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Specific pros and cons of system reserved partition for me
I have read around various sites and tutorials and all for the Windows 7 system reserved partition, but I am still not entirely clear on what are the pros and cons of having them. I have heard many arguments each way, but all from each person's own individual perspective, and would really like someone to clear up what I don't understand. Hopefully this doesn't come over like I haven't bothered searching for myself, I did, but I still don't quite get it.
OK. If I delete the system reserved partition, can I extend the other partition into the space using Windows 7 own tools? (No third party for partition management for me, it always, always totally wrecks my machine, leaving me having to nuke the drive and reinstall). I can't see the point of deleting it otherwise, but nobody has so far said you do anything other than delete it and then run the startup repair.
What is in that partition - I mean, other than "recovery environment" - I've read that, but what is it? I don't carry the drive with my system images on it when I am outside the house anyway, so no benefit in being able to run recovery without the disc. I can get into the restore tools from my Win7 installation disc, is there anything on the system partition that is not on the upgrade version of the installation DVD for W7 Pro Student Upgrade 32 bit?
If I get rid of the system partition, does W7's native system image creation tool still work as before? (obviously you only image one partition, but does it still work?)
Is there any situation where Windows will get upset about the absence of this partition? I don't want to do anything which is essentially a "hack" I want W7 to be running as closely as possible to the tried and tested, stable methods, as I have had a lot of trouble with hacks and third party software making a mess of my system.
Does this process ever go wrong for people? I currently have a working system, and on the old adage "if it aint broke, don't fix it" I don't really feel like faffing with the system. OTOH I find it hard to correctly image and restore this setup with Acronis True Image Home 2009, and that's my primary backup and restore method, so I would rather take the risk now so that Acronis will work well in future. Is it a "risky" thing to delete this partition or does it always work that startup recovery will put the boot files back? Did anyone try it and find that didn't happen?
Bear in mind that I have a special relationship with the impossible - I used to have a Windows machine whose mouse didn't work until I loaded a particular building society's mortgage calculator web page, which I could then shut down and the mouse continued working, but would stop working again at next reboot until I loaded that mortgage calculator. That level of impossible happens to me all the time!
I have a single boot W7 laptop, 250GB sata drive, no other OS, no GRUB, no anything complex and don't intend installing any other OS on here in the future. It's a Packard Bell Easynote LJ61 in case that helps, but the manufacturer partition has been nuked, so it's just W7 main and W7 system reserved on here now.
Last edited by RoseRodent; 16 Aug 2010 at 09:30.