1 Rookie

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8 Posts

3956

May 28th, 2022 18:00

Partitions on Dell laptop

The Dell laptop came with Windows 10 installed and the following partitions:

1. EFI ~680MB
2. Microsoft reserved ~128MB
3. OS large
4. WINRETOOLS ~1GB
5. Image ~13GB
6. DELLSUPPORT ~1GB


I want to remove Windows and install Linux.

Should I keep the DELLSUPPORT partition? 

I have not been able to find a clear explanation of what is does or how it is used.

Is it used only by Windows, or is it used by the BIOS?

If I delete it, what functionality do I lose?

Thanks

 

 

7 Practitioner

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2.4K Posts

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12K Points

May 31st, 2022 07:00

EFI : Its required for the UEFI BIOS to recognize that drive is bootable

Microsoft reserved : Reserved by windows for it's own dirty tasks  

WINRETOOLS : It has windows recovery tools , RESET/REFRESH/Advanced boot options

Image : Dell's OEM image, without this you wont be able to factory RESET machine. You can still use windows RESET though

DELLSUPPORT : This is for SupportAssist OS recovery which is Dell's own recovery environment can be access from F12 menu

 

Yes you should do a clean Format on HDD for Installing Linux at any point of time you wanna come back to Windows you can download a copy on a USB from Microsoft or Dell

 

1 Rookie

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8 Posts

May 28th, 2022 22:00

Also, what is the image in partition 5, what made it, and when?

2 Intern

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162 Posts

August 18th, 2022 22:00

Create a partition from unpartitioned space with these steps:

Right-click This PC and select Manage.
Open Disk Management.
Select the disk from which you want to make a partition.
Right-click the Unpartitioned space in the bottom pane and select New Simple Volume.
Enter the size and click next, and you are done.

 

This may help you,

Rachel Gomez

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