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General discussion

System Reserved Space Mistake

Jul 14, 2006 3:43AM PDT

Hello,
I have a Toshiba Satellite M45 running Windows XP Home SP2 with a 1.6ghz centrino and 1gig ram. Recently, I'd installed the new Linux OS called Ubuntu. This is not a question about Ubuntu. I had created 3 more partitions on my 80gig harddrive for a dual boot system. One was for Linux, another for its swap file, and one other for a shared fat32 space between windows and linux. I decided I didn't want to use this version of Linux and wanted to remove it. I used the Linux Rescue CD that had created the partitions to remove them (this is where my subject title starts to make some sense). I had run the format utility for the partitions before deleting the partitions but noticed that the process only took about a minute. I don't think it actually had formatted anything. Now when I run diskeeper, where there use to only be about a bar and a half of reserved system space on the performance map, there are now 5 bars of reserved system space! I'm sure I did not remove linux properly, just removed it from the mbr and resized my primary windows partition. I think that makes sense.
Can anyone help me recover this space without using my toshiba recovery cd? It would be much appreciated..

Discussion is locked

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more info needed
Jul 14, 2006 12:36PM PDT

RECAP:
80GB HD. How many partitions show and what utility are you using to see them?

NOTE: there is always the chance of damaging an installed OS installation when changing its partition size.

Is there a function in any of your utilities to format the unformatted space?

Can you start Windows and open DISK MANAGEMENT to repartition/format?

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more info
Jul 15, 2006 6:36AM PDT

hey there, thanks for the reply. I used a Linux Rescue CD found here http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page
The partitioning utility is called qtparted. There is only one partition now, there used to be 4; 1-windows, 2-linux, 3-linux swap, 4-shared free space. But again, there is only one partition now (windows xp). When I run my defrag utility (diskeeper pro) there appears to be a larger than usual chunk of my disk that is said to be reserved for the system. Never used to be this size until after i installed linux. I did the wrong thing in that I removed the partitions, one being where linux was intalled, without properly removing linux first. I'm a bit new at creating and removing partitions to make a dual-boot system as you may tell. I know enough to know that you must be very careful but if there is anyway to recover this space so that I can stick to my windows for now, that would make my day. By the way, my windows works great, its just that reserved space that is really getting to me. Is there any way to manage it? Thank you for your help, let me know if this was a bit more clear and any suggestions/software recommendations would be really appreciated.

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I think I understand
Jul 15, 2006 8:15AM PDT

I think I understand your situation, but still am not completely sure.

Some OS'es can't ''see'' partitions with certain file systems.

Boot with GParted, QTParted, Diskeeper, your HD maker's utility, etc. One of them should ''see'' the empty space/unformatted partitions. Format those partitions as NTFS or FAT32 (something Windows XP can see). After that, boot into Windows XP and partition and format with Disk Management.

If you deleted the partition that has your boot loader (no OS on the HD will boot), then you need to fix the master boot record. If you need to do this, Google: XP FIXMBR