AlienRespawn - Recovery Disk Creation

Am getting really comfortable playing with my new AW17 R1 and it is now time to get serious and make my recovery disks. Iv'e enjoyed to stock setup. No real bloatware to be found, a very pleasant surprise. But now it's time to revert back to a fresh state from the factory.

I was getting ready to use the AlienRespawn program to do this and realized that I had not created by Recovery tool yet. I did receive a disk from Dell labelled operating system Windows 8.1 recovery media with my purchase but my assumption is that this is windows only and not a true recovery disk?

Dug around in the drawer and found a couple of 4gb USB stick, lots of old CDRW, Some DVD- and DVD+ media. So it looks like a trip to town in the morning to get a larger dedicated USB drive for this task.


My primary question was if I was to proceed toninght and burn the disks to CDRW it would take quite a few. Would that then lock the program from being able to create a set with USB or a USB HD?

Essentially what I'm asking is are you allowed to make more than on recovery set? Or is it locked once you make one. I know my old pavilion would only let you create disks one time.

Thanks for the help. Love this new machine. Going to be adding a couple SSD drives soon.

 

Unless they have changed something with Respawn, you should be able to make multiple recovery media without issue. I haven't used it for a couple of years, but you used to be able to make as many as you want, as often as you want to.

If you want to know how many DVD or how large a USB thumb drive will be required, if you start the process the program should tell you at the very beginning how many disks or what size USB flash drive will be needed. You can cancel out of the process and start it over again when you have the media ready to go.

USB is the best way to go. The creation process and restore process are much faster than DVD. The other thing is, unless they recently changed Respawn "RW" media cannot be used. Only "R" (single write) optical media can be used.

 

Make sure you test the recovery device. Especially if it's a sandisk USB drive. I have had bad luck with sandisk USB drives not being bootable. You don't have to actually for a recovery but make sure it atleast boots.

 

I've also had poor experience with Sandisk USB's and recovery media. Avoid them! - and yeah, you can still use AWR to make as many recovery disks/USB's as you want to.....

 

Im off today, so headed to town.

Any reccomendation on specific USB sticks that are known to work. Ill pick up some blank dvd's as well. While I would prefer a USB stick I guess it doesnt really matter as long as I have a functional copy somewhere.

 

You want to avoid USB sticks with special "features" amounting to crippled firmware and their own backup and encryption trash. If you see "U3" (in some cases "Launchpad" or a similar fancy name may be used) on the package, avoid it like a plague. There are tools for removing the U3 garbage, but in some cases those drives still suffer from limited functionality after removing the crapware and they are only useful for file storage.

Just a basic, no-frills USB flash memory stick without any of that nonsense will serve you best. Many of the newer USB flash memory drives, especially USB 3.0, (including some SanDisk) have firmware that does not allow them to be recognized as a removable USB mass storage device and that creates problems. They are not bootable and have protected partitions on them that limit their functionality for anything except file storage. Most of the older/slower USB 2.0 flash drives work better for recovery media, OS installation or bootable media. I would go with 16GB or 32GB capacity. You don't want to run into a lack of space problem creating recovery media.

 

Thanks for the help. Picked up a 16gb lexar (micron) basic stick and will give it a shot.

Go figure it was about twice the cost of a sandisk with U3 on it...figures.

Whats the best way to check it to make sure the recovery stick is bootable?

 

Well, you can use Rufus or the HP USB format tool to confirm it is bootable. Also, try to make recovery media and see if Respawn allows you to do that without pitching a fit about it not being compatible. If it allows you to, be sure to test the recovery media for true functionality. You don't want to find out when you need it that it does not work to restore your factory image.

 

Whats the shortcut to get to the boot menu

 

F12 at POST. Is that what you are asking about?

 

Yes, thanks.! Checking it now. Appreciate the help.

edit:

Was able to access boot menu via F12 and verified that stick boots to AlienRespawn and offers recovery options. Quit process at that point.

One point to add should any inexperienced users like myself come across this thread. Once I created the Recovery media using AlienRespawn, as I was exiting the software it prompted me that I could recover 34mb of disk space and prompted me to remove the files. I believe this is the alienrespawn software itself and the only way to recover it would be to do a factory reinstall of the software. Somewhat dangerous move should the Recovery media not work and you did not test it.

I elected to leave the files in place, as the size is insignificant to me.

@Mr. Fox: If I'm incorrect please let me know.