making a restore CD

  • Thread starter Thread starter bob
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bob

I heard that if you buy a new computer that doesn't come with a
restore CD, you can make your own. Anyone know what tools will do
this?
 
I heard that if you buy a new computer that doesn't come with a restore
CD, you can make your own. Anyone know what tools will do this?
Click to expand...

An OEM bundle should have a utility that will do just that.
 
I heard that if you buy a new computer that doesn't come with a
restore CD, you can make your own. Anyone know what tools will do
this?
Click to expand...


Without a doubt you should image your drive(OS).
I personally use Acronis True Image.
Once a month images, mean you are fairly safe at all times.
Old ones can be deleted occasionally.

Having said all that, new machines normally come with an OS
in a hidden partition, that you can use to recover your machine to
factory condition.
 
Having said all that, new machines normally come with an OS in a hidden
partition, that you can use to recover your machine to factory
condition.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but that ain't gonna help him if his hard drive dies.
 
Yeah, but that ain't gonna help him if his hard drive dies.
Click to expand...

Only had 1 store-bought computer in my life. It was a Compaq. It had an
app that allowed me to make 1 set of CD's for recovery in case the
recovery partition of the hard drive was inaccessible. Maybe the OP's
computer has such?

--meander
 
Unfortunately there can be complications to relying on the factory
method. For example you can't add another partition as it may no longer
be able to find the hidden one, and if a restoration disc works it may
wipe out any existing 2nd partition. Bye bye data if someone otherwise
did what is wise in keeping user data off the OS partition for the
ironic expressed purpose of being able to restore the OS partition
without loss of data.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's a good point.

I once had an eTower 700 eMachines with restore CDs. I wanted to restore
the OS (Win ME), and I started out by using a boot disk to partition the
single hard drive into several partitions for various categories of data.
I then ran the restore CD only to find out that its first act of business
was to reformat the entire disk to its own pre-set partition scheme.

Fortunately, I hadn't yet used the other partitions to store any unique
data, so it was a painless learning experience. But yeah, those restore
disks can be pretty obnoxious sometimes.
 
The only place I have seen the tools to do that is with Vista. I have so far avoided having Vista on my own PCs and can't vouch for how it works.
 
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