Using "Recovery Media"

joe99 · 20 Mar 2010

Hi

My laptop is Toshiba Satellite T130 running Windows7 Home Premium 32 bit.

I clicked a desktop icon "Recovery Media Creator" Is this part of Windows7 or is it something specific to Toshiba?

Anyway it asked me to insert

>8.9G USB Flash Media

which I did and clicked on "Create"

Is the flash drive I produced efffectively the same as the "System Repair Disk" which Control Panel offers me?

I presumed that this flash drive would enable me to recover my data files off the C drive in the event that it became unbootable due to corrruption.

To try things out, I followed Toshiba's instructions and held down F12 until the first message appeared on the screen and was able to choose USB as boot device.

The next screens were "Windows is Loading Files" and "Starting Windows"

The next choice was between

Toshiba Recovery Wizard (default) and
System Recovery Options.

I chose the second option on the basis that the "Wizard" might go ahead and actually do something which I did not want.

Next I had to select "Keyboard Input Method" and took the default which was "US"

On clicking Next, it searched for Windows Installations and not surprisingly found "Windows7" (only)

The next choice was:

Use Recovery Tools (default)
or
Restore your computer using a system image you created earlier

I chose the first and was then given the following list to choose from:

Startup Repair
System Restore
System Image Recovery
Windows Memory Diagnostic
Command Prompt
Toshiba Recovery Wizard

I was surprised that nowhere was I offered anything to browse my C drive to look for data files but without actually making any changes to it.

Does such an option exist?

At this point I aborted the exercise and selected "Shutdown"

Is the use of recovery media documented anywhere? The Toshiba UserGuide just says things like "a menu appears" and "follow the on screen instructions"

Thanks for any advice

joe99

MilesAhead · 20 Mar 2010

I would go on Toshiba site and see if they have a forum. Every manufacturer's restore system is a bit different. I have HP machines and for the inside nitty gritty I go to the HP business support forum. Toshiba probably has a similar user forum.

Generally, people make discs like BartPE to boot from and access the HD with a file manager etc..

Bill2 · 20 Mar 2010

Storing data files on the system partition is a bad idea. AFAIK, the Toshiba Recovery wizard gives you an option to leave non-system partitions untouched while it restores C: to factory default. But in that case, data files on the system partition will get wiped out. So, best to move data either to a separate partition or external media.

theog · 20 Mar 2010

For option 3 you may like to have look at those tutorials:

System Image Recovery
Backup Complete Computer - Create an Image Backup
Restore Backup User and System Files