Can't create recovery media "Windows 7 only allows one copy"

Thanks for your advice, but I'm having a tough time understanding what you are saying gregrocker, I'm sorry, I'm not as proficient in computers as you. Do you know the answer to my question about the C drive...is it safe to extend the C Drive (with everything I have on there) by 8gb? Lenovo says the Q drive is the backup of everything my computer shipped with. I think I backed it up correctly (do you agree I probably did), but just in case, I am likely not going to recover that space, just the 8gb from Hibernation partition.

You can't recover only the 8gb partition because Recovery is in the way. If you want to keep Recovery then I'd keep the other partition too. It isn't large enough to worry about moving Recovery over so you can reclaim 8gb and risk Recovery losing its hotlink.

Unless you deleted the contents of Recovery, it is likely still there and needs to have its partition ID reset to read its contents, which as I said SIW2 can help you with - as well as make the edit to cause it to create another set of Recovery disks so you have a backup.


Of course Lenovo is going to tell you to preserve Recovery since its how they solve most issues - by running Recovery. Just be aware that factory pre-installed Win7 is inferior to a Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 so if you ever decide you want to get the best install we are here to help you.

alanrudy said:

F5ing is right, it's still there even though I turned off Hibernation. I don't know how to recover that space...how do I manipulate the partions to recover or even worst case, just use the partition as a separate 8gb. SIW2, actually when I click on that Q drive it is empty even though it shows about 11gb being used, so I can't make the changes you advised. But for backing up, I just used Windows backup and restore to copy just that Q drive to the external L drive, I think it worked. It shows that 11gb on there, I can't really figure out if that will work because I don't really want to restore my computer after all I've done to get it how I want. Did I likely do it right and is there a reason why Macrium was advised and not the Windows backup and restore? I will do a system image in the next few days as I've still been making a lot of changes to the computer to get it how I want.

Bolding of text above is mine.

Based on your statements above I think I would tackle this the other way around; I'd be making images at this point rather than worrying about backup. That way no matter what mistake you might find you've made you can always recover by restoring that image; your disk/machine would then be back to the same state it was in when the image was made.

If you've got more disk space than what I've seen in your Disk Management screenshots then you could easily handle multiple images, making a new image after each "milestone" of successful changes/updates you've made. Keeping your original image allows you to roll all the way back and maybe the last two allowing you to roll back just a little.

Imaging can be used for OS/system recovery as well as data recovery. Backup is only good for data recovery, typically your personal user files.

I have everything on my C drive, is it safe to expand it by 8gb?

Did you read what I wrote? YOu can't extend C into the 8gb partition at the end of the HD because the Recovery is in the way.

If you use Partition Wizard CD to slide Q over to the right, it may lose its hotlink to run from boot since that is mapped to it's position on the HD.

Ahh, okay gregrocker, I get it now. I read what you wrote but it didn't click til your last explanation, thank you. Will reread thread and figure it out. Thanks for your help again.