Managing partitions with 'Disk Management'

We have been donated a brand new lap top
FWIW it's a 64 bit Lenovo G50 it's supposedly an entry level pc

It came unopened in it's shipping packaging.

So I plugged it in and turned it on and how the hell your average entry
level user could cope with what I found is compeletely beyond me.

It was running 8.1, as soon as it booted the update manager started up
and started downloading a whole bunch of updates. Most of these failed.
I had that sinking feeling, so I just kept rebooting and downloading and
installing, checking the update logs etc.

Eventually, with too many failed updates to count all of a sudden update
manager tells me that it's downloading Windows 10 ... WTF?

Long (long) story short, eventually Windows 10 booted.

how the hell your average entry level user could cope with this is
completely beyond me.

Anyway, First things first I thought I try and figure out how to get
some kind of recovery thing going on. Jeez

I started reading around to try and figure out what the Lenovo solution
is. There is a thing called 'One Key Recovery' the available
documentation (that I have found) is useless, there is another thing
called Lenovo Solution Centre. I made a wild guess that this might be
what I needed so I gave it a whirl ... later.

I clicked the 'system' tab and launched the One Key Recovery 'tool'
I clicked the 'System Backup' icon

ROFL! LMAO! FFS! WTF

The well hidden Windows disk manager application tells me that there are
two primary partitions. C: and D: along with a bunch of unnamed
partitions (snapshot available at http://imgur.com/CYgls75)

D: is 25GB

The default backup location is set to

D:\Lenovo\OneKey App\OneKeyRecovery\backup.wsi

Are you sitting down? I literally LMFAO whan I saw

Estimated image size 37.3GB

Available hard disk space 21.9GB

.... speechless.

I went back to the Disk Manager and started trying to figure out how to
make D: big enough to store the image ...

I mean, For F***s Sake
how the hell your average entry level user could cope with this is
completely beyond me.

Anyway here are a couple of questions

How reliable is the Disk manager application, I want to take enough from
the partition hosting C: and give it to the partition hosting D:
so that D can hold the backup image.

Any gotchas, traps or 'features' I should be aware of?

Also, if you look at the image, the highlighted unamed (possibly
secondary) partition is reported as being a 'recovery partition'

Any idea what this is about.

I'm a developer, if the machine breaks I give it to a spod to fix.
It's been years since I messed around with disk partitions (fdisk is
about my level) so please forgive stupid questions.

Finally how the HELL your average entry level user could cope with all
this is compeletely beyond me.

TIA

--
Laughing Spam Fritter

Eternal Hope wrote:
We have been donated a brand new lap top
FWIW it's a 64 bit Lenovo G50 it's supposedly an entry level pc

It came unopened in it's shipping packaging.

So I plugged it in and turned it on and how the hell your average entry
level user could cope with what I found is compeletely beyond me.

It was running 8.1, as soon as it booted the update manager started up
and started downloading a whole bunch of updates. Most of these failed.
I had that sinking feeling, so I just kept rebooting and downloading and
installing, checking the update logs etc.

Eventually, with too many failed updates to count all of a sudden update
manager tells me that it's downloading Windows 10 ... WTF?

Long (long) story short, eventually Windows 10 booted.

how the hell your average entry level user could cope with this is
completely beyond me.

Anyway, First things first I thought I try and figure out how to get
some kind of recovery thing going on. Jeez

I started reading around to try and figure out what the Lenovo solution
is. There is a thing called 'One Key Recovery' the available
documentation (that I have found) is useless, there is another thing
called Lenovo Solution Centre. I made a wild guess that this might be
what I needed so I gave it a whirl ... later.

I clicked the 'system' tab and launched the One Key Recovery 'tool'
I clicked the 'System Backup' icon

ROFL! LMAO! FFS! WTF

The well hidden Windows disk manager application tells me that there are
two primary partitions. C: and D: along with a bunch of unnamed
partitions (snapshot available at http://imgur.com/CYgls75)

D: is 25GB

The default backup location is set to

D:\Lenovo\OneKey App\OneKeyRecovery\backup.wsi

Are you sitting down? I literally LMFAO whan I saw

Estimated image size 37.3GB

Available hard disk space 21.9GB

... speechless.

I went back to the Disk Manager and started trying to figure out how to
make D: big enough to store the image ...

I mean, For F***s Sake
how the hell your average entry level user could cope with this is
completely beyond me.

