Solved Samsung Recovery Partition missing, boot to F4 not working

[Qub1]

I'm about to give my old Samsung laptop to a friend of mine, but I would like to restore it to factory condition before doing so. I saw I've accidentally removed the recovery partition when I formatted the drive the first time. I do however have a backup of the files that were on the recovery partition. As a result of the missing partition, I can no longer use F4 to boot to recovery.

Is there a way to restore such functionality? I've tried creating a new partition and moving the files to it, but I imagine it has to be a specific size and have some specific properties such as bootable etc. so the PC can recognize it as the recovery partition. Is there any tool by Samsung that allows me to restore the default partitioning? If anyone here has a samsung PC, would they be willing to share the information about their partitions, such as the flags that are set, specifically for the recovery partition.

This thread here made mention of such a tool, but it was never posted and I couldn't find it: https://superuser.com/questions/476...msung?newreg=140dedbc97fc4623adcea6c0c0419fef

The hard drive is 500GB in size, and the type of Laptop is a Samsung R530-JT02.

Thanks in advance.

 

[GokAy]

You don't have DVD's for recovery? I guess that function (F4) is embedded in BIOS. Maybe how you format the partition is important. Tried FAT32/NTFS? Or set it Active http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/71432-partition-mark-active.html

 

[Qub1]

You don't have DVD's for recovery? I guess that function (F4) is embedded in BIOS. Maybe how you format the partition is important. Tried FAT32/NTFS? Or set it Active http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/71432-partition-mark-active.html

No, unfortunately with Samsung you either get a recovery partition or a CD, but not both. The CD used to be for sale but they are not available anymore. I've tried different types of formatting and it is already set as Active but no success so far.

 

[GokAy]

Ok, seems F4 uses a link in the partition table, and it can be destroyed with any of the popular 3rd party cloning/imaging software.

Samsung Recovery Problem on Windows 8.1 | Page 7 | NotebookReview
there is a link in the above thread:
2013 Series 7 chronos / Ativ Book 8 15" owner's lounge (NP770Z5E / NP780Z5E / NP870Z5E / NP880Z5E) | Page 272 | NotebookReview

USB Admin Tool in combination with a separate backup of the factory image (or file and folder backup of the entire Recovery partition) was how we did things with the older SRS5. The above procedures in SRS6 are much easier, though. The thread linked here provides overview of the process, and links to exact procedures.

seems to be the best bet, but please read them all. TL;DR for me well, I did but not all

 

[Qub1]

Ok, seems F4 uses a link in the partition table, and it can be destroyed with any of the popular 3rd party cloning/imaging software.

Samsung Recovery Problem on Windows 8.1 | Page 7 | NotebookReview
there is a link in the above thread:
2013 Series 7 chronos / Ativ Book 8 15" owner's lounge (NP770Z5E / NP780Z5E / NP870Z5E / NP880Z5E) | Page 272 | NotebookReview

USB Admin Tool in combination with a separate backup of the factory image (or file and folder backup of the entire Recovery partition) was how we did things with the older SRS5. The above procedures in SRS6 are much easier, though. The thread linked here provides overview of the process, and links to exact procedures.

seems to be the best bet, but please read them all. TL;DR for me well, I did but not all

Aha thanks, I've just booted from the AdminTool usb and it has repartitioned my hard drive to its factory state (I used ISO to USB to copy the tool to my USB). All I have to do now is try to get the original contents of the Recovery partition back on my hard drive. I'll edit this post once I've any progress to report.

EDIT:
Managed to fix it by initializing and repartitioning the hard drive using Samsung Admin Tool, then exploring the recovery partition using an Ubuntu Live CD and the command "sudo mount /dev/sdaX /mnt" where X is the number of the partition that is the recovery partition. Then I copied my backup over the newly created partition, WITHOUT replacing files. Then I rebooted and recovery worked perfectly, and the PC is now back in its original state.

Thanks for the help!