image HDD on hidden partition?

[JM]

Hello,
I may not be in the right forum for this question but mabey someone could
direct me to the proper answer?
My friend just got a new dell. It has a hidden partition with all the
programs and the OS installed so that if you have a calamity you can simply
press F11 and reinstall the OS and all the programs and drivers to factory
new condition .
Can someone tell me what program i need to have to be able to make this
partition on my machine.
Thanx JM

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Hello,
I may not be in the right forum for this question but mabey someone could
direct me to the proper answer?
My friend just got a new dell. It has a hidden partition with all the
programs and the OS installed so that if you have a calamity you can simply
press F11 and reinstall the OS and all the programs and drivers to factory
new condition .
Can someone tell me what program i need to have to be able to make this
partition on my machine.
Thanx JM

Imitating the Dell solution is most likely beyond your reach
but you can get close by doing this:
- Install an imaging product such as Acronis TrueImage or Norton Ghost.
- Create an image of your system partition. You will need a
separate drive to store it on, e.g. drive D: or an external USB disk.
- Create a Rescue CD so that you can boot your PC in case
Windows fails, and restore the system partition.

Note that imaging partitions only makes sense if you back up
your data regularly, e.g. once a week, or if your data is stored
on a partition other than the system partition, or both (which is
by far the best approach). If neither of these applies then you
would destroy your data files when recovering a system partition . . .

 

[Malke]

Hello,
I may not be in the right forum for this question but mabey someone
could direct me to the proper answer?
My friend just got a new dell. It has a hidden partition with all
the
programs and the OS installed so that if you have a calamity you can
simply press F11 and reinstall the OS and all the programs and drivers
to factory new condition .
Can someone tell me what program i need to have to be able to make
this
partition on my machine.
Thanx JM

This is normally done with enterprise-level partitioning and imaging
software. Acronis has these types of programs, as does Symantec. It
really isn't something an end user can afford or would use.

A better solution for you would be to purchasing a regular imaging
program like Acronis True Image and create an image of your system.
Store the image on an external hard drive instead of trying to create a
hidden restore partition on your internal hard drive.

Malke

 

[NoStop]

Hello,
I may not be in the right forum for this question but mabey someone could
direct me to the proper answer?
My friend just got a new dell. It has a hidden partition with all the
programs and the OS installed so that if you have a calamity you can
simply press F11 and reinstall the OS and all the programs and drivers to
factory new condition .
Can someone tell me what program i need to have to be able to make this
partition on my machine.
Thanx JM

Trueimage v9 for Windoze offers this "feature".

--
The ULTIMATE Windoze Fanboy:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2370205018226686613

View Some Common Linux Desktops ...
http://linclips.crocusplains.com/index.php

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

JM wrote:

I may not be in the right forum for this question but mabey someone
could direct me to the proper answer?
My friend just got a new dell. It has a hidden partition with all the
programs and the OS installed so that if you have a calamity you can
simply press F11 and reinstall the OS and all the programs and
drivers to factory new condition .
Can someone tell me what program i need to have to be able to make
this partition on my machine.

It's not something you can easily do yourself, but as far as I'm concerned,
It's very poor protection anyway. I would never choose to buy a system that
came with something like that.

The problem is that it protects you against some types of calamities, but
not others. For example, if your hard drive crashes, you find that you have
no protection at all. And of course, there is no type of calamity where it
does anything to recover any data files you have yourself created.

You can protect yourself against almost all kinds of calamities by
installing appropriate backup software and backing up to an external device.
My personal choice is to make an image of the entire drive to an external
hard drive, but others use CDRs, DVDs, etc.