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August 20th, 2017 11:00
Finding advice for new Dell 7000 owner - search? index/categories?
I know that many others must have asked this over many years but can't see an easy way to find what I need.
Later this week I will have a brand new Dell 7000 with a 256GB SSD to tailor - in particular how to ensure I can use as much as possible of the SSD in a structured manner so the backups to a v.large external USB device can be well managed - ideally using (MR) Macrium Reflect (purchased but Home Ed.).
From initial research it appears that the partition structure on arrival will be the usual EFI "stuff" (2p?) followed by Windows and then at least one 'Factory Reset' partition.
My instincts are to try to boot from a UEFI MR USB stick and backup all of the SSD before I run the MS intro' script / prompts / set-up. Is that worth it?
Either way I will get to the point where I *do* have a MR image backup of the whole SSD inc. the Recovery partition(s). I then plan to delete the Recovery partition(s) as they will only be useful in the case a disk crash and the external backup is therefore the only place they ARE useful.
I then plan to shrink the C drive to 80-100GB and create a D drive for my (user) Data which has v.different backup requirements to the C drive. I *may* also the block-size 16 or even 32kB as v.few files are smaller than even 8kB.
I haven't used Dell equipment for 20+ years so I am *hoping* nothing above is a surprise or difficult but I would seriously appreciate any feedback from real users...
Many thanks in advance for any input and especially pointers to posts which might cover the topics raised by my thoughts above and maybe some I haven't even thought of or be aware that I need to.
Cheers, BrianR.
jphughan
9 Legend
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14K Posts
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August 20th, 2017 11:00
I'm also over on the Macrium Reflect forums, fyi, so I'm quite familiar with that product as well.
There's no real benefit to capturing an image of the system before you go through out-of-box setup. After all, you're going to keep capturing images going forward anyway.
A standard UEFI disk layout will include the following partitions, not necessarily in this order, but all of which you MUST keep:
- EFI partition, usually ~100MB
- MSR partition, usually ~16MB
- Recovery partition, usually ~500MB (newer Win10 releases continue to increase the size requirement) -- this is required for things like BitLocker, Automatic System Repair, etc. You do not want to kill this even if you're using Reflect, and in fact even if your system works without it, Windows will add it back anyway when you update to newer Win10 builds.
- OS partition
In addition, you MAY have a separate "Dell Image Recovery" partition, which you can absolutely delete, and if that's the last partition on disk, you don't need to capture an image of your system first; just delete it right where it is, shrink the C drive if needed, and then create your Data partition. The other possibility is that the aforementioned Recovery partition will be several GB because Dell added their own tools and factory image to Microsoft's standard Recovery partition. In that case, you can jump into your Macrium Reflect Rescue Media environment to manually delete any files other than the normal Microsoft tools, and then you may indeed need to capture an image of the system so that you can restore it in a way that rearranges/resizes partitions as needed -- more on that in a moment. And finally, it's possible that you won't find either of these to be the case. Dell may not be including factory images on some systems anymore, instead having users download a recovery image and prep a flash drive to perform restores on-demand, rather than permanently taking up several GB of disk capacity.
If you do end up doing an image capture so that you can rearrange/resize partitions on a restore (as I've done using Reflect successfully), then I personally would recommend placing your Recovery partition immediately AFTER your OS partition (i.e. before this Data partition you'll be creating), because if you don't, then as future Win10 builds require larger Recovery partitions, they'll shrink your OS partition by the amount required to create an entirely new one of the needed size, leaving your existing partition wherever it is as unused, dead weight. If on the other hand the Recovery partition is immediately after the OS partition, Windows will only shrink your OS partition by the additional amount required for the new requirements and then expand the existing Recovery partition to fill that freed up space, maintaining only one Recovery partition and no wasted capacity on the disk. But for now, make sure you make the Recovery partition at least 500 MB.
jphughan
9 Legend
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14K Posts
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August 21st, 2017 19:00
Windows 10 includes a built-in "Reset This PC" feature that you can use to return the system to out-of-box state. That will either restore a default Windows 10 installation or Dell's out-of-box setup, depending on whether Dell has customized that feature. Either way though, you don't have to go out of your way to keep an image of the out-of-box state just to achieve that setup prior to selling the system. And of course you could always just wipe the hard drive and reinstall Windows 10 manually.
Just to be clear, there are FOUR partitions that you have to keep, not three. But yes, if you want to resize or rearrange partitions, MR can do that. You would have to first capture an image of the entire disk as-is, then boot to Rescue Media and perform a "customized" restore. At the first step of the restore you'll see a Source row showing the partitions in the image you're restoring, and the Destination row will show what's currently on the internal hard drive. Choose to delete all existing partitions on the destination, then instead of clicking "Copy selected partitions to destination", drag each individual partition down from the Source row to the Destination row in the NEW order you want them to exist on disk. Microsoft's recommended sequence is: EFI (aka System), MSR, OS, Recovery. When you drag each partition down to the Destination, you can also click "Cloned partition properties" to change the size of the partition, which you'll probably want to do in order to leave room for your new Data partition, which should be placed AFTER the Recovery partition. Then run the restore and you'll be good to go. As you may have just realized, it's not exactly an in-place move of the Recovery partition since you're having to restore your entire hard drive, but you also only have to do it once and then you're set.
In terms of bloatware, Dell seems to have been getting much better about that, at least on the XPS, Latitude, and Precision systems I've seen recently. I haven't bought an Inspiron in a long time. The only junk I've seen is trial anti-virus software, but that's easy to uninstall. There may be some other stuff in Programs and Features you may also want to uninstall, but it's nowhere near as bad as it used to be.
OlDB
3 Posts
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August 21st, 2017 11:00
My logic for doing the MR of *all* part's is the ability to restore the LT to 'ready to set-up' OoB state just in case it gets re-sold or given to a non-IT person (after wiping of course)...
Thanks for pointing out 3 part's + System and the need to keep all of those and the need to watch out for any Dell tools that are surplus to needs given the regular use of MR to ext. HDD. I will research how to move the Recovery part' if it isn't after 'C:' or are you saying that MR can handle this without upsetting Win'10 / EFI etc..
Also thanks for the forewarning about the possibility of NOT having pre-installed "stuff" from Dell.
From your comments and knowledge of MR do I assume that Dell don't inhibit what I hope is a fairly simple switch to using MR and having a multi-partition SSD?
One thought that I forgot to ask about: 'Bloatware' - do Dell swamp the laptop with their own tools, utilities and the almost inevitable advert's for extra products/services they uniquely? provide?
If there are no guides / related material on this forum / site are there other URLs that are useful?
I thought I had found the perfect domain: dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/.../ but so much has changed since 8.1 it wasn't that useful.
ozGeorgeL
2 Posts
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August 22nd, 2017 06:00
thanks jphughan you info in this thread is perfect for me too - my Inspiron 13 7000 7378 just arrived today :)
OlDB
3 Posts
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August 23rd, 2017 14:00
JPhughan - many thanks for the insights from your knowledge of Dell, EFI etc. etc..
Someone beat me to it to accept as answers although I am not sure what changes that makes to the status of the Questions, Answers or yourself... I will attempt to 'Like' both of your posts but if that involves Social Media I will be unable to do so... Thanks again...
Now off to the Macrium Forum to find out if it is possible to prepare V7 for the new PC having just upgraded from a V6 'Home' 4-pack.
I assume that replying to my own question doesn't upset the system.