Recovery partition

I have an new Asus K52F notebook that's pre installed with Windows 7 x64 HP. I have no dvd as such and will have to rely on the recovery partition to solve any problems that may ... OK, will occur.

Now , my question is ....

Is it possible to break into the protected recovery partition , remove all the bloat that comes with a new notebook and add my own applications to it ? So if and when i recover , all my stuff is good to go.

As you can see i have around 30 gig on my C drive ( see screen capture)




Plan B, If i trim down my current install to under 30 gig , would adding an image to a 32 gig flash drive be a suitable way of recovering my drive image for later use. (I used to mess about with themes and .dlls a fair bit and will most likely start my shenanigans again once I'm bored ) Seems a very tight fit on a flash drive to me , are you meant to have a certain amount of free space on a recovery flash drive , or can i fill it to the brim ?

Sure i can buy a 64 gig flash , but it seems like over kill to me not to mention added expense. I do have an old external drive and will be buying a shiny new one next week , but id prefer to have an image on a flash that i can keep handy and use when needed, if that makes any sense at all ?

Any ideas or suggestions would be most welcome.

Many thanks.

Hi

It really bugs me that they don't give people a Widows disk!

I don't think it's safe to try and hack the recovery partition.

If you had a Windows disk you could just do a full reinstall of Windows but since you don't...

Clean up your computer by going through it item by item and remove all the bloat ware.
Update all your drivers, run CCleaner and Defraggler.
Activate Microsoft Security Essentials.
When you have it nice and clean...Your are sure that everything is working, and your basic software is installed.

Use the built in Windows Backup utility to make both a bootable repair disk and a set of DVDs that will recover your computer to exactly the state it's in at that moment.

I just feel safer having the back up on disks.

Put them away for an emergency.

When you get your new external drive, make a new backup and keep it up to date, but you'll always have the disks to fall back on and the repair disk to boot your computer and get to them if you have to.

The repair disk will also give you access to the backups on you external drive if your computer won't boot.

Mike

I have two HP Win 7 that also did not come with the windows disk. HP as well as most manufactures DO give you the option to usually make ONE set of recovery disks (for me this was 3 dvd's) that will bring the PC back to the way it was day one in case your recovery partition ever fail. On top of doing that make a system repair disk. Also do regular backups and you should be fine.

Didn't the OP plainly state that his notebook (Netbook) does not have a CD/DVD drive? Or did I misread that?

I have the Acer One Netbook without a CD drive, but......get creative.....either use a USB CD/DVD drive or make one,
with a standard DVD burner (5.25" internal drive) an external drive power supply and an IDE to USB adapter.
My own adapter came with the external drive power supply.

That's how I had to install Windows 7 on my netbook and it's how I make Ghost Backups, to DVD.
I first made the Ghost backup of Windows XP that came on the netbook. Then I loaded Windows 7 which I really didn't like on that little computer, so I wound up restoring the backup of Windows XP and that's what I'm running today.

When life gives you Lemons, make LemonAde!

Cheers mates!

Hi

I missed the part about not having a DVD drive.
I still can't get used to the idea of a computer without a CD or DVD disk drive.

So if your computer won't boot then there is no option except to use the recovery partition.
Unless you do what Old Timer said or...

you make a bootable Flash Drive, with the Windows Recovery Disk on it, to recover your data.

It will also have to have all your backup data on it if you want to backup you setup and files.
And preferably a copy of Windows 7 installation files.

So I would get a pretty big flash drive.

Here's some information about that.

Use a USB Key to Install Windows 7
Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool Creates Bootable USB Flash Drive - The Winhelponline Blog
How to create a bootable Windows 7 USB flash drive

Mike

"Didn't the OP plainly state that his notebook (Netbook) does not have a CD/DVD drive? Or did I misread that?"
I think you may have misread it? He said he did not have an install DVD. I believe that particular notebook, by default, does have a DVD drive.
But he mentions buying a newone (Flash or DVD - not clear)

Thanks Mike , sounds like solid advice to me. Didn't realise that "win7 back up" makes a complete image to recover from. I was under the impression that all it did was just back up my illicit images (Rule#34) , terrible music collection and associated random pdf's. Saved me some money from buying a 3rd party app to do the job.

