Windows 7: How does system recovery work

was thinking of upgrading from vista homepre to Windows 7 homepre and was curious how system recovery works. Do I need to keep my partitioned space on my HD for vista? then if I need to recover I re-install vista then re-upgrade. Or, will a new partion be created/ current partition be upgraded as well?



Also I have an HP dv6910us any known isusses with upgrades? I have been pretty confidant that I would update untill I came to this forum and begun to read all the issues people are having with a non-clean install

You can get a clean install using upgrade by choosing Custom install which will wipe out the Vista installation as soon as it verifies it's license, then install Windows 7 fresh in that space, moving your files to a windows.old folder where you can easily redistribute them (then delete that ginormous file). This is pretty close to a clean install compared to the upgrade install, which also overwrites the Vista after saving your programs, settings and files, then replaces them after installing Windows 7 where the Vista was. I have about equal luck with both methods using Windows 7 for six months now.

There is a fantastic new feature in Windows 7 that allows you to make a Backup image of your Hard Drive (even a dual boot) in about 20 minutes saving the image to the place of your choice, which is then available to reimage your HDD from the OS or booting from Repair/Install Disk if it is unbootable. This is the way you would want to go to recover your Windows 7 installation without having to reinstall Vista and upgrade over it. It even saves your activation.

On each of our computers, I have the Image Backup utility tell me how much disk space it needs, then create a slightly larger primary partition, save the image to that Partition (which it views as a drive) where it is easily discoverable to reimage the entire HDD. Then I copy that Image Backup to an external drive in case the HDD fails, in which case you boot from your Windows 7 installer/repair disk, Repair My Computer>Image from Backup and your new drive is re-imaged in about 20 minutes. Flawless!

Hi Linden5150

1)Your recovery partition will NOT BE UPGRDED

2)download the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor.

thanks for the help gregrocker !

Now let me make sure i understand this clearly, either way I decided to go my original partition will be deleted? and in its place i should create a hard drive image?

which is better, to upgrade or custom install (not clean) I purchased the student upgrade promo and am not sure what the advantages would be to ado a custom as opposed to a regular upgrade.

Hi Linden and welcome to the SevenForums.

I assume you are talking about a HP Recovery Partition on your laptop. It contains your original OS (Vista Home Premium) and the bundled drivers and software to allow system recovery to factory defaults. This partition contains also a tool to create a DVD / CD recovery set, allowing you to burn these files to discs. This Recovery Disc Creator only works once, allowing you to burn just one set of discs. The reason ,as so often, is copyright regulations; OS and software makers don't want to give you the right to make several installation sets. There's no really working and legal way to bypass this.

When you install Windows 7, the recovery partition stays there but becomes useless, you can not boot to Recovery Options (F10 or F11, depending on the model) anymore.

So I really recommend you to use this Recovery Disc Creator before you upgrade your computer with Seven. Burning the discs means you can always go back to the factory defaults if something happens.

Kari

ok thanks for the info Kari, I will be making some back up discs tonight after school. once I installed 7 should I then unpartition the space ? is this possible(no need to go in depth here as I wont be upgrading untill next week) I know gregrocker recomended then making a hd image and transporting this to an external HD do you recomend? My real question is what happens if I experience a problem with my system and need to recover, I would then use the HD image, or, insert original vista backup and re-upgrade to windows 7?

also you have any preference in an upgrade or custom upgrade?

If you search these forums or the net, you'll find 99 % of users tell you to do a clean install. I am one of those weird but happy upgraders. At home and at work I have several HP's, desktops and laptops, and I have noticed everything works better after an upgrade installation.

But you have to understand my version of "upgrading" is a little bit different. You could almost say it is a half clean installation; I erase all data on Vista computer, make then a recovery to factory defaults, afterwards I let Windows update the Vista to the point where Windows Update tells me Windows is up to date. Then, before installing any software i.e. when the computer has only the factory defaults plus Windows updates, I do a Seven upgrade installation.

This method has surprised me positively. All HP's I've updated are working like a dream. No blue screens, no crashes, no problems. All the drivers are working. Shortly, I never believed computing can be so easy and fun.

The above is my subjective opinion. To find more pros and cons, you can read about clean vs. upgrade here and about my own experience here.

Kari

In your case, I would do an upgrade of your Vista to see how it works and then test drive it to make sure it is what you want, fast with no hangs. If not, you can always resinsert the disk and do a Custom install which overwrites the OS while moving your files to windows.old for redistribution. But you have to reinstall your programs with Custom so that alone is a good reason to try Upgrade first. With Vista you could also do a Custom upgrade to a formatted second partition which is an even cleaner install - it remains to be seen if that will work with Windows 7, but you can always try it.

About your recovery partition: After you make those disks, I would delete that recovery partition which is useless after Windows 7 upgrade. In some cases, the partition cannot be deleted in Disk Management or even using free utilities like Easeus or Partition Pro (bootable). There is a diskpart override command to achieve this from the command line. After you upgrade with Windows 7, you can then create a new recovery partition to the size needed for a WIndow 7 Imaging backup and save it there. Just be sure to make a copy to an external in case you should lose your HDD, since a new HDD can easily be imaged by booting from your Repair/Install disk.

Important: If the recovery partition you are grappling with is the FIRST partition, then it contains the boot and will require some additional steps to recover the boot (Startup Repair) and move your Vista>Windows 7 partition into that space to the left (Easeus, Partition Pro). I have been doing all of this quite a lot lately so will check your progress here.

Thanks for the help (exp the hot link to those threads, I have been searching and couldn't find it) I apreciate the quick responses and I will be sure to update in the future

ok I created a set of recovery dvds (3 actually) and deleted the old partition I just have one question how do I know If the recovery cds will work? is there any way to test them?