Discussion on:

Create a Recovery Drive in Windows 8

Have you made a Windows Recovery Drive yet, or do you prefer to live dangerously?

other that 32/64 bit incompatibility which should be a given, is it system specific, could I make a recovery drive on my HP and take it to a Lenovo product and expect it to work? I think not.

Also what about full disk encryption, if your drive is encrypted will it be able to deal with that? Again, I think not.

I am assuming that this makes a bootable USB drive or CD/DVD but that was not made clear in the article, did you test it?

Perhaps it might be a good test to use a Linux live CD/DVD to boot the pc and delete the files on the root rendering the Windows 8 PC unbootable and see if the recovery drive can save you.

Edit to add; Could this be used to boot a dead Windows 8 pc for data recovery?

Answers would be a good thing.

As long as you are not crossing the 32-bit/64-bit line, you should be able to use the Recovery Drive that you created on your HP and use it to boot up your Lenova. Keep in mind that the Recovery Drive only boots up the PC and provides access to a host of repair tools. If you are going to perform data recovery/restoration, you will need system specific data. For example, you can launch and run System Image Recovery from the Recovery Drive, but of course you will have to use the image created for the Lenova. Stay tuned as I will explore using the Recovery Drive next week.

Disk Encryption is something I have not yet explored but will do so in the future.

Yes, the optical disc (CD/DVD) and USB flash drive Recovery Drives are bootable devices. I did fail to mention that in the article... I made the assumption that people would know. (EDIT: Actually I did mention in the introduction to the article that the Recovery Drive will allow you to boot your system... but I suppose that I could have elaborated a bit more.) I apologize for any confusion.

In the future, I plan on mercilessly killing a Windows 8 PC over and over again and showing how to use the tools on the Recovery Drive to aid in fixing it.

Really! Try using 3.1

What gets me is that these dweebs seem to think we care that they don't like it and won't use it. Ignorance on their part does not translate to ignorance on our part.

it runs my invoicing program

the only part I miss switching back is the dang scroll wheel on the mouse
otherwise I'm right at home as soon as it loads
which happens to occur in about 12 seconds from the DOS prompt

and the casual onlooker wouldn't know if you were using 3.1, 9X or
whatever (with appropriate theme applied). Sometimes I miss those
old days.

Thanks for the info! I'm still getting used to Win 8 Pro's app and recovery functionality. I like File History and use an encrypted drive (Bitlocker) to save my data as I add to it. I, too, am looking forward to the results of your experiments. Hopefully, I can use the encrypted drive as for system recovery also.

Windows reports that it can't create a recovery drive because some files are missing. I have seen this reported on several forums as well but no solution. My system has a clean install of Win8 Pro - any ideas what's missing?

"Who Am I Really" mentions his 3.1 system loads 3.1 in about 12 seconds.
Also we have all seen countless folks report how their systems boot in only "n" seconds.

Now I certainly prefer faster boot over slower but as long as it's of reasonable speed I don't spend any time fussing over it because I boot so infrequently. I spend my effort making my systems reliable. So reliable that when I put them into suspend I don't worry have I saved all files.

Even back when using Windows 3.1 in a large corporate Novell network I once ran my primary workstation for 26 days without a reboot or restart of Windows (no suspend in those days).

Today my home desktop is a Win 7 64 ASUS based build that I did. It's right next to where I sit to read and watch TV (always via Tivo). My system is ready 7x24 to in an instant search an issue and do daily reading.
It and our excellent 30 Mbit broadband access ... what a powerful tool.

Sounds as if there's no real need/reason to create a bootable recovery drive in advance of problems, since it's not system-specific. If/when problems happen, create a recovery drive off of someone else's (same-bit) Windows system and then use it on the computer with problems--yes?

What I do is create 3 partitions on any hard disk and leave say 100 gig for W7 OS and around 80 gigs for the backup of the OS only and create a DATA partition. Hence on a 500 gig drive you get around 300 gigs for data. I then make all the defaults for W7 folders transferred over to the DATA partition. W7 allows this but it is a bit tedious to do. But the benefits are huge as the OS only can be backed up using W7 to the 3rd W7_Bkup partition and as there is no data transferred I can then and even remotely rebuild a clients computer for them. Why W8 dropped this wonderful ability that W7 had beggars belief.
For some programmes that wont let you move the files out of C drive I use Syncback Pro to do it for me overnight automatically. It wakes my W7 PC up and does the backups and then goes back to sleep. Slick piece of software is Syncback Pro.
I also have a programme that someone in middle America wrote around Ghost 11.5 that will allow me to make a one file image file of any W7 build before it goes onsite. A gem of a tool this is, as I can store these image files cheaply to use for a full recovery if needed at any time. Huge time saver.
W7 is the best OS I have sampled from Microsoft and W8 does not cut it for me. As one person said on one of these forums it will be something else for an OS for him/her if Microsoft tries to force people to W8. Yep, it could be Linux here I come????? I am pretty impressed by Linux and at 71, I arent too old to learn either.
If I can finished with QED

