it goes straight to the drive. In fact it doesn't let me use the C: Drive at all!! All windows updates etc are going automatically to the Drive!

NY68

Hi im having the same problem. My O/S is Vista, I keep getting a pop up saying the D drive is almost full. This only started recently and I dont know what is causing it??? I reset the computer to factory settings and am still getting the same pop up. I'd really appricate any help.

Fysh

NY68 wrote: »

Hi im having the same problem. My O/S is Vista, I keep getting a pop up saying the D drive is almost full. This only started recently and I dont know what is causing it??? I reset the computer to factory settings and am still getting the same pop up. I'd really appricate any help.

What kind of machine are you using? How many partitions do you have on your drive and how are they set up?

NY68

I'm using a Inspiron 1720. To be honest I dont know how it is partitioned.

Fysh

NY68 wrote: »

I'm using a Inspiron 1720. To be honest I dont know how it is partitioned.

Hit Windows + R and type compmgmt.msc. Select Storage > Disk Management and you'll be able to see how your disk is partitioned.

Capt'n Midnight

stupid question time

you don't have an extrnal drive / usb / sd card plugged in somewhere ?

NY68

Hi Capt Midnight, no I dont have anything pluged it.
Fysh I went to Disk Managment and it says Recovery (D:) 10 GB NTFS Healthy(primary partition).

I opened the D Drive and it give a list of folders.
Dell File folder
Eddie PC File folder
Program files File folder
Sources file folder
Tools File folder
Users File folder
Windows File folder
MediaID VLC Media file (.bin) 1 KG

The top and bottom one are in blue. The bottom one is strange as I dont think VLC media player should be in the Recovery drive???

Fysh

The Dell drive is just a container where most of Dell's driver packages unpack themselves during installation. That VLC file is not actually a VLC-related item - it's a small binary file, but VLC sets itself as the default choice to open binary files as some people choose to encode (or, shall we say, "obtain" their films from people who encode) films in binary containers for cross-platform compatibility.

Judging by the name your recovery partition has, it seems that the recovery process ended up installing to your secondary partition, not to the main partition. This is going to cause you nothing but misery over time, so is best dealt with sooner rather than later.

Do you have a Windows disc you can use to reinstall?

NY68

Ya I have all the disk's that came with it.

Fysh

NY68 wrote: »

Ya I have all the disk's that came with it.

Grand - if that's the case your best bet is to back up all your stuff to an external disc (don't forget to back up installation packages for any software you want to keep) and reinstall from the DVD. During the reinstallation process when you get to the disk management section, make sure to choose the largest partition available - you'd probably be better off just getting rid of the existing partitions anyway, since I doubt your recovery partition will work any more and tbh if you've got a reinstall DVD you don't need it.

You may want to look at this to speed up the post-reinstall updating process.

NY68

Ok thanks for the info. I'll get back to you on how I get on.