recovery discs to usb

I for one am very impressed j0E, but I have a question: were you FORCED by a laptop failure to use your recovery method, or did you just have faith it was going to work and rebuild the thing as a test?

I'm inclined to try your method with my Netbook, for which I have 3 recovery ISOs but no external DVD drive with which to make a "disk recovery" (though I suppose I'd buy one if only to recover the netbook), but testing's another matter!

I'm at least going to take a look at the DVDs and see if the "file consolidation" you talked about looks straightforward enough. I wonder for example how you found/eliminated "any referrers to CD2 and CD2".

Thanks for your post, especially given that we seem to have lost the OP.

Hi Maxseven, thanks for the comment.
You could say that I was forced because during a process of " trying full disk cloning [including the recovery partition [RP] with Clonezilla software (tried some other disk cloning softwares without success in the past), when I lost the original drive Proprietary MBR loosing access to the RP through F8 [option windows repair] at windows start up the PR was still accessible through partition bootable softwares setting it ACTIVE).

The cloning process was successful except for accessing RP through F8, so I spent few days trying to find some trick to repair windows boot file to make them point to the RP @ f8, without great success ( although it gave me the chance to get initiated to some deep stuff concerning windows 7 booting process and the use of a tool called VISUAL BCD very interesting above my humble level ( see " For recovery on F8 you need" superuser.com/questions/55585/how-do-you-recreate-the-system-recovery-environment-in-windows-7") , boyans.my3gb.com/ and geoffchappell.com/viewer.htm?doc=notes/windows/boot/bcd/index.htm)

Any way after trying some neophyte smartness (reasoning shortcuts) playing with Visual BCD thing I had the idea of DVD virtual burn, couple hours later I was playing with Virtual CD options allowing me to create the Recovery DVDS virtually.

The rest of the story you know it already, a little digital adventure of the average user I am (no programmer).

Clonezilla by the way is reputable for it's ability to clone disks with RP, but failed with me for some reason, I'll definitely give it another try later.

Thanks again for your warm welcome.

Sorry Max, I missed a part of your question which I am answering now :
gateway recovery DVDs 1 and 2 ( built through gateway recovery tool) have some files referring to the next cd : RCD.DAT and RESTORE.DAT (checked the contents with notepad+)
Then compared folder structure, and files, gathered files in redundant folders, and mostly images files etc...
It was mostly an informed guessing process and testing, it was successful from the first try, probably because of the redundant folders and files and the almost similar folder structure of the 3 dvds (programs pointing to the same file or folder arborescence).

Thanks again for your interest and good luck with your project.
Just bought 2 old used slim laptop DVD multi (one slot loading) in the process of building 2 external slim USB dvd drives!.

j0E

It may depend on the brand. Some new HP notebooks recovery disks have .bin images which are only readable when booted from the dvd, they are difficult or impossible to manipulate with iso apps.

lrod8 said:

no iso's, just files & folders, see [IMG]file:///C:/Users/Neisha/AppData/Local/Temp/moz-screenshot.png[/IMG][IMG]file:///C:/Users/Neisha/AppData/Local/Temp/moz-screenshot-1.png[/IMG]image below:

Recovery partitions like this have 2 key boot elements bootmgr and [Boot] meaning that you may be able to boot directly into the recovery partition by making it the active partition. Alternatively, Hirens Boot CD will allow you to boot directly into the partition without setting it as active.

j0E said:

gateway recovery DVDs 1 and 2 ( built through gateway recovery tool) have some files referring to the next cd : RCD.DAT and RESTORE.DAT

I have these same files, on all 3 DVDs for this Acer netbook, and they are all exactly alike, in fact I've not been able to discern any difference(s) whatsoever that distinguish one disk from the other except of course in (in my case) the Patch folder.

I've consolidated all 3 into one, but of course haven't done anything with it yet. Next I want to look at the Acer's built-in recovery partition, and I expect it will look exactly the same as what I've built.

Interestingly, in looking thru the various files I observe that there's one that references both Acer and Gateway, maybe even Dell and HP. It seems this disc set is used in multiple PCs and there's magic afoot to sort what-to-put-on-give-the-HW-platform.

I gained very little "space" by consolidating these BTW--the total of my 3 discs once combined is 10.2Gb.

Next I suppose I'll see if I can boot any PC from this monster I've created!

Interestingly, in looking thru the various files I observe that there's one that references both Acer and Gateway,

Acer, Gateway, eMachine, PACKARD BELL, are the same OEM manufacturer.

theog said:

Interestingly, in looking thru the various files I observe that there's one that references both Acer and Gateway,

Acer, Gateway, eMachine, PACKARD BELL, are the same OEM manufacturer.

How 'bout that... ya just can't keep track these days!

And I can boot directly to the recovery partition my Acer recovery partition or image of it.
Again
Boot Hirens - select the partition & boot - recovery is running.

PS: the fact one of my PCs is an Acer isn't an endorsement.

In my Acer Netbook I can see the 12.70GB Recovery Partition, but it's not mountable in Windows that I can find. Right-clicking on it yields only Help and not the expected context menu including "Change Drive Letter and Paths..."

So is there any way to make this partition "explore-able" from Windows? I just wanted to compare it to the recovery disk consolidation I made.

P.S. I see also in Disk Mgmt that partition does not have a "File System" listed for it! What kinda animal is that...?