Here is my experience with trying to remove the 10GB and create one single 60GB drive, without formatting Vista, or losing any data. Mind you I have only done this once and I did encounter some serious issues that I was able to resolve. Do this at your own risk, and only if you are not concerned about possibly losing your data on your hard drive.

Requirements:

1. USB-DVD-RW External Drive
2. USB Keyboard & Mouse (not required)
3. Acronis Disk Director Suite 10
4. Another copy of Windows Vista (home/business/ultimate, not the CD that came with the Q1U!)

Steps:

1. Install Acronis Disk Director Suite
(free trial is fully functional)
2. Open Acronis Disk Director Suite (pick manual mode)
3. Select the 10GB Recovery Partition, select delete.
4. Pick the "Increase Free Space" on the left side menu
5. Select the C: Windows Vista partion as the drive you want to increase free space on
6. Set the slider to the maximum 55.89GB new size
7. When wizard is done, pick the Commit button on top (Checkered Flag)
8. Reboot

You will see acronis doing some work on the drives once it finishes it will restart again, then you will get an error message 0xc0000225 when it starts back up.

Windows failed to boot, winload.exe is corrupted etc...

9. Shut off the Q1U
10. Plug in your USB-DVDRW and Keyboard/Mouse (i had a combo mouse/keyboar which has only 1 usb plug)
11. Press a key to boot from CD
12. Pick F8 for other setup options (or go into install and pick boot repair)
13. If you picked F8 pick safe mode
14. When booted pick repair (it will scan and say you have boot errors and click to repair & reboot)
15. Once it starts to boot don't click anything and let it boot normally (unplug your usb dvd drive etc..)
16. Done

Reason why it doesn't boot after Aconis does its work, is because it has to do another finishing step, which the Q1U-V does not let you get to it says winload.exe is corrupted. Once you fix the boot, Acronis does this last step, and all is fine.

Also very important is the Vista Home Premium DVD that Samsung provides does NOT have a REPAIR option in the windows setup, your only option given is to install over your current installation or format and install fresh. How the hell there is no recovery option is mind boggling. But thank god i had a Windows Vista Business DVD which gives the repair options when you run setup.

If someone can figure out a safer route to get this done please let me know.

Also when I booted into Windows Vista Business setup the pen does not work, you need to use the keyboard on the Q1U, along with the directional pad, and mouse buttons.

I didn't want to lose all the work I had done so I had to run out and buy a DVD-RW usb drive, don't have time to do all the work before leaving on a trip.

Also recommended is installing Acronis True Image Home, which is also a fully functional free trial, what i did was a full backup of the recovery partition and vista drive, was about 12GB which i saved on another pc.

Anyway, it was not the ideal way to get it done, but it worked out in the end, whew!

Thanks for sharing your experiences.  I haven't removed the backup partition myself, but I'm sure I will in the future when I start running low on space. 

Um so what Is on the Recovery? I mean Vista fits ona DVD so I don't think it has to be 10 computer gigs.

I tried using Acronis, and it told me that I needed to purchase the full version to perform the resize operation.

Mazda_3s:

I tried using Acronis, and it told me that I needed to purchase the full version to perform the resize operation.

Oops, sorry about that I was using a registered version, I thought I had read the trial was fully functional, guess not.

The 10GB partition is too big, you are correct. It's only using a part of it for the backup, around 4gb if I recall correctly.

I feel sorta dumb asking this, but should the Recovery partition show up as a "D:" drive?  I have such a drive on a new desktop that runs Vista, but I don't see such a partition on my Q1u.

I thought the same thing, but its some special type of partition called "EHD" which I guess allows it to be hidden without a drive letter. Maybe EHD stands for Enhanced Hidden Drive?

To see it, go to Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management, pick on Disk Management.

You will see a 10GB EHD (or something like that) partition.

On a side note I was just at my Sister's place in Canada, and thier year or 2 old Dell had the same kind of hidden recovery patition.

Thanks, Quick!!

Just be very careful doing this.  I did it and caused irreparable damage to the drive.  I then tried to boot with another vista disk and I deleted the drive hoping to reformat.  I then put my Samsung Vista disk in and it would not recognize the drive and there was no way to fix this that I know of.

You should not have any problems booting to a USB CD/DVD drive with a bootable disc. Even if the drive is without any partitions or MBR even... You can't really damage the drive permanantly, it just needs to be repartitioned/reformatted.

When you delete the drive in Windows Vista setup you are just deleting the partition. You need to pick new, and then it will prompt for making a new partition.

But I do agree, do it at great risk of losing your data. Only do this if you have already backed up an image of your drive.

On a side note I was returning my unit to Costco earlier today (exchanging with another Q1U), and I wanted to restore my factory image of the 10GB partition and Vista C: drive, but for some reason Acronis True Image Home 10 when attemping to restore the image would lock up and stay that way for 30 mins, and eventually close with no change to anything. I was unable to restore anything, I just had to remove my personal data and programs manually. This was when trying to run it from within Windows Vista, not from bootable cd (DOS)

I just removed the 10GB recovery partition and re-sized the C: partition to 55GB on my brand-new Q1U-V using Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0.2160 (registered) with absolutely NO boot problems / repairs needed. Worked like a charm, system started right up like normal.

YMMV...

Fletchrox:

I just removed the 10GB recovery partition and re-sized the C: partition to 55GB on my brand-new Q1U-V using Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0.2160 (registered) with absolutely NO boot problems / repairs needed. Worked like a charm, system started right up like normal.

YMMV...

I tried to use it and it blased my drive.  So I just reinstalled using the recover cd and now I'm doing the driver/software CD, so my mileage twice now has definitely varied.  It may be the version of Acronis.  I think mine is older and I didn't bother with the updated version.  Mine is like 10.0.2112 or something just slightly lower than yours.

kapurcell:

Fletchrox:

I just removed the 10GB recovery partition and re-sized the C: partition to 55GB on my brand-new Q1U-V using Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0.2160 (registered) with absolutely NO boot problems / repairs needed. Worked like a charm, system started right up like normal.

YMMV...

I tried to use it and it blased my drive.  So I just reinstalled using the recover cd and now I'm doing the driver/software CD, so my mileage twice now has definitely varied.  It may be the version of Acronis.  I think mine is older and I didn't bother with the updated version.  Mine is like 10.0.2112 or something just slightly lower than yours.

Just wanted to confirm, that Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0.2160 (registered) does work without any issues what so ever. Used it on a brand new Q1U-V straight away after backing up the drive with Acronis True Image Home.

Was able to remove the recovery partition, and resize C: to 55.89GB just like kapurcell with the same version.

Thanks

I have recovered my 10 GB as well with no problem at all. Same process as described above.

Oh boy, I could sure use some help! I backed up a full disk image, then an incremental using Acronis True Image Home 10.  Then I tried to change partitions as described here. The computer rebooted, it ran through the boot tasks, then rebooted into Windows with no changes! (I deleted the recovery partition and added the space to C:\). I tried this again a couple of times. Then I simply tried deleting and wiping the recovery partition. That completed successfully.

Now here's the problem: neither Acronis True Image or Disk Director will start. True Image will get to the first screen, but then hang after choosing to backup the entire computer. Disk Director will get to the splash screen but than hangs when going through the partitions. When I tried using the emergency boot media, the same thing happens!

My computer is working fine, but there's this 10GB of unused space and I can't do any backups. I am still able to do backups using Outback (useful for Outlook settings).

Needless to say, I haven't been able to add the recovery partition's space to my c drive.

Any ideas what I should do next?