Anyway here are a couple of questions

How reliable is the Disk manager application, I want to take enough from
the partition hosting C: and give it to the partition hosting D:
so that D can hold the backup image.

Any gotchas, traps or 'features' I should be aware of?

Also, if you look at the image, the highlighted unamed (possibly
secondary) partition is reported as being a 'recovery partition'

Any idea what this is about.

I'm a developer, if the machine breaks I give it to a spod to fix.
It's been years since I messed around with disk partitions (fdisk is
about my level) so please forgive stupid questions.

Finally how the HELL your average entry level user could cope with all
this is compeletely beyond me.

TIA


The G50 comes with Superfish on it, out of the box.

https://web.archive.org/how-to/lenov...uninstall-fix/

Superfish checker (checks for appropriate "disturbance in how browser
is supposed to work)

https://lastpass.com/superfish/

*******

The disk has GPT partitioning, rather than MBR partitioning.
This doesn't change the steps involved.

Open Disk Management. Try right-clicking the Start button and
look for Disk Management there. In the old days, you would
type in "diskmgmt.msc" to run it.

Right-click the C: partition and select "Shrink". This is a new
function on modern OSes. You won't find it in Disk Management
on WinXP. The dialog will indicate the maximum shrinkage allowed.
Typically on the order of 50% max shrinkage, due to the layout
of NTFS metadata.

Once the shrink of C: (on its right end) is completed, you
can Expand the D: partition in a similar way. (Expand the
left hand side of D: to take up the unallocated space.) Shrinking
C: should be relatively quick, as there is no reason for
clusters to be in usage up near the end.

If D: is empty, and you plan on putting a lot of backups
on D:, then I might change the cluster size of D: to 64K.
You could reformat D: in Disk Management, and select a
non-default cluster size. (On NTFS, 4KB is normal, and
supports compression and encryption. Using a 64KB cluster
size when reformatting, prevents compression. But it also might reduce
the heat movement a bit.) I use 64K clusters on my NTFS partition
that has a few backups on it, and that's to help with
efficiency. It's not practical to do that with C:. I
tried, using a third party tool, and a data file ended up
corrupted.

Backing up to the same hard drive isn't typically
recommended, due to the possibility of the hard drive
failing and trashing both backup and primary. If you needed
to "stage" the backup, which is something I do here occasionally,
you can temporarily store the backup on D:, then copy it to safe
storage somewhere else. In my case, the second transfer step
would also involved a compression tool, to make the backup
a bit smaller.

At the current time, you claim C: has 37GB of data on it.
It actually has

C:\Windows --- now Win10
C:\Windows.old --- the old Win8.1

Using Disk Cleanup ("cleanmgr.exe"), there is a provision
in there to remove Windows.old. Only do that if
you are sure you don't need anything from Win8.1
(such as backing out of Win10 and going back
to Win8.1). When Disk Cleanup deletes Windows.old,
that will free up 12GB or more of space. Now, your
backup will fit that other partition. That is, if you
enable some compression in the backup tool. It might
take a bit of LZO or better compression, to make the
C: partition fit in the old size of D:.

Also, both Win8.1 and Win10, will delete Windows.old
all by themselves, after 30 days have passed. That's one
of the reasons a Win10 install cannot be reverted,
because the Windows.old is gone when you need it
most. Doing Disk Cleanup now, would only be necessary
if you actually wanted to fit the backup onto D:.

I would just be hooking up my USB3 hard drive right
now, and doing a backup of the entire disk, to that
drive. With "intelligent copy" for the imaging method,
you only pay for the sectors used. So while C: is 931GB
or so, 900GB of that will not need to be backed up, as
there are no files stored in there.

Paul

Eternal Hope wrote on 9/19/2015 5:19 AM:
I'm a developer, if the machine breaks I give it to a spod to fix.
What the heck is a 'spod'?

PS. I never turn on a new PC and connect it to the internet till I've looked at it completely.
And I usually boot an Acronis cd first and image the entire drive before it has booted the OS so I have that ultimate
virgin image of the whole hard drive. I'm anal like that!

On 19/09/2015 9:22 AM, Stormin' Norman wrote:
On Sat, 19 Sep 2015 08:52:54 -0400, Big Al wrote:

Eternal Hope wrote on 9/19/2015 5:19 AM:
I'm a developer, if the machine breaks I give it to a spod to fix.
What the heck is a 'spod'?

A British term for nerd or geek.

