D drive with a dangerous file/folder

[Power Lunch Club]

Hello,

My laptop has 2 drives on is....standard C: drive and a D: drive which Acer call, (ACERDATA),which I use to store backed up copies of My Documents in case I need them....I back up my stuff daily with an online system.

I have been trying to defrag this drive, but it is telling me there is file in use in it and won't let me defrag it. (it's is actually a folder not a file)....and when I try to delete the file/folder in question, it asks me "Do You want to format this drive?" Cleary I don't...I want rid of this little blighter....what do I do?

Kind regards

Annoyed of Edinburgh!

 

[Brian McIntosh]

OK Gordon, a shot in the dark here. When I bought my last laptop it came with a partitioned drive. The D drive had all the recovery software on it so that I can restore the laptop back to the factory settings in case thing go pear shaped. I had to make a recovery DVD before it would let me do anything on the drive. Now that I've got the DVD made I can store, defrag and even format the drive.

 

[Idea15]

I have an Acer with a partitioned drive and I'd say - don't mess with it. It's there for a reason.

You would have to have someone delete that rogue file through your registry, which is a matter for serious geeks.

 

[TomB]

HI Gordon,

If you don't use that any more for back as you have an online service then I would say its safe to remove it.

is there any backup or recovery software from Acer on the laptop to control it.

That should allow you to remove it, and that also that might be why its locked the drive.

T

 

[Power Lunch Club]

Yes, Heather point is good....it's a partioned drive....(even non techy like me knew that)...

The folder in question is a sub folder of one I created for my PDF documents....so how the heck it got there.

Now if I try to delete it or rename it...it threaten to reformat laptop...not good.
Even defraging it cause it to try to reformat it....

I have done as much as I want to do with it, I rebuilding the machine...so now it's time for me to call in my MR FIXIT....heck that's what I am paying him for.

See if he can sort it without a major rebuild.

other than this now....and laptop working a dream this week.

Thanks for all your posts...much appreciated.

Oh just to add something else...I have discovered a MOV file...which doesn't seem to want to be deleted....says its being used by another programme somewhere....any thoughts.

Kind regards

Gordon
PLC

 

[PC]

restart your machine in safe mode and then you will be able to delete them.

 

[TomB]

there is nothing quite like a freshly installed laptop!!

Its an extreme fix though Gordon, you can remove partitions with out having to re-install everything.

 

[PC]

The partition holds the recovery information if ever you need to reinstall Windows - I presume you didn't get a Windows CD with the laptop hence the recovery partition.

 

[TomB]

yeah i noticed that on a new HP 6720 i was setting up last night.

Quite annoying really. I had to create a restore disk (2 DVD's) before i could remove the partition.

I wonder how much money the manufacturers save by doing that?

T

 

[PC]

You really shouldn't have deleted the partition. It was there for a purpose...

What if your DVD's didn't burn properly, are corrupt or they get scratched?

 

[TomB]

the dvd's burnt fine and run perfectly. I have made three copies of them in seperate locations.

I find these paritions pointless anyway, the hard drive gives up on the pc and it doesn't make a difference whether the parition is there or not.

I don't like pC manufacturers telling me how i should setup my PC.

I work in IT any way, i manage the IT needs of a charity with 30 users, three servers and 7 printers.

Our exchange server raid mirror decided to pack it in and our hard drive was knackered, the data was unretrievable, the company that installed the servers created a partion like the hp one with the server data on it and software, was useless to us, as the hard drive was knackered.

I would hope i know what i'm doing by now