Is there any downside to creating a system repair disc (is this the same as a recovery disc?). I have a disc with the operating system that came with the computer but this wouldn't restore the computer after a crash without going through other operations such as hard disk partitioning etc. Please clarify. Thanks
A System Repair disc will attempt to fix an existing install that won't boot. A Restore disc assumes you want to wipe the drive clean and restore the system to the day it was purchased. To me, the repair disc would be more useful.
Hello Leon,
A system repair disc can only be used to boot to the System Recovery Options screen to help repair your current Windows 7 installation. You will not be able install Windows 7 with a system recovery disc.
The OEM recovery disc will format the hard drive and do a full clean reinstall of Windows 7 back to factory conditions.
Hope this helps,
Shawn
You can do the same thing with the Win 7 dvd and as you said it takes a few more steps, the repair disc load the file it needs to get you to the repair, restore, load a backup image, etc, but that's all it does.:) let us know if you need more info
You don't have to down load anything to create a system repair disc. Just hit Start and type in repair disc and you will find it at the top. Windows 7 has that ability built in.
Thanks for all the answers. I see that one also has the option of creating a system image disc. I guess that this would incorporate the operating system and other programs as well as data files. How is this used used? One would think that this and the system repair would be needed if something goes wrong. Is this correct? Thanks in advance
Leon,
A system image backup create a complete image of the "current" state of your selected hard drives with everything installed on it. When you do a system image recovery, it will restore the selected hard drives back to the same state as they were when the system image backup was created.
A OEM (Dell) factory recovery disk will wipe out your current state completely and restore only the default factory image back.
It would be a good idea to keep system image backups to make it easier to return to that same state without having to reinstall everything again that was not included in the factory image. It would also not be a bad idea to have "system repair disc" handy to use as needed at boot. :)
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