Can I create a recovery partition for Win XP

[Guest]

Hi there,

I am wondering if I can create a recovery partition for Windows XP Home, a
la HP and Compaq? So, if I ever want to reload windows from the HD I can
without using my disk. Can anyone tell me if this is possible or point me to
a site that can tell me? Thanks.

Dave

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Hi there,

I am wondering if I can create a recovery partition for Windows XP Home, a
la HP and Compaq? So, if I ever want to reload windows from the HD I can
without using my disk. Can anyone tell me if this is possible or point me to
a site that can tell me? Thanks.

Dave

Yes, you can. Buy a copy of Acronis TrueImage, a 40 GByte hard
disk and a USB case for this disk. After installing TrueImage, let
the program create an "Recovery CD".

To back up your system drive, do this:

1. Boot the machine with the recovery CD.
2. Back up the system drive to your USB drive (which needs to
have a formatted partition of a suitable size).

To restore your system, do this:

1. Boot the machine with the recovery CD.
2. Restore the system drive from your USB drive.

The process works especially well on machines that use
one partition (usually drive C for Windows and for all
applications, and a second partition (often drive D for
user data.

 

[Guest]

Thanks Pegasus, One other question. Can I just have two partitions on one
HD and do this? Basically the D: partition would be the recovery partition.
Thanks.

Dave

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Yes, you can. If you do it like this then I recommend that you
subsequently copy the image file to an independent medium,
to protect yourself against losing the image file in case of the
hard disk going bad.

 

[Guest]

Sorry, I have one other question...Is it possible to have it where you can
start the recovery process without using the TrueImage disk? Sorta like HP
and Compaq have theirs setup? Basically if a virus corrupts the C: drive I
can just hit F10 to access the recovery partition?

Thanks,
dave

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

There is no facility built into Windows to do this sort of thing.
Here are the options I'm aware of:
a) Use TrueImage (or a similar imaging product). Very nice,
very powerful, easy to use, low cost.
b) Temporarily install your disk as a slave disk in some other
WinXP/2000 PC, then zip up the slave disk, ensuring that you
include hidden files, system files and security descriptors.
c) Boot the machine with a Bart PE CD (www.bootdisk.com),
then zip up your system disk as under b).
Both b) and c) are free but much more laborious. They also
require you to repair the boot environment after a restoration.
Both work very nicely and are an excellent educational tool
when learning about the way the WinXP boot process is
structured.

 

[Guest]

Partition Table Doctor 3.0 -- partition recovery tool.
Partition Table Doctor is the only real partition recovery software
used to recover partition for hard disk when you experience a drive error
(other than hardware failure) this versatile tool automatically
checks and repairs the Master Boot Record, partition table, and
the boot sector of the partition with an error, to recover the
FAT16/FAT32/NTFS/NTFS5/EXT2/EXT3/SWAP partitions on
IDE/ATA/SATA/SCSI hard disk drives. It can create an emergency
floppy disk or a bootable CD for partition recovery even if your
operating system fails to boot. Partition Table Doctor manager
for MS-DOS, Freedos, Windows 95/98/Me, Windows NT 4.0,
Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows 2003.

http://www.ptdd.com
http://www.ptdd.com/partition-recovery.htm
http://www.ptdd.com/recoverylostpartition.htm