Recovery Partition - Create

   Warning

THIS IS NOT INTENDED TO REPLACE YOUR WINDOWS 7 DVD, HARD DRIVES FAIL, AND YOU SHOULD ALWAYS HANG ONTO THE DISK, THIS IS SIMPLY TO SPEED UP THE PROCESS OF REINSTALLING OR DOING A RECOVERY

This recovery partition will only be available to you assuming that your bootmanager is in tact, if it becomes corrupted it will be inaccessible just like your copy of windows, another good reason for hanging on to the original disk

   Note

it is recommended that you allow windows to create the 100MB System reserved partition upon installation if you plan to do this or you will have to repeat it everytime you reinstall

1. Download Easy BCD 2.0 from here: EasyBCD 2.0 Beta Builds - The NeoSmart Forums (you will need to register on the forum first)

2. open disk management, (type "partition" into the start menu its the first option that comes up)

3a Right click a partition with free space, and click "Shrink Volume" when it asks you to select how much space to shrink by allocate 4GB or 4096MB

3b Right Click the Unallocated Space and Click "New Simple Volume"

4. click ok through the next few screens, i recommend assigning it letter Z:\ so you dont get confused and accidentally delete it or save other files here

5. place your Windows 7 DVD in your drive and go to Computer, right click and then click Open
NOTE: At this point please make sure you have "hide protected operating system files" DISABLED as it occasionally corrupts the copy, to do this press alt in any explorer window, then click tools>folder options>views>hide protected operating system files.

6. Copy the entire contents of the DVD to your Z:\ Partition

7. open Easy BCD and click "add/remove entries" click the tab labelled WinPE,
When it asks for a path browse to "Z:\sources\boot.wim" and click ok, then click "add new entry"
NOTE: At this point there is a good chance easybcd will tell you that the operation failed, just click ok and do it again, from what i can see this is simply its way of asking if your sure, and it will work 2nd time around.

8. thats it your done, when you reboot you will have 2 options, Windows 7, and NST WinPE Image, NST WinPE image is your recovery partition and will act as if you'd put the disk in.

   Note

It has come to my attention that Windows has an annoying habit of corrupting the Recovery Partition, especially after Disk Cleanups and Defrags. To get around this Open Disk Management (type it into the start menu) and right click your Recovery Partition, remove the letter so that windows cant see it any more. (Don't worry it will still boot, this just stops Windows from writing files to it)

   Information

This tutorial is the intellectual property of (c)2009 Martin Joy a.k.a severedsolo and is only authorised to be hosted on sevenforums.com This tutorial is not to be copied without my explicit consent and when consent is granted the original author must be credited along with a link to this tutorial

Related Tutorials

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• How to Create a Windows 7 System Repair Disc

 

[iseeuu]

Nice option!

Cheers!
Robert

 

[severedsolo]

no problem, im thinking of doing a similar one explaining how to get rid of the old Vista recovery Partition and linking to this tutorial to explain how to replace it with a Win 7 one, would anyone be interested in that?

 

[Dave76]

That's a good idea.

Makes it easy to replace that recovery partition when you get a new OS.

I make a partition that will hold an image of my hard drive, and keep a recent copy there as well as on my external hard drive. Makes it faster when I re-image.

 

[severedsolo]

have given it an update to work around an issue i found, also just to confirm, deleting ei.cfg will unlock it for all versions just like from the disk

 

[SIW2]

Easy doesn't ask for the dvd anymore - it comes with boot.sdi already included.

It could be handy - I would reaffirm , that it doesn't replace the need for external bootable recovery/installation media.

This "recovery" partition relies on 7 boot management system and is subject to similar potential problems.

You can always use the name dropdown in Easy to rename it Recovery , or whatever you want - that will be what you see on the boot menu description.

 

[Kari]

How about integrating users own 'bloatware'? AV, Office etc.?

 

[severedsolo]

SIW2 - thank you have deleted that step as it is now irrelevant, renaming it doesnt work, although everything recognises it as the new name, the actual bootloader entry will still read NST winPE Image, there is a warning at the top stating that it is not a substitution for the original installation media, i do not see the point of stating it twice

Kari - Great idea, Unfortunately, i dont have the technical expertise to write this into the guide, if anyone would like to fill me in on how to do this ill happily include it

 

[whs]

Hmm, interesting. But what would be the advantage of this approach over writing an image of your OS partition to a seperate partition on one of your drives (preferably another drive than where the OS resides) after you are all done with your installation. That would also cover Kari's comment.

 

[SIW2]

there is a warning at the top stating that it is not a substitution for the original installation media, i do not see the point of stating it twice

LOL - touchy...

Adding info that it is reliant on the boot management process - not just the health of the HD.

Nevertheless, it can be a useful addition. It allows reinstall of a clean o/s , e.g. onto another partition - can be useful if you have a problem getting into the original installation.

Not sure what advantage it offers over an image , as whs says.

