Remove HP Tools or System Partition?

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obscuredbyclouds

New Member
Hi there,

I need to dual boot Linux Mint along with my Win7 OS. I already have 4 primary partitions (C, Recovery, HP Tools, & System) and need to delete one to make room for a partition for the Linux OS, or somehow combine two of them if that is possible.

On my last computer, I chose to delete the recovery partition. By miraculous fate, I started having computer issues shortly after. Although I eventually learned that the issues were caused by heating damage to my motherboard and couldn't really be fixed, the whole process while I was trying to recover and diagnose my computer was extremely frustrating without recovery.

Would deleting HP Tools or System be very harmful? Which deletion would be the least risky? Or is there a way to combine them so I don't have to worry about deleting them at all?

Thanks
 
You can't do anything with them. The only thing you can do is create a new one from the existing free space you have. Go into disk management and shrink the volume where you free space. Most likely it will be labeled the c drive. How much free space does C have?
 
I have tons of free space to shrink if I did that; the only problem is that there are already 4 independent partitions on my HDD, which is the max. If I shrank the volume, it would create some free space, but not another primary partition. If I did that and tried to install Linux, that extra space would be labeled as "unusable space" instead of "unallocated space", and wouldn't allow me to create the volumes needed for the new OS.

The situation is like the one described here :
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1765275

So essentially, I am forced to delete one of the partitions in order to install Linux, but it seems like deleting any of those could be dangerous from what you've said, so I'm in a bit of a pickle.
 
I would first make or buy a Win7 Boot Disk;
copy the HPTools to dvd, delete it; make Recovery a directory under System;

Use gparted to move (if necessary) the remaining partitions to be adjacent each other;

use your Windows utility to shrink 'em;

use gparted, again, to create a primary boot partition of 15-20GB (depending on distro),
and an extended partition of the remainder of the hard drive, into which place your /swap and /home.
 
You really can't move the recovery partition as thats how he can recover the operating system. If that gets moved then he won't be able to access that partition at startup. If anything, purchase recovery cd's from the manufacturer so you can reinstall in case disaster strikes. Then delete recovery partition. How big is the system partition?
 
Thanks for both helping me out. I'm trying to accomplish this with the least risky way possible.

To answer your question the system is 199MB, HP Tools 102 MB, C Drive ~900GB, and Recovery ~22GB

I was looking around online and it appears that it may be possible to create a live USB drive to host the HP Tools partition and then delete it. That way, if I ever needed to use the diagnostic tools, check for hardware errors, etc. on HP Tools, then I could just use a flash drive to do so. Would any of you know how to facilitate this?

I was also just considering devoting space on an external HDD for the partitions of the Linux OS. Is is possible to boot up an OS from an external HDD?

Thanks as always for the input
 
You can always shrink c drive and then use the free space you crested to install linux.
 
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