O/T
Last week I ordered my daughter a Dell Inspiron 17R laptop, which came preloaded with Windows 8. After removing McAfee software and adding others, I spent about 5 hours hands-on with this machine, and it was, in one word,SUPERB!
I cannot speak to the Surface users, but using Windows 8 on this machine (no Touch Screen) was absolutely wonderful. You can read about the experience all you want, but until you've actually used it, you won't see what makes this OS truly cutting-edge technology.
This laptop came with a core i3 3227U CPU, 500GB hard drive, 4GB RAM, DVD burner, Wireless, USB3 slots, as well as card readers; true, not the most powerful system, but plenty enough horsepower for her purposes.
It was a thing of beauty, and one of these is in my future, now sooner rather than later.

it seems you can create a recovery drive only once. tough if you damage or lose it....

You mentioned that you have to give up the flash disk and dedicate it as a Recovery Drive. Wouldn't it be possible to backup and/or zip the contents of the flash disk and when needed copy it back to a flash disk when needed?

Or does Windows 8 actually do some funky stuff to the flash disk's file system etc?

I bought a Dell desktop with Windows 8 installed. I then had to activate it online. I took advantage of Microsoft's upgrade to Windows 8 Pro on sale in January. I then had to reactivate it again. What version is now on the recovery partition? If I make a USB Recovery Drive, will it be the original Windows 8 installed by Dell, or will it be the upgrade version of Windows 8 Pro that I installed? In case of a total hard drive failure, will I have to reactivate both versions all over again? I only wish that Dell would give you the original OEM disks like they did for my last Dell computer. Also, Microsoft to my surprise, did not send me a disk for the upgrade to Windows 8 Pro. When I opened the package I thought the disk was missing at first, until I read the instructions. I just had to enter the upgrade number and it opened the files that were already in the operating system but were hidden and locked. I still prefer disks and am not too happy with Windows 8 although there are some features I like.

When using instructions here and in the Dialog Box for creating a Windows 8 Recovery Drive, I am not able to copy the recovery partition; the option is greyed out. I have an 8 Gb USB drive so that is not the issue. I tried to assign a drive letter to the System Partition, that did nothing. Any ideas?
(I note that there must be a System Partition for the option to appear. However, there is a partition created during install which is only available for system stuff(?) so isn't that the System Partition?)
By the way, at Fry's Electronics here 2Apr2013, no drive under 8 Gb is even available, so space for Recovery is not an issue.

I followed the instructions, inserting an un-needed USB drive (4GB). Ran the utility, un-checking the Copy System Restore Partition. Then ran the Windows 7 File Recovery utility, selecting Create a System Image. Selected the USB drive and got the following message:
This drive cannot be used to store a system image because it is not formatted with NTFS.
Formatted the drive with NTFS, reran the Recovery Drive utility (which formats the drive before copy the utility files to it) and got the same error in Windows 7 File Recovery utility.
What am I missing??

Win 8 disk management indicates a health recovery partition on my laptop's SSD. Recovery fails to create a USB flash drive disk - "some required files are missing". The copy check box is grayed out. My install was a downloaded Win 8 Pro file using the Install Assistant to upgrade Win 7. Perhaps the recovery partition is still Win 7?

I did as recommended, created a Windows Recovery USB file. No option to copy System files even though I have a system created partition.
Used program I have used hundred times, Uniblue PowerSuite, 2013 (UPS2013). UPS2013 ran and updated 2 drivers, asked to restart. On restart, got the Repair screen. Plugged in the USB, it was not recognized. There was no option I did not try given the several choices. One option as a last resort was DOS prompt, cd to a Srt folder. There is no SRT folder, no srtTrail.txt found with dir search. On reinstall, there is no srt folder so whatever that instruction from TechRepublic came from, it's not correct.
I had to start from scratch to reinstall Windows 8, which I am still working on all those programs and Mboard drivers. This is really upsetting and time consuming!
I have mirrored drives, that did not help. I used EaseUS Toto to create a partition backup of the System and C:\ drives, but I found it would not boot into Windows.
Any comments, welcome.

Thank you so much, this was very helpful for me. I have share some important solution for windows corruption, Kernel for windows data recovery software to recover all over data files from damaged windows 8 partition.

i dont khow how to do and i want to if nessesery

Shouldn't you mention that you needn't create a system repair disc if you have the Windows 8 install DVD?. And that you needen't create a Windows 8 recovery drive unless you include a system image?.
I went ahead and created a repair disc CD-ROM then I later found I could use the Windows 8 DVD and choose the Repair option for the same purpose.