The British have some colorful completely unintelligible terms for
things. It's hard to believe they actually invented the language.

Yousuf Khan

On 19/09/2015 5:19 AM, Eternal Hope wrote:

snip

Long (long) story short, eventually Windows 10 booted.

Still not short enough.

how the hell your average entry level user could cope with this is
completely beyond me.

We've all started out as entry level users at one time. We become
advanced users by staying calm and working through it.

Anyway, First things first I thought I try and figure out how to get
some kind of recovery thing going on. Jeez

I started reading around to try and figure out what the Lenovo solution
is. There is a thing called 'One Key Recovery' the available
documentation (that I have found) is useless, there is another thing
called Lenovo Solution Centre. I made a wild guess that this might be
what I needed so I gave it a whirl ... later.

I clicked the 'system' tab and launched the One Key Recovery 'tool'
I clicked the 'System Backup' icon

ROFL! LMAO! FFS! WTF

Okay, so first thing, if you want to get a recovery thing going, then
why are you trying to backup? Those two are the exact opposite actions.

The well hidden Windows disk manager application tells me that there are
two primary partitions. C: and D: along with a bunch of unnamed
partitions (snapshot available at http://imgur.com/CYgls75)

D: is 25GB

The default backup location is set to

D:\Lenovo\OneKey App\OneKeyRecovery\backup.wsi

Are you sitting down? I literally LMFAO whan I saw

Estimated image size 37.3GB

Available hard disk space 21.9GB

... speechless.

You're obviously no "spod", as a spod will know enough to change the
location of the backup location, instead of trying to resize the
partition! Tail wagging the dog.

Back in the old days, we were all computer developers and "spods", there
was no difference between us, we knew everything about computers as a
matter of logic.

The little 25GB D: drive is known as a recovery partition. It contains
the original image of the version of Windows that came with that
computer. It really shouldn't even have a drive letter assigned to it,
but sometimes during a system reset it gets assigned a drive letter
automatically.

Anyways, you can make a folder on your C: drive which has plenty of
space, and direct the backup there. This isn't the ideal place to put a
backup as you'll be backing up the C: drive to the C: drive, but you're
only attempting to do a one time backup here, and you can move the
backup images to another drive (like an external USB hard drive), some
time later. In the meantime, you can create a folder like "c:\backups"
to hold the images. You should also exclude the "C:\backups" folder from
being backed up itself, otherwise, it'll just end up backing previous
backup images.

I went back to the Disk Manager and started trying to figure out how to
make D: big enough to store the image ...

I mean, For F***s Sake
how the hell your average entry level user could cope with this is
completely beyond me.

Anyway here are a couple of questions

How reliable is the Disk manager application, I want to take enough from
the partition hosting C: and give it to the partition hosting D:
so that D can hold the backup image.

Any gotchas, traps or 'features' I should be aware of?

Yeah, get off of this line of thinking. Change the backup location to C:
drive, like I said before. Or if you have an external USB hard drive
already, then direct the backups directly to that drive (it'll likely be
called E: drive).

Also, if you look at the image, the highlighted unamed (possibly
secondary) partition is reported as being a 'recovery partition'

Any idea what this is about.

Yes, I've explained it up above. As I said, it really shouldn't even be
given a drive letter, it's supposed to remain hidden most of the time.

When you first posted this question, I was thinking your question might
have been how to resize this partition to make it **smaller**. If you'll
notice, it's been assigned 25 GB, but the existing image on it is only
about 4 GB, so there's a full 21 GB that's being wasted. That way you
could reassign the partition space to the bigger C: drive.

I'm a developer, if the machine breaks I give it to a spod to fix.
It's been years since I messed around with disk partitions (fdisk is
about my level) so please forgive stupid questions.

Finally how the HELL your average entry level user could cope with all
this is compeletely beyond me.

I'm shaking my head in disbelief. Not at how difficult it is, but at how
difficult you're finding it.

Forgive me if I seem a little angry, but I started using computers in
the 1980's. Back then developers and computer techs were the same
things, and we knew how to do our own computer repairs. I can't believe
that this is considered such different jobs nowadays.

Yousuf Khan

On 19/09/2015 13:52, Big Al wrote:
Eternal Hope wrote on 9/19/2015 5:19 AM:
I'm a developer, if the machine breaks I give it to a spod to fix.
What the heck is a 'spod'?

A spod is a techi that isn't a developer, it's a name that confers
appropriate respect on someone who takes the machines to bits and fixes
them. It's not a negative lable.


