OT: HP Media Center m7425.uk

[RJK]

Seeing as there was a deftly silence when I posted about this PC on 23rd
October !

This machine had 250gb hd, an 8gb's approx. "recovery partition" drive D:\
....and a large drive C:\
Even though I was aware of this HP hd configuration, and partly because the
disk was failing fast, (had to use Spinrite 6 to get it booting up - which
may have altered MBR), ...instead of cloning disk to disk, I Norton Ghost
14.0 backed up drives C:\ and D:\ to external USB hard disk.

PowerQuest's Partition Magic's displayed drive C:\ parittion with a yellow
border with a "Bad" label. Used ptedit.exe to note C:\ and D:\ partition
details, and noticed that C:\ was NTFS and D:\ was FAT32x
....another point - bios "Advanced configuration" hard disk setting was set
to "RAID" ...and I left set to that, suspecting that this was the original
factory setting - as there is a large hole on the front panel of this HP
Multi-Media machine where a removeable hard-disk could be plugged in. So,
does anyone know if the machine was originally supplied with a "RAID"
configuration, or should that setting in bios be the normal "IDE" ?

Anyhow, after restoring drives C:\ and hidden drive D:\ ,the HP
application software that should create a set of recovery cd/dvd's?, and the
F10 system recovery procedure would not work. I tried several permutations
of Ghost's restore, for drives C:\ and D:\ as below - and gave up - leaving
the machine with a restored and bootable drive C:\ and didn't bother to
restore drive D:\ ...(as it's so old anyway !)


1.) Set drive active (for booting OS)Makes the restored drive the active
partition (for example, the drive from which the computer starts).
You should select this option if you are restoring the drive on which your
operating system is installed.
Restore original disk signatureRestores the original, physical disk
signature of the hard drive.

2.) Disk signatures are included in Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000
Advanced Server, and Windows NT Server 4.0 Enterprise Edition (SP3 and
later). Disk signatures are required to use the hard drive.
Select this option if either of the following situations are true:
Your computer's drive letters are atypical (for example, assigned letters
other than C, D, E, and so forth).
You are restoring a recovery point to a blank hard drive.

3.) Restore Master Boot Record (MBR)Restores the master boot record. The
master boot record is contained in the first sector of a physical hard disk.
The MBR consists of a master boot program and a partition table that
describes the disk partitions. The master boot program looks at the
partition table of the first physical hard disk to see which primary
partition is active. It then starts the boot program from the boot sector of
the active partition.
This option is recommended only for advanced users and is available only if
you restore a whole drive in the recovery environment.
Select this option if any of the following situations are true:
You are restoring a recovery point to a new, blank hard disk.
You are restoring a recovery point to the original drive, but the drive's
partitions were modified since the recovery point was created.
You suspect that a virus or some other problem has corrupted your drive's
master boot record.

Any idea if it is possible to restore that drive D:\ recovery partition and
tweak MBR to get that "HP recovery" feature working again ?

regards, Richard

 

[Paul]

Seeing as there was a deftly silence when I posted about this PC on 23rd
October !

This machine had 250gb hd, an 8gb's approx. "recovery partition" drive D:\
...and a large drive C:\
Even though I was aware of this HP hd configuration, and partly because the
disk was failing fast, (had to use Spinrite 6 to get it booting up - which
may have altered MBR), ...instead of cloning disk to disk, I Norton Ghost
14.0 backed up drives C:\ and D:\ to external USB hard disk.

PowerQuest's Partition Magic's displayed drive C:\ parittion with a yellow
border with a "Bad" label. Used ptedit.exe to note C:\ and D:\ partition
details, and noticed that C:\ was NTFS and D:\ was FAT32x
...another point - bios "Advanced configuration" hard disk setting was set
to "RAID" ...and I left set to that, suspecting that this was the original
factory setting - as there is a large hole on the front panel of this HP
Multi-Media machine where a removeable hard-disk could be plugged in. So,
does anyone know if the machine was originally supplied with a "RAID"
configuration, or should that setting in bios be the normal "IDE" ?

Anyhow, after restoring drives C:\ and hidden drive D:\ ,the HP
application software that should create a set of recovery cd/dvd's?, and the
F10 system recovery procedure would not work. I tried several permutations
of Ghost's restore, for drives C:\ and D:\ as below - and gave up - leaving
the machine with a restored and bootable drive C:\ and didn't bother to
restore drive D:\ ...(as it's so old anyway !)


1.) Set drive active (for booting OS)Makes the restored drive the active
partition (for example, the drive from which the computer starts).
You should select this option if you are restoring the drive on which your
operating system is installed.
Restore original disk signatureRestores the original, physical disk
signature of the hard drive.

2.) Disk signatures are included in Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000
Advanced Server, and Windows NT Server 4.0 Enterprise Edition (SP3 and
later). Disk signatures are required to use the hard drive.
Select this option if either of the following situations are true:
Your computer's drive letters are atypical (for example, assigned letters
other than C, D, E, and so forth).
You are restoring a recovery point to a blank hard drive.

3.) Restore Master Boot Record (MBR)Restores the master boot record. The
master boot record is contained in the first sector of a physical hard disk.
The MBR consists of a master boot program and a partition table that
describes the disk partitions. The master boot program looks at the
partition table of the first physical hard disk to see which primary
partition is active. It then starts the boot program from the boot sector of
the active partition.
This option is recommended only for advanced users and is available only if
you restore a whole drive in the recovery environment.
Select this option if any of the following situations are true:
You are restoring a recovery point to a new, blank hard disk.
You are restoring a recovery point to the original drive, but the drive's
partitions were modified since the recovery point was created.
You suspect that a virus or some other problem has corrupted your drive's
master boot record.

Any idea if it is possible to restore that drive D:\ recovery partition and
tweak MBR to get that "HP recovery" feature working again ?

regards, Richard

"cloning disk to disk" - yes, that would have made more sense for a setup
that doesn't boot the normal way. I would probably have looked for a
copy of "ddrescue", to make a copy of as much info as possible. If the
original disk isn't dead yet, you might still try it, using a spare
disk to hold the output. Then you could examine the exact copy of
the disk, at your leisure.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Damaged_Hard_Disk

You could try getting the recovery media from HP, and put back a factory
fresh install on the new drive. HP only tends to keep media for purchase,
until the warranty period expires. Then you'd have to find it on Ebay
or something. So try HP first and see what they say.

You need to find the equivalent of a site like this, which discusses HP.
This one covers Dell, and may give you some idea of the myriad ways
the restoration can be set up.

http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/

Paul