 

[severedsolo]

it doesnt matter what you name it, the actual bootloader entry will still read the same, mine is called recovery, it still reads as NST winPE image in bootloader, sorry if i came across as touchy, i didnt mean to lol and yes i see what you mean now, i will change it

whs- system image is good admittedly, but what happens if you havent disabled automatic backups and when it does its backup whatever is wrong is backed up too?

 

[SIW2]

It's also not impossible the backup image is corrupted.

The naming works ok for me:

D:\windows\system32>bcdedit /enum /v

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {c41cd56f-296a-11df-8efe-001966657855}
device ramdisk=[D:]\BOOT.WIM,{c41cd56e-296a-11df-8efe-001966657
855}
path \Windows\System32\Boot\winload.exe
description Rename here before click Add
locale en-US
osdevice ramdisk=[D:]\BOOT.WIM,{c41cd56e-296a-11df-8efe-001966657
855}
systemroot \Windows
detecthal Yes
winpe Yes

D:\windows\system32>

 

[Kari]

Hmm, interesting. But what would be the advantage of this approach over writing an image of your OS partition to a seperate partition on one of your drives (preferably another drive than where the OS resides) after you are all done with your installation. That would also cover Kari's comment.

We sometimes provide our customers with tailor made and assembled computers, too, although we are absolutely not a PC vendor. Each customer has own needs, different 'bloatware'.

I am really interested to find out if this approach would allow us to create a standard recovery partition. Removing ei.cfg would make it universal; some customers are happy with Professional, even HP, when most want / need Ultimate, so the customers key would decide the version.

IMO this could be something really good!

Kari

 

[severedsolo]

SIW2 - thank you have deleted that step as it is now irrelevant, renaming it doesnt work, although everything recognises it as the new name, the actual bootloader entry will still read NST winPE Image,

sorry should have been clearer there, when you reboot, your name will not appear on the dual boot menu, every entry points to it having the right name, but at the OS selection screen there is no change

 

[whs]

it doesnt matter what you name it, the actual bootloader entry will still read the same, mine is called recovery, it still reads as NST winPE image in bootloader, sorry if i came across as touchy, i didnt mean to lol and yes i see what you mean now, i will change it

whs- system image is good admittedly, but what happens if you havent disabled automatic backups and when it does its backup whatever is wrong is backed up too?

Well, I would make a one time image and delete the xml definition file. Thus I am sure it will not be repeated and accidently write over the original.

 

[SIW2]

Ther's something wrong then.

The last entry on my boot menu reads:

Rename Here before click add

I have done it hundreds of times - may be a glitch in the version of Easy you are using.

Try d/l ing build 82.

EasyBCD 2.0 Beta Builds - The NeoSmart Forums

SIW2 - thank you have deleted that step as it is now irrelevant, renaming it doesnt work, although everything recognises it as the new name, the actual bootloader entry will still read NST winPE Image,

sorry should have been clearer there, when you reboot, your name will not appear on the dual boot menu, every entry points to it having the right name, but at the OS selection screen there is no change

 

[SIW2]

Hi Kari,

If you are interested in that kind of thing , it is pretty easy to add extra functions and apps. to the boot.wim , to access extra recovery tools - such as the free versions of Paragon PM and Backup and recover , Partition Wizard, Nir Sofer's free apps, like Produkey , password blanker, there are lots of nice open source apps. and so on.

It's a lot easier than it appears.

For example, if you are on Win 7 , this little app. will add some in automatically for you ( Paragon Pm 2010 Free and Backup and Recovery 10 free as long as you have them installed ).

pe - Windows Live

If it's for customers , obviously need to check the licenses allow it.

 

[Urza]

Hi all,

First up, thanks for this great tutorial. The instructions are very clear and concise and I was able to follow them without any problems whatsoever!

I've been having issues with my Recovery Partition, and was wondering if you could help.

I have a 120GB Backup Disk. On this I created a 4GB Recovery Partition (Z:\) with the Windows 7 Pro 64-Bit DVD contents on it, and on the same disk I also created a second partition (G:\) with my System Image on it, plus an export of my Registry.

I have used EasyBCD to create a boot menu, and as long as my Primary Boot Disk is functioning, I am able to select the Recovery Partition from the boot menu and load it.

All OK so far!

However, I my Primary Boot Disk recently failed. Now when I try to boot the Recovery Partition, I get told that the disk is not bootable. I have changed the boot disk priorities in the BIOS so that the disk that the Recovery Partition is on is the primary boot device, but it still isn't bootable.

I understand that the boot menu was on the failed disk, but I would have thought that the Recovery Partition would be bootable, seeing as the Windows 7 DVD is.

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

 

[SIW2]

Did you try marking the recovery partition Active?

 

[Urza]

Hmmm... I have a feeling you may be on to something there..

I'll see if I can get my dead HDD (it occasionally still works for random periods of time!) to work for long enough for me to check.

I'll post back here with the results.