Acer eRecovery Discs installation.

Hi all,

I am getting ready to use my Acer eRecovery Discs to restore Vista (and everything else of course) on my Acer 5570-4421. I have been putting stuff I want to save on the D: drive because I am led to believe that the eRecovery process will only overwrite C: drive, not D: drive, so that stuff on D: will still be there when the recovery is complete.

Is this correct?

I only have 2 days left before I must do the eRecovery.

-- John D.

 

eRecovery will overwrite your C: drive,but not D: drive .Don't worry you are safe

 

As bigspin said acer's erecovery will only overwrite(wipe) everything that is on the C partition on the harddrive, any other partitions that you have will not be touched, so put all of the data you want to keep on the d partition and then run the recovery process and you will be fine.

 

Great...

Thank you both for your prompt replies,

-- John D.

 

Personally, I'd also make sure you have a backup of your D drive too, just in case something goes wrong.

If something does go wrong you'll be VERY ANNOYED at the death of your data!

 

Oops...too late. The eRecovery is being done while I am typing this.

But I'm not worried...most of the stuff was P2P files...I'll just have to download them all over again if they're gone. No great loss...only about 20GB of music, videos, movies and such. Well, maybe it IS a great loss! But too late now.

The eRecovery Discs dDidn't come with instructions, though...just two invoice pages. Instructions like which disk to put in first...that would have been helpful since they're both labeled "Disk 1" which I found somewhat amusing. I suppose Acer wants to challenge their customers. ;-)

Whatever, Acer should include instructions since most people are NOT PC-savvy.

And I didn't know if I was supposed to set my BIOS to boot from the DVD drive instead of the HD, but I set it to boot from the DVD anyway, put the "System" disk in -- found this out by trial-and-error -- and then it asked for the "eRecovery" disk.

eRecovery is in progress.

So far, so good.

Even if this doesn't work, I'll just buy a copy of Vista Home Premium Full Install and do it that way. Would prefer that anyway but don't have the $200+ for it right now and the eRecovery Discs were a much cheaper (for now) option...will get Vista Full later though. The eRecovery is just until then, whenever I get Vista Full.

-- John D.

 

If your system came with Vista installed, just borrow a friends Vista OEM disk and install from that. You have your key on the bottom of the computer. No need to buy another copy.

 

Just an UPDATE re: Acer eRecovery Discs installation to make this thread complete...

Acer eRecovery took 49+ minutes and completed successfully. No error messages, everything went smoothly. And D: drive contents are intact.

Thanks again...



RobertDrake,

I will look into that, thanks. I had thought about buying a OEM Vista Home Premium (much cheaper than a Full Install version) but I don't like it being linked to only one PC whereas with a Full Install, I am free to move it from PC to PC if necessary (as long as I only use it on one PC at a time). Unfortunately, I don't know anyone who has VISTA yet, let alone someone who has an OEM copy of it, so at some point I will just get a Full Install because I can use it in the future without concern and do my clean installs on this Acer or if I get another laptop later and retire the Acer.

Some time ago I got a Full Install of Windows XP Pro...VERY pricey but I needed it since I occasionally blow everything off my HD and do a clean install...I do NOT like to install over an existing OS. XP Pro is on my Twinhead laptop (which is acting as my Desktop PC since I won't buy Desktops anymore) and Vista Home Premium is, of course, on my Acer (2nd PC). I got the Acer to replace my iPAQ h6315 Pocket PC because the 802.11b WiFi got flakey.

Likewise, I will be doing the same with Vista Home Premium Full when needed...doing a clean install on my Acer occasionally.

Now, I just need to try that 5570 BIOS update so I can use my RAM upgrade without the problems I had earlier that started this whole eRecovery mess.

Regards,

-- John D.