Formatting "D" Recovery drive

[choodalls]

Hi,
I have a Vaio PCG-K295HP laptop with twin drives. When I bought the laptop I made the two recovery disks with the Recovery Utility.
Recently I went to open the recovery utility and got message to the effect that it wouldn't open because the recovery partition had been removed or been corrupted. Now I didn't remove it myself , so guess at some stage an application I have may have corrupted it making it unusable. Anyway not really bothered by this as I have got my own disks.
So, can I now re-format drive D to make it all usable or are there some other hidden folders etc. on there the system uses that I might screw up?
Thanks.

[kee-lo_]

😧 is not used for the reocvery partition, it's on a hidden partition.

[choodalls]

So what is on "D" that is used by the system? When I check what's on it there seems to be about 4GB worth of stuff that is not visible - could it be being used by Norton Go Back - in which case I'm fine with deleting it, but I do not want to delete any system stuff. So, what do you think will re-formatting D mess up my system?

[kee-lo_]

D usually has the spare space left after C is made....
what other drives do you have?

[choodalls]

Just C and D (I have a plug-in removable too). D allegedly has 23GB of space, and I only have 7GB of visible files on it, but system says there are only 10GB of free space leaving 6GB of apparently used space that I can see no folders for.....

[avalancha]

Here's how it was with my VAIO

-- hidden partition with about 10GB
-- partition drive C with about 30GB
-- partition drive D with about 30GB

If u want to free the space (if u have already burned your recovery CDs) then just delete the hidden partition with

a) a partition manager like Partition magic or
b) use a WIN install CD - start the system with the CD, go as far as tot he question on which partition u want to install, then delete the hidden partition there.

I deleted the hidden partition with the WIN XP Pro CD, then added the space to Partition C.

Hope that helps

[choodalls]

Thanks for that.
If I move my files out of D (only have four folders and can back up to my removable drive) then that would clear all my stuff from D temporarily.
I don't have Partition Magic or similar, but would doing a simple re-format on D then leave it all usable so I can pop my folders back into it?
Thanks.

[kee-lo_]

I would use Norton Ghost if you have it before doing any operations

[choodalls]

Okay will do.....I don't want to mess anything up.
Thanks for all the input.
Dave.

[mauricetgol]

Here's how it was with my VAIO

-- hidden partition with about 10GB
-- partition drive C with about 30GB
-- partition drive D with about 30GB

If u want to free the space (if u have already burned your recovery CDs) then just delete the hidden partition with

a) a partition manager like Partition magic or
b) use a WIN install CD - start the system with the CD, go as far as tot he question on which partition u want to install, then delete the hidden partition there.

I deleted the hidden partition with the WIN XP Pro CD, then added the space to Partition C.

Hope that helps

That makes our HD 70 GIGA?