Windows 7: recovery discs to usb

hello everyone, new here!!!

got a question, i have a gateway laptop with Windows 7 hp 64bit. i created the recovery media from the gateway recovery manager & it used 3 dvds. my question is, can i put all these dvds in a usb? the recovery manages will only let me choose dvd media, but i was wondering if there's a way to merge them all into one usb.

thx in advance...

You could always try, I guess. Microsoft has a tool that's linked to on here that takes the .iso files and creates bootable USB drives. You could give that a shot. If the imaging program looks for the second and third file parts...and finds them on the USB drive...it should work. I'd imagine you'd need a 16 GB flash drive for this, though.

Microsoft Store: Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool Help

thx DeaconFrost, i was thinking along those lines too. i'll go ahead & buy a 16gb usb, my biggest one is 8gb. now, another point, should i create an .iso of each dvd or make a folder with the contents of all 3 dvds and make an .iso of that? sorry if i sound ignorant, but i am!!!

I'd make an .iso of the first, bootable DVD. Then I'd just have the contents of 2 and 3 on a folder. Usually, the rest of the disks contain one file, something like image0002.xxx and image00003.xxx or something like that. It will boot from the first disc, then look for the rest of the parts. If those are already present, it might just continue on to the end, and reboot.

that makes more sense!!! i'll give that a try. thx again!!!!

Each disk that is bootable should have an .iso file that can be extracted then written to flash stick using UltraISO trial version.

On File tab Open DVD/CD Image, then on Bootable tab Write Disk Image.

You will have to study the help file or research further how to merge the 3 ISO's if they are all image disks and one not a drivers/apps disk, or try Deacon's approach to write the first disk's image to stick and place the files from the two others on the stick to see if it will proceed. If not you can format other sticks with subsequent disks, or write each one as you go.

no iso's, just files & folders, see [IMG]file:///C:/Users/Neisha/AppData/Local/Temp/moz-screenshot.png[/IMG][IMG]file:///C:/Users/Neisha/AppData/Local/Temp/moz-screenshot-1.png[/IMG]image below:

See here.

Creating a Recovery Disk on a USB Flash Disk - HP technical support (Finland - English)

cool, that looks good, but i wonder if it would work on my gateway. once i get the 16gb drive, i'll give it a try. thx again

Hi, my first participation in this forum I've been checking a lot lately.

I actually run through the same issue of merging 3 recovery discs of a gateway laptop deprived from CD drive, I have burned those the RECOVERY DVDs with virtual CD as iso images ( the recovery crating software DOESN't allow Dual layer DVD! size limitation of each DVD 4.7 GB) which I transfered with a usb stick to my desktop and then burned each one of them on a separate USB stick for recovery purpose.

Now when you insert the first usb stick in the laptop in a recovery process, it is recognized and boots up fine and recovery process starts, but it will ask for the 2ND recovery DVD and doesn't recognize the 2nd USB stick ( that has the 2nd recovery CD image on it).
After multiple hours of search on this matter, I decided to try IROD8 trick, which is to gather the 3 DVDs manually to create one iso image on the USB stick (couldn't find any software that does that)
I used ultra iso (to keep boot image valid) to open RECOVERY1 DVD (and then mounted the RECOVERY2 and RECOVERY3 DVDs on virtual drives using magic iso or different software : compared files and folder METICULOUSLY
- deleted any referrers to CD2 and CD3
- gathered all recovery images from DVD2 and 3 in the DVD 1 images folder
- added patch folder present in 2 and 3 to dvd1 and gathered all files and folders from 2 and 3 in it

Burned the iso image obtained directly to usb 16 GB = TOTAL SUCCEsS , recovered laptop WHOLE disk structure with recovery partition and system partition which was amazing by the way.

Later I have tweaked the iso image after saving it, deleting the extras ( located in patch folder) in a way I got an iso image little enough to fit a DVD dual layer to be saved for later ( to free the usb drive and eventually will build an external slot loading slim dvd drive from ebay ! to use with the laptop)

regards

j0E