# Clone/Backup Dell Restore Partition?



## jagsrus (Dec 30, 2008)

I have a Dell XPS800 which shipped with XP Pro Media Center Edition. Lost the disks in a move last year. Requested replacement disks from Dell, but all they had were XP Pro non-media center (which they shipped). So I backed up and did a restore to factory state from the 3rd partition (Ctrl-F11). All is well UNTIL the inevitable HD failure, so, is there a way to make a bootable clone/copy of the restore partition as a recovery CD or DVD since the partition is FAT32 and hidden? I have been able to determine it was created by Norton Ghost v 8.5 . And yes, I am purchasing a second identical drive to do a full XXClone, but HDs are still not a true backup and I hate the install/uninstall hassle of Norton(Symantec).


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## justpassingby (Mar 11, 2007)

Hi jagsrus and welcome to TSF !

Can you still boot within Windows ? See if there's some preinstalled program in the start menu that allows to create backup/recovery CD's, it's not available for all models though.

What's the brand and model of the failing hard drive ? Some hard drive manufacturer's utility softwares can make a 1:1 copy of the whole drive to another drive.

I've never tried to create a recovery CD from the backup partition using something else than the preinstalled program made specifically for that purpose so can't help much with that. I asked the question once about cloning a whole drive content and got this reply, don't know if it'll help.


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## jagsrus (Dec 30, 2008)

Thanks for the reply, but you miss the point entirely. I HAVE recovered from a crash using the 3rd partition back to the factory installed Media Center Pro Edition. What I am trying to do is preparefor for any future HD failure (it will happen eventually) and I want a useable COPY of the Dell factory installed recovery partition because Dell no longer has an exact match for my service tag. I want to copy or clone or ISO the existing 3rd partition (hidden, Fat32 not NTFS on and NTFS drive and you need a basic understanding of that quandry and the Dell protocol which is a ghost image with a Dell recovery utility) for any future blessings of the BSOD from XP. No guesses please, just a pro answer with details.
:4-dontkno


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## justpassingby (Mar 11, 2007)

> I want a useable COPY of the Dell factory installed recovery partition because Dell no longer has an exact match for my service tag


Well, is there some preinstalled utility that allows you to create a recovery CD or not ? Can't find Dell's support page for the XPS 800.


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## Klint (Oct 18, 2007)

Well after you recovered why don't you just use a utility and make an image of your current conf (while its working) and burn that to a cd and put it in a fire proof case in side of a fire proof safe under the house in the ground in a water proof container?


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## justpassingby (Mar 11, 2007)

Here's how to unhide the FAT32 recovery partition so you can browse the files and export the ghost image :


> To save a copy of the Ghost backup image onto a DVD, you must first gain access to the DSR partition. Note this procedure requires a DVD burner, as the files are too large to fit on CD.
> 
> The following procedure can be used to save a copy of the Ghost image from a DSR-DOS partition.
> 
> ...


Source (with additional pics) : http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/recover.htm


You could try to use Norton Ghost 8.5 or prior to create a bootable DVD with the image but can't tell you whether that'll work.

Here's more informations on how to restore the image : 


> Manually Restoring the Ghost Image (DSR-DOS)
> 
> 1. Obtain the ptedit.exe utility. Copy the file to some place you will be able to run it from when booted to DOS, such as a floppy disk, CD, or USB flash drive.
> 
> ...


Source : http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/recover.htm

Needed utilities : 
Ptedit32
Dsrfix bootable CD 
The dsrfix iso contains ptedit.exe. Google for a dos mouse driver and add it on the image, easily done with imgburn.


Practice on a blank hard drive and see how it goes. The partitions will need to exist beforehand.

More informations :
http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/fixes.htm
http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/


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## techie81 (Mar 16, 2009)

I created a boot DVD for a Dell Inspiron 9300 with the recovery image on it. I used a DOS 6.22 image with imgburn to make the DVD bootable and I copied the .gho and .ghs files from the recovery partition. For some reason when I run recover.exe, it sees the image as 76GB and makes me select the whole disk to restore to. The original hard disk was 76GB. It was failing and had to be replaced.


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## Old Rich (May 31, 2007)

See if anything here helps:

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

Edit . . never mind . . justpassingby had the same link . .


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