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When to Burn System Recovery Discs
The manufacturers of PCs all seem to recommend you burn your own recovery media shortly after you perform the initial Win 7 chores, thus providing one more return path to heaven when catastrophe strikes, e.g. total loss of your primary drive and the hidden recovery partition (HRP), or some incredible error on the part of the sys-admin who one day flunks his IQ test and tries something bold and exciting. The preferred or required medium for these discs is either DVD-R or DVD+R type, something hard and physical and large enough not to get lost but also readable under most circumstances. Note that Win7 only lets you perform ONE SRD burn.When do you burn your System Recovering Discs (SRD)?
So far all is simple. Burn a DVD. Well, not so fast. I’m getting two HP systems, one laptop (LT) and one desktop (DT). The LT will have a Blu-Ray/ DVD reader but not a burner. The DT will have a full burner. Both systems will be on a LAN so on some versions of Win7-64 I will be able to burn the LT SRD on the DT burner. On some other versions of Win7 that may not be possible.
Now here is the tricky part. Since I’m getting in two new systems I opted to get the multi-system license for Office 2010. The multi-system license gives you three installs and is much more economical than buying several separate Office vendor installs. HP does not install that pre-ship so if I make the SRD immediately after Win7 install it will not reflect the later Office install. Notice that with the multi-system Office license each install eats one of the allowed installs hence you don’t want to do a repeat during system recovery.
So it would seem that a possible strategy might be to postpone the SRD burn, which you only get one chance to do, until after the core applications are installed. The SRD burn is like old marriage; until system death do you not part. The above questions and strategy raises the more fundamental questions: What exactly is contained on the SRD and HRP the when the SRD is burned? Does the SRD contain and recover any changes made as a result of pre-burn installs and other system activity? Should you install all your critical and trusted applications that have limited licenses before you burn the SRD thus allowing an almost pain free restore from backups?
I’ve asked HP support those questions and the tech’s seem confused. Of course perhaps I’m confused or obscure so remain
Clueless in Oregon,
Rob
Note: Some context. In this configuration the intent is that the LT be an almost mirror of the DT, just on a smaller scale. When both systems are linked directly on the LAN, or via a VPN link, then resources will be shared. Else work can proceed on the either with all facilities possible. Both LT and DT will have Win7-64 Pro. Exactly how data synchronization will occur is still an open issue.
Note: Some retailers discourage buyers who ask about recovery media. They of course want to sell a plan where they do the recovery and will do so forever – promise, cross their heart and hope to die -- or until the U.S. Bankruptcy Court settles their affairs. HP on their Web sites strongly recommends you make the SRDs but also offers to provide them in the event of need with the caveat that they may not have the SRD for your model at some future date. Consider – your system dies Monday, you decide by Tuesday morning you have no choice but to recover from scratch. You order SRD’s FedEx next-day and by Wednesday or Thursday they arrive. Gives you tons on time to talk to headhunters or apologize to the wife and kids while their home network is down. Hope that works for you. Open a new thread and let us know.
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