# Custom Recovery Partition???



## quez26 (Apr 23, 2008)

Anyone know if you can make your own built in recovery partition to recover Windows without a cd using any of the imaging products out there? ray:


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## Doby (Jan 17, 2006)

Yep acronis has this feature

http://www.acronis.com/

Free trial and you can download the manual seperatly to view all the features and how they work.

I have never used that particular feature but its the best image product I own


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## linderman (May 20, 2005)

IMHO ........ drive imaging is far superior to recovery partition

unless you just want a hidden partition ??????????

drive imaging allows you to keep as many copies of your hard drive contents as you deem needed .............. you can image once a day or once a week if you like

why have one single image when you could keep weekly back-ups

then when your boot drive takes a nose dive ........ you can restore your complete drive contents ...... bootabilty and all in a small amount of time ........ and you can be as close in time to what you had as you desire 


the trouble with the average system restore partition is they are "generally" a snap shot of your drive from a long time ago .......... so when you do get restored ....... you will have alot of data and program "catching up to do"

the best way is to keep your images on a slave drive which you keep the power plug disconnected when not needed ......... then say lightening or power back feed kills your boot hard drive ........ no sweat ....... install a new drive and restore your last weeks image stored on your slave to the new drive ......... voila ........ in lees time than it takes to go grocery shopping you will be right back to where you were .............


I agree with Doby too ....... Acronis makes some great software ........ there are some others too that are freebies


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## quez26 (Apr 23, 2008)

Can I create a hidden recovery partition (for use with F11) and not actively run Acronis? I want to be able to build a computer and sell it with a recovery partition. Thanks for any help.


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## linderman (May 20, 2005)

http://www.tech-forums.net/computer_articles/restore/restore-disk.php

Have a look here:
http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=37939
http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=47206
http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=26185
http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=43610


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## linderman (May 20, 2005)

you want an easy way or are you willing to struggle to get things exactly the way you want them ?


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## quez26 (Apr 23, 2008)

well it would be a basic build image.... not too much tweaking going into it.


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## linderman (May 20, 2005)

well driveimagexml (free) can make and store a baseline image on a partiton 

now to make the partition hidden and how to make it appear when you want to .......

I am thinking partition magic .......... do you have that ?


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## linderman (May 20, 2005)

thats the ticket ................ PM makes the hidden partition / PM also unhides the partition at your command ........ then use drive image xml to make and restore the image


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## quez26 (Apr 23, 2008)

Just out of curiosity, why do you say not to run chkdsk on a failing HDD? How exactly does it affect the data on the drive? 

I'll check into the PM option thanks.


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## linderman (May 20, 2005)

Easeus partition manager has a free home edition ! its an equal to PM


check disk screws up data that is found on bad sectors which means the data on those bad sectors is lost forever .................. not a good thing


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