PS. I never turn on a new PC and connect it to the internet till I've
looked at it completely.
And I usually boot an Acronis cd first and image the entire drive before
it has booted the OS so I have that ultimate virgin image of the whole
hard drive. I'm anal like that!




--
Laughing Spam Fritter

On 19/09/2015 15:35, Stormin' Norman wrote:
On Sat, 19 Sep 2015 10:19:38 +0100, Eternal Hope wrote:

We have been donated a brand new lap top
FWIW it's a 64 bit Lenovo G50 it's supposedly an entry level pc

You changed your nym recently, didn't you? I can't remember the former nym, but aren't you the same person
who has volunteered to support a computer lab being run as part of a municipal outreach program?

No idea, sorry, what's a 'nym'

IMHO, you guys need to establish some standards, for example, settle on a single operating system for all the
machines, i.e. Windows 7. Create a hardware independent, deployment image and simply apply that image to each
machine in your inventory. Reject machines that are not capable of running your chosen OS.

You're missing the point. People bring their own machines in that can be
running anything from Windows 3.1 to slackware Linux. We get Android
phones and tablets, one lady does everything on a notepad running Mint,
we get questions on Macs and any number of those iPad things. Many older
citizens have tower systems, they seem to prefer the solidity and
anyway, they look like 'real' computers. We currently have machines that
run Vista, 7, 8.1 and 10. I run Windows 3.1 and various flavors of Linux
in VirtualBox we don't demand uniformity we help anyone. Installing
Windows 7 on all our machines would be ... unhelpful to many of our
customers.

If there is an issue with licensing, contact the software vendors directly, tell them what you are doing, what
you need and the odds are the companies will give you licenses for free or at a reduced cost. At the very
least, you could probably buy the software very inexpensively on eBay.

When you were a developer, didn't you insist on coding standards?

Coding standards are wonderful things often devised by the marketing
department to comply with a clients level of (ISO) standards compliance.

Certain industries (defense, flight systems and ATC to name a few)
wouldn't be able to operate without strict coding standards, everthing
else is panic driven, when the burn rate is approaching critical and
delivery penalties loom, coding standards go out the window.

The frustration you are experiencing and expressing here is actually painful to read.

No, really?

I just do it for fun, jeez, if I let this stuff get to me I'd be in a
padded room by now.


--
Laughing Spam Fritter

In message , Stormin' Norman
writes:
On Sat, 19 Sep 2015 09:37:50 -0400, Yousuf Khan
wrote:

On 19/09/2015 9:22 AM, Stormin' Norman wrote:
On Sat, 19 Sep 2015 08:52:54 -0400, Big Al wrote:

Eternal Hope wrote on 9/19/2015 5:19 AM:
I'm a developer, if the machine breaks I give it to a spod to fix.
What the heck is a 'spod'?

A British term for nerd or geek.

The British have some colorful completely unintelligible terms for
things. It's hard to believe they actually invented the language.


Like "Boffin", which is what they call scientists or engineers.

Though that's rarely used these days, and sometimes when it is it has
some of the negativity of "geek", since mocking seems to be a necessary
part of life these days.

IMO, the late Gerry the museum was one of the last of the boffins. (See
http://www.bvwtm.org.uk/portrait/index.htm .)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"The great tragedy of science, the slaying of a beautiful theory by an ugly
fact. - Thomas Henry Huxley

In message , Yousuf Khan
writes:
On 19/09/2015 5:19 AM, Eternal Hope wrote:

snip

Long (long) story short, eventually Windows 10 booted.

Still not short enough.

how the hell your average entry level user could cope with this is
completely beyond me.

We've all started out as entry level users at one time. We become
advanced users by staying calm and working through it.

Yes, but Eternal's point was/is, I think, that the industry - or
whatever we call the amorphous entity that includes the hardware
manufacturers, Microsoft (et al.), and ourselves - has evolved, to the
extent that there now _is_ the concept of an "entry level user", who
expects to buy a computer, turn it on, and use it. (To be fair, this
_is_ closer to the truth than it once was.) Those of us who started all
those decades ago, did so in a different world, where you _expected_ to
have to work at it.
[]
Back in the old days, we were all computer developers and "spods",
there was no difference between us, we knew everything about computers
as a matter of logic.

(So we're in agreement there.)
[]
how the hell your average entry level user could cope with this is
completely beyond me.

