Question about Acer general setup (Partitions/Recovery/?)

Just a minor question, I'm thinking about getting the new Acer 8204 (once it actually comes out and is fairly widely available) however I'd like to know how partitions/recovery is worked, is it a recovery partition, recovery disks, original Windows XP Cd's or something else.

Anyone who has got one able to say?

 

There are 2 partitions and they are FAT32 formatted. There is a hidden recovery partition and also they provide restore disks. There are no OEM Win discs.

 

Just a quick update, can anyone confirm this for the 8204, does it come with Restore disks as well as the hidden partition rubbish, I hate hidden partitions and junk that I don't want on them..

Otherwise maybe time to Ghost my system when it arrives.

 

just the hidden partition... you need to make the disks... still i wouldnt kill the hidden partition... its only 4 gigs out of 120 afterall

 

Yeah, but then I have to live with FAT32 as well? Plus I'm not sure how well the machine would cope with my customizations (I generally partition off C drive as the OS (small, maybe 5Gig) then D as programs, then E as actual data).

Might just have to try Ghost, see if THIS machine can cope with Ghost (my current machine overheats when running DOS applications)

 

My understanding is that you can make disks from the hidden partition. Does this include a windows XP installation disk?

 

No recovery disk, no XP disk. And it appears that if you convert your C drive to NTFS, you can't install additional components from the XP folder (C:\i386), or so Acer support told me after I went ahead and did it.

 

One of the first things I did after receiving my 8204 was to convert C: to NTFS, as I needed to Install IIS, and it won't install on FAT32. I had no problems using the Windows setup files in C:\i386 - in fact they were required in order to install IIS. I've also read of at least one other person on this forum who had to do the same, and didn't have problems either, so I guess it looks like your milage can vary!

My system definately did not come with any discs of any description whatsoever.

As for Ghost, you won't need it - the machine ships with an Acer backup utility that creates a full drive image just as Ghost does, with CD/DVD burning capability.

 

Good to know, not having to install Ghost will just short-cut a step, but I definately want to create a full image prior to starting to play around with it (and then again once I've installed all the latest updates and customized to my liking).

Does the drive image software support USB drives? I normally store my backup images on hard drives as well as on CD's in case the CD's fail (I have very little confidence in how long CD's last).

 

Travel Matey,

That's really odd. I keep getting a message that the installer can't copy the files. And the Acer person gave me the line I mentioned.

A little frustrating, I have to say.

- Ed

 

Just tried it again. No dice. Grr.

 

Good question, here's what I can tell you; you have the option to save the image to the D: drive or directly to CD/DVD. If you save it to D: it creates a series of files split into CD-sized chunks. You also have the option of burning the hard drive image files to CD/DVD at a later time, so I can't see any reason why they couldn't be copied onto a USB drive.

So far we're good. The next question is does it recognize a USB Drive at POST? It seems this is possible (see attached screenshot), but I haven't yet tried it.

 

My machine is a Thai model (Thai language defaults and an English/Thai keyboard), so it's definately different to a standard Western model I guess. As noted, I read on here somewhere that someone else did exactly as I did (another software developer I guess), but I have NFI where they were located in the world. Perhaps it's just a problem with US-English versions? Dunno what else to suspect!

 

Gotta say, I've never encountered anything quite like it in my 25+ years of software development. I just found Acer's explanation a bit inadequate.