For some reason or other i know someone with a Dell 640m 1.73 Core Duo Vista Home Premium that came with a 40gig hd.

Thanks to dell the first 10gig is the dell recovery partition. Bravo, the fastest part of the hard drive is filled with junk and he's left with mere peanuts of slow hard disk space towards row Z at Carisbrook.

My question is this: is there any reason why we can't just wipe out the 1st partitions and fill it up with Vista? It says the boot files are in the Vista partition, which, is also a primary partition. There are 2 primary partitions, no extended partitions.

Does Dell have any special requirements in its bios or otherwise that require this partition to be intact? Will Vista still work if i gparted it to conquer the small world after all?

Thanks. Of course we will backup but a failed partition project means lengthy reinstall! Thanks