Still kinda curious in regards to using a flash drive to recover, you know throw it in a drawer and forget about it. Any views on that please ?

First thing i did was make a repair disc and that's stashed away with a driver back up.But yeah, i may as well burn it to DVD's as well ...hey better safe than sorry !

@ Techmonkey

I have been reading into this a fair bit , Asus notebooks like mine seems to have a flaw in the back up process according to various forums, basically the built in back up fails when burning the back up to DVD's. Im not even going to bother trying to do it to be honest via the Asus back up facility ( Mines a 6 disc back up). But thanks for the advice .

@ Oldtimer

Sorry but you didnt get what i was saying , maybe my OP was poorly written ? I do have a DVD drive , just lack the original Win7 disc and all i have is a recovery partition . Full of bloat and junk that's no good to man or beast.

@ Davehc

Again , maybe its down to may lack of description (and alcohol consumption.) But yes , you got it !

I have a DVD drive , but lack an install DVD. All i have is a protected partition to recover from. Im in two minds just to delete the partition and be done with it. I can understand OEM's trying to sell you junk .Please gimmie a break , its my PC and i have a "license" to use Windows 7. Just don't want the junk they put on it. Why do they do this ? Its always some crappy media type centre type app with shocking GUI, and a nice price tag or the "killer" label burning software that has pretty flowers n smiley faces lol.

Any to clear things up , this is what im using :

ASUSTeK Computer Inc. - Notebooks- ASUS K72F


Thank you all for taking the time time to reply.

[QUOTE=Still kinda curious in regards to using a flash drive to recover, you know throw it in a drawer and forget about it. Any views on that please ?

First thing i did was make a repair disc and that's stashed away with a driver back up.But yeah, i may as well burn it to DVD's as well ...hey better safe than sorry !/QUOTE]

Well since you do have a DVD drive I would back it all up to disks.
That's what I did with my wife's computer.

Myself I have 4 external hard drives and I have both my internal drives backed up on two of them.
One with Windows Backup, and the other with Norton Ghost.

I figure that if I ever have a crash one or the other of them should work.

I also have all my data backed up to a third drive uncompressed so that I can just access it in a normal manner, in case all my backups fail.

The Forth drive is just there for what ever I want to backup temporarily with out adding it to or having to turn on, any of my regular backups.
My external drives are never on unless I need to use them. Less wear and tear.

Sounds like overkill but I have years worth of Photos, Music, and job files that I don't want to lose.
And I don't want to have to try and find and install all the over 90 software programs I have installed.

I also have three boot disks, Linux, Windows 7 and Norton Ghost, all of which will boot my computer and give me access to my files in one way or another.

You can't be too careful! LOL

Mike

Wow that was almost painless !


Apart from the bit that i tried to back up my film collection , on the drive that they are stored on already ... Windows politely told me I FAIL ...... n told me what to do.

I'm rather happy now as I have all my stuff up and running and was easy !

Quick question ,

If this notebook dies on me and i replace it , would Windows migrate onto another PC ? Or would that cause mass activation problems with software ?

Hi

I'm not sure about that.
I think that as long as the computer you are restoring it to has the same version of Windows registered you would just have to call Microsoft to get it sorted.

However you would probably find that it would't run on a different computer then is was created on.
You could run into a lot of problems with drivers etc. i.e. you have an nVidia card and ATI drivers, different sound card etc.

This is probably the point where it's best to just reinstall your software and restore you files from the backup to the new computer.
No sense bringing all the accumulated junk from the old one anyway.

That's what I did when I got my present computer.

I re-installed all my software and retrieved everything I needed from the backups on my external hard drives.

That included all the installation programs from all my downloaded software (which I keep in a sub-folders under a master folder named My Software with all of the serial numbers in the folders), all my address books costume sound file etc.

Mike