Anyway here are a couple of questions

How reliable is the Disk manager application, I want to take enough from
the partition hosting C: and give it to the partition hosting D:
so that D can hold the backup image.

Anyone who discusses it says you shouldn't _rely_ on it, but back up
everything, which is just common sense anyway. Having said that, I
haven't had it go wrong on _me_ yet.

Any gotchas, traps or 'features' I should be aware of?

The main one I've encountered is that it won't shrink partitions beyond
a point (sometimes "where immovable files" are). Sometimes restarting
will let you have another go, but I've found getting a free third party
tool (so far the EaseUS one has worked fine for me, so I haven't tried
any others, so don't know if others are better; I also haven't tried it
above W7) is less bother.
[]
Finally how the HELL your average entry level user could cope with all
this is compeletely beyond me.

I'm shaking my head in disbelief. Not at how difficult it is, but at
how difficult you're finding it.

I'm a bit with both of you. I _certainly_ agree with Eternal that what
he saw when turning on an apparently-new computer would faze a new user
(though I'm puzzled how it got a network connection); I'm with you in
being surprised he didn't recognise a recovery partition for what it was
(though the fact that it had a drive letter probably doesn't help).

Forgive me if I seem a little angry, but I started using computers in
the 1980's. Back then developers and computer techs were the same

(Me too: not long ago I found the receipt for the extra 7K of memory I
bought to get my Tangerine up from 1K to 8K. Not to mention that I
_really_ started on a machine with a memory of 16 locations [of 7 bits -
that was a weird architecture].)

things, and we knew how to do our own computer repairs. I can't believe
that this is considered such different jobs nowadays.

It is, though. Not least because the subject has grown so much.

Yousuf Khan

John
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"The great tragedy of science, the slaying of a beautiful theory by an ugly
fact. - Thomas Henry Huxley

In message , Stormin' Norman
writes:
On Sat, 19 Sep 2015 16:38:29 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

Though that's rarely used these days, and sometimes when it is it has
some of the negativity of "geek", since mocking seems to be a necessary
part of life these days.

Strange, I still see Boffin used in the UK press all the time.

We probably read different bits of the press (-:. Though don't you get
the feeling that it is used, if not actually negatively, at least
condescendingly? (Sort of "quaint old fellow in a white coat"?)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"Scheisse," said Pooh, trying out his German.

On 19/09/2015 10:19, Eternal Hope wrote:
We have been donated a brand new lap top
FWIW it's a 64 bit Lenovo G50 it's supposedly an entry level pc

It came unopened in it's shipping packaging.


This is getting better

Open the lenovo solutions centre

click system

hey, how cool is that, there is a 'Recovery Media' icon

click it

Oh ********, the same dialog opens telling me to write a *backup* to the
D: drive that doesn't have enough space.

I think I'll contact the Lenovo 'support' ... tommorrow.


--
Laughing Spam Fritter

On 19/09/2015 12:24 PM, Stormin' Norman wrote:
On Sat, 19 Sep 2015 16:38:29 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote:

Though that's rarely used these days, and sometimes when it is it has
some of the negativity of "geek", since mocking seems to be a necessary
part of life these days.

Strange, I still see Boffin used in the UK press all the time.

Mostly see it when reading the Register or the Inquirer.

Yousuf Khan

En el artículo , Eternal Hope
escribió:

Finally how the HELL your average entry level user could cope with all
this

You can't even cope with finding the right group to post in. None of
your problems have anything to do with Windows 7.

alt.windows10.general is that way ---------------------

--
(\_/)
(='.'=) Bunny says: Windows 10? Nein danke!
(")_(")

En el artículo , Yousuf
Khan escribió:

It's hard to believe they actually invented the language.

We invented it, the Americans ruined it.

--
(\_/)
(='.'=) Bunny says: Windows 10? Nein danke!
(")_(")

On 20/09/2015 12:25, Mike Tomlinson wrote:
En el artículo , Eternal Hope
escribió:

Finally how the HELL your average entry level user could cope with all
this

You can't even cope with finding the right group to post in. None of
your problems have anything to do with Windows 7.

alt.windows10.general is that way ---------------------


*If* it exists (alt.windows10.general) eternal-september doesn't carry
it. The last post to alt.windows was in July. There is an Italian
windows10 group but I don't speak that language. I asked if it was OK to
post this stuff here and was told it was.

Bitch and whine somewhere else

--
Laughing Spam Fritter