Sony Vaio System Recovery

I just bought a new Sony VAIO desktop for video editing and have learned a
few things about Sony's System Recover and Hard Drive configurations I would
like to share.

1) The system has a 200G HD, it came preconfigured with a C & D partition in
which C was given 14G & D 167G, you ask where's the rest of the space. I'll
get to that, in a minute(#3). Partitioning C with only 14G is wrong, knowing
all of your program and system files will be stored on C. Out of the box,
with all Sony software, XP, and other bundled software, only 4G of usable
disk space is available. But the problem continues, Sony also made the C
drive the default for XP to use for all User data (My/Shared
Documents/Document & Settings) which is crazy. They should have made the D
drive the default for XP user data. Needless to say I ran out of disk space
on C th efirst day.

2) The second annoyance is that Sony does not ship any CD media for the
software you buy from them. You must create you own CDs or CD/DVDs using
their VAIO system recovery wizard. This utility takes all factory installed
OS and program files and burns them to a recovery set of CD/DVDs. I did this
but was skeptical that it would work when needed for a restore. Nothing like
being down the road 3 years later, and Sony telling you they no longer offer
support or worse, it just doesn't work and your left hanging. I created a
set of CD/DVDs.

3) To overcome the default partitioning as described in #1, I decided to buy
a new 250G hard drive and test the Sony recovery process. I disconnected my
original factory HD, and installed the new. I partitioned the drive as a
single 250G NTFS partition, no problems. I only want one HD. I inserted the
1st system recovery CD, it ran but ended with an error "Cannot determine
partition settings". I tried this process 4-5 times with no luck. I went in
search of answers and found a posting in which someone stated Sony creates a
"private" partition on thier factory HD. This is where they install all
factory OS & program software. I reinstalled my original HD to verify and
there it was, 5G with no drive letter associated with it; along with my C &
D drive. With this knowledge I decided to re-partition my new HD with two
partitions, one 5G the other 245G. I re-ran the recovery wizzard, it worked.
My OS & Program files began to install, but not exactly how I wanted.
Remember the problem I described in #1, well Sony's program wanted to
re-partition my HD again with a small C partition, WHY? They did give you an
option of increasing it some, but they always required a D partition too.
Therefore if you increase C, you're left with a tiny D partition too which I
think is silly. I could find no way around eliminating the creation of a D
partition, and only having one large C drive. So I guess Sony did what they
claimed, they restored my system to the factory defaults and configurations.
Also, unlike the normal XP install they did not give you the option of using
D for all XP Document & Settings, it still mandates for them to be installed
on C.

One positive note, all of my OS and programs files did restore as claimed.