is backup the same as recovery discs?

[hamiltoncruiser]

I expected my HP laptop to tell me to make recovery discs soon after
turning it on.

It didn't so I went to Backup and am in the process of creating backup/
recovery discs. I'm on DVD #3 so far.

But I screwed up...I initially tried to do the backup to the D drive
which I think is the recovery drive...it filled up, told me backup
couldn't finish and D drive is low on space. 7.07 MB free of 8.08 GB

what should I do about D?? Anything? I don't know how full it was
before I tried the backup.

....Lisa

 

[Mhzjunkie]

hamiltoncruiser spewed out this bit, and i'll scatter a few bits myself:

I expected my HP laptop to tell me to make recovery discs soon after
turning it on.

It didn't so I went to Backup and am in the process of creating
backup/ recovery discs. I'm on DVD #3 so far.

But I screwed up...I initially tried to do the backup to the D drive
which I think is the recovery drive...it filled up, told me backup
couldn't finish and D drive is low on space. 7.07 MB free of 8.08 GB

what should I do about D?? Anything? I don't know how full it was
before I tried the backup.

...Lisa

If you've got a recovery partition, you'll most likely hit a set of keys on
the keyboard to recovery your computer from files that's stored on the
recovery partition. That is unless you over write them, or screw the
recovery partition up by writing files to it when you shouldn't be.

The recovery partition shouldn't be touched, and never be used to as a place
to store files. When you screw that partition up, recovering your computer
may be lost.

--
Mhzjunkie

1 PRINT "Windows Vista ERROR"
GOTO 1
END

 

[Paul Randall]

Backup and recovery may be two different things. Doing DVD number 3 just
doesn't sound right to me because the systems I've done requied only two
DVDs. I would suggest going to help and support and searching for 'recovery
disc'. There should be some links that get you to a "here's how' link which
starts the actual 'create recover disc' process. That's how it works on my
cheapo Compaq, but the process varies from one Compaq computer to the next.

Near the beginning of the process it may ask you to choose what type of
media you will be using and tell you how many CDs or DVDs or DVD-DLs it will
need. It typically picks one of your CD or DVD drives and gives you choices
based on that. On a laptop that could only write to CDs, that was my only
choice; it ignored the DVD-DL writer I had plugged into a USB port, but I
found a way to get around that. 7 to 10 CDs or 2 DVDs or 1 or 2 DVD-DLs is
typical. It may want to create all the images before starting to write the
first one which means that you have to tell it where to store the images.
DON'T put them on the recovery partition. Don't use that partition for
anything.

You are typically only allowed to create one set of recovery discs. You use
them when things are so screwed up that you are willing to wipe out
everything on the hard drive in order to get your system working again. In
theory, they should restore your system to 'out of the box' state. I doubt
that you can make another set of recovery discs, so it is not exactly the
same as 'out of the box'.

On a laptop, I changed my mind about creating CDs -- I decided I'd rather
have two DVDs to store than 10 CDs. I aborted the process after it had
created the images but before it started writing CDs. It let me start over
and created DVDs on an external USB drive after I figured out how to disable
the internal CD drive.

-Paul Randall

 

[hamiltoncruiser]

Thanks Paul.
I did a system recovery on the advice of HP tech support b/c laptop
was not recognizing network/connecting ot the internet
Upon re-boot recovery disc instrux came up...it's taking 2 DVD's.

I won't touch D again.
Now hopefully the computer will recognize the home network!

....Lisa