Windows 7: How to create a disk image

Can i creat a disck image form RECOVERY partition on my HP laptop ?
Can you help me please ?

Im not sure I understand.. What exactly is it you are trying to do??

Hello arbmal.



Look around in the start menu for an HP entry and click that to see what opens up, there should be an options to create the HP recovery disks for that PC and if not they're usually available from HP for a nominal price, you would just have to give them the PC make/model number.

click to enlarge

Although it is unusual to create an image of the recovery partition (you usually create a recovery DVD), it is, of course possibe. You can create an image of any partition - e.g. with free Macrium

Of course doing this, the image will only 'install' to the PC it was created from just as with the disks, it will not 'install' to a different PC; the factory image is hard coded to look for the exact same hardware it was created for and will not work on different hardware.

I guess it makes sense if you want to have a backup of every partition on your disk - just in case the drive fails.

If you were to change the Hard Disk Drive (HDD) or any other piece of hardware the factory image will not install, it has to be the EXACT same hardware or it will fail.

Is this a new limitation?

Asking because I had a hard drive fail in an HP Media Center PC (running XP), and I did the following successfully:
1) Inserted a new hard drive
2) Booted from the first HP Recovery CD
3) Reinstalled XP
4) Booted from the Driver CD
5) Reinstalled all the drivers
6) Rebooted in XP -- everything worked and didn't have to reactivate it.

What I read (and my experience bears it out, at least, with XP and this machine) is that the license is locked to the BIOS, and as long as you don't mess with that, it will reinstall without difficulty -- even if you change the hard drive.

But, maybe with Windows 7, things are different now.

Hello Mark Phelps.





I've been thinking about this and I feel you must be correct as there has to be some way to replace a failed HDD and still use the factory recovery disks.
Thanks for the input.

Yes, still locked to the BIOS.