HOW TO: Preserve AlienRespawn - stock drive to aftermarket drive / AlienRespawn Q&A

Hi Everyone... A question came up on the 14x sub-forum in regards to "moving" AlienRespawn from one drive to another. After a bit of discussion with the OP, he suggested we have this located in the main AW forum and I certainly agree. This question comes up quite often with new owners. I have edited the General Info sticky and added a link to this thread for easy reference.

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First things first... What is AlienRespawn?
AlienRespawn is a Dell application installed on your system from the factory. Its not bloatware. This is your 'rescue/restore' option. There are two versions of AlienRespawn.

The 'Basic' version is what you will find on your system. Basic allows you to create a recovery option (Emergency Rescue Media) using either blank optical media or a USB Flash Stick.

The 'Premium' version which has a cost of 39.99 (USD). There are added features with the Premium version of course, however I suggest looking at other third party backup packages... Acronis is a good one and of course I will always support Ghost.

See attached image below... this is a screenshot of AlienRespawn's main screen and shows the different options between premium and basic.


Preserving your Factory Image / Out of Box state...
One of the first questions new owners post is: "What do I do when I receive my system?"

Answer: CREATE YOUR RECOVERY MEDIA

I have seen multiple folks receive their system and fail to do this. They end up wiping the drive and starting a fresh OS install only to become stuck/have something go wrong and have no easy save method of restoring the factory image. Don't allow yourself to end up in this state... Create your recovery media!

Steps to do this - very simple and well worth the blank media or USB stick:

1. Have blank DVDs on hand or a 8GB USB Flash Drive (the size of the flash drive required by AlienRespawn may be higher - this is based on apps installed @ the factory and Windows OS version. If you opted for games or Adobe apps or selected Windows Ultimate, you may need a 16GB stick).

2. Boot into windows and open AlienRespawn (can be found in the start menu)

3. From the left menu, select Backup

4. Select 'Create System Recovery Media'

5. Follow the prompts

6. When done, stash that USB stick or Recovery Optical Media in a SAFE PLACE.


If I create recovery media using AlienRespawn Basic after I have installed my games and other apps/documents, will it preserve them?
Answer: No. The Premium version might do this but the basic version will not. Remember, AlienRespawn takes the data on your Recovery partition and creates an easy route to recovery.


I've created my Recovery Media, now what?
Answer: Entirely up to you. Again, stash that recovery media away somewhere safe. If something freaks out with your system (dead drive, corrupt drive, etc.), this is your only way to get back to that wonderful 'out of box' first power on state. With the recovery media created, its time to decide how to proceed.

For those who want to move on to a clean install of windows, reference this thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...er-install-order-guide-alienware-systems.html

followed by,

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ook-feel-after-clean-install-windows-7-a.html

If you are satisfied with the factory install and do not want to perform a clean install then that is fine also. I have ran the factory install on my 11xR1 and to this day the system performs just fine. No need to feel there is 'bloatware'.

Just remember, STASH AWAY that recovery media in a SAFE PLACE.


Can I use my recovery media to recover the factory state on a new hard drive?
Answer: Absolutely. It does not matter if the original hard drive was a 320GB drive and the replacement is a 500GB drive. AlienRespawn will format and restore the factory out of box state to the new drive. The new drive will still have the correct free space remaining. No need to worry about lost space... Move on to installing your applications, games, documents. Update Java and Flash. Updated Windows via Windows Update. Enjoy your new replacement drive!


Can I use my recovery media to recover the factory state on a new SSD?
Answer: Possibly. Many have reported moving from a larger factory drive to a smaller aftermarket drive is throwing a 'not enough free space' message in AlienRespawn when attempting to respawn. When I initially performed my testing, I used a M17xR2 320GB HDD with AlienRespawn and had no issue with restoring the factory state of the 320GB install to a 256GB SSD. I don't know why some are having this problem. So, the short answer here - be prepared for it not to work. Perhaps just go with a clean install after creating the recovery drive. Creating the recovery drive is still important - if you ever want to drop the original drive back in and recover to the out of box state then this is the best way to go.


RED ALERT! My system is completely dead and I have not used an imaging app such as Acronis or Ghost to preserve my drive. What do I do now?!?
Answer: If you took my advice and preserved your out of box state by creating the emergency rescue media, don't freak out. Retrieve your rescue media from that wall safe you installed to protect it and boot up your system with the media inserted. Use FN+F12 @ the boot screen to access the one time boot menu. Select your rescue media (either USB or Optical Drive) and follow the prompts. AlienRespawn will go to work and you'll be right back to the state you were in when you first unboxed your very cool Alienware system.



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Well, I think that about covers it. If you have any questions on AlienRespawn, post away and I'll try to answer them.

Note: Please also see this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/633