"OEM Partition" & Recovery partition on Dell Win7 PC

[Timothy Daniels]

I've been reading about the 100MB System Reserved Partition (SRP) that
the Win7 installation disk makes that contains the boot files. But on my
Dell Precision T3500 workstation that has Win7 Pro 64-bit pre-installed,
there is one 39MB mystery "OEM Partition" and a 750MB NTFS Recovery
partition (marked "active") in addition to the 297GB NTFS Win7 partition.

Since I plan to eventually dual-boot the Win7 with Ubuntu, I would like to
free up any partitions not really needed by Win7. Can someone tell me:

1) if that 39MB OEM Partition is counted as one of the 4 Primary partitions
allowed on an MBR machine?

2) Does that 39MB OEM Partition contain the boot files and act as the 100MB
SRP that is created by Win7 installation DVDs?

3) Given that I have a Dell Win7 installation DVD, is there any reason to
keep the 750MB Recovery partition?

4) Why is the 750MB Recovery partition marked "active"?

*TimDaniels*

[Pen]

The 39MB partition has the Dell Diagnostics, which are
usually found on the Dell Drivers disk also. The recovery
partition will restore the machine to the state it was in
from the factory. It's your choice if this is useful or not.

[Timothy Daniels]

"Pen" replied:

Thanks. That seems to partially answer question (3).

But if the Recovery partition is marked "active", it seems to
imply that the boot files are on that partition. If so, it
functions, at least in part, as the 100MB partition made by
the Win7 installer. Is the only other function of the Recovery
partition the restoration of an image that it may contain of
the factory-installed Win7 partition?

The partition table is supposed to accommodate up to 4
primary partitions and no more, or up to 3 primary partitions
and 1 extended partition and no more. Does the 39MB
partition count as one of those partitions?

*TimDaniels*

[Pen]

Check in Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer
Management/Storage/Disk Management should tell you every
thing you need to know about the disks on your machine.

[Tom Cole]

On Mon, 6 May 2013 01:21:25 -0700, "Timothy Daniels"
<Spam...@NoSuchDomain.com> wrote:

>I've been reading about the 100MB System Reserved Partition (SRP) that
>the Win7 installation disk makes that contains the boot files. But on my
>Dell Precision T3500 workstation that has Win7 Pro 64-bit pre-installed,
>there is one 39MB mystery "OEM Partition" and a 750MB NTFS Recovery
>partition (marked "active") in addition to the 297GB NTFS Win7 partition.
>
>Since I plan to eventually dual-boot the Win7 with Ubuntu, I would like to
>free up any partitions not really needed by Win7. Can someone tell me:
>
>1) if that 39MB OEM Partition is counted as one of the 4 Primary partitions
>allowed on an MBR machine?

As Pen wrote, this may contain the Dell diagnostics. ( You can get to
this by pressing F12 when booting. It counts as one of the 4 primary
partitions. On some later Dell machines this is essentially empty, and
the Dell diagnostics are built into the BIOS. My Vostro 3560 laptop
(purchased late last year) is like this and I have deleted this
partition with no obvious side effects.

>
>2) Does that 39MB OEM Partition contain the boot files and act as the 100MB
>SRP that is created by Win7 installation DVDs?

No

>3) Given that I have a Dell Win7 installation DVD, is there any reason to
>keep the 750MB Recovery partition?
>
>4) Why is the 750MB Recovery partition marked "active"?

The recovery partition combines both the recovery and SRP functions.

On my Vostro, after imaging the HD, I wiped it, and reinstalled
Windows from the DVD to eliminate the SRP. Then installed the drivers,
etc from the supplied drivers disk.

[Timothy Daniels]

"Tom Cole" replied:

After speaking with a well-informed Dell tech support agent in the
Small Business division this evening, I've learned that the 39MB OEM
Partition contains just diagnostics, and the 750MB Recovery Partition
contains boot files (like the 100MB partition that the Win7 installation
DVD builds) plus some proprietary Dell utilities. He also said that the
39MB partition is a primary partition and counts as one of the 4 allowed
primary partitions in an MBR partitioning scheme - which I'm stuck with
since the Precision T3500 doesn't have UEFI. The bottom line is that if
I put the boot files in the Win7 partition (which I've read can be done),
I can get away with just one partition for my Windows 7 installation and
one partition for data, and also have a primary partition and 1 extended
partition left over for Linux.

*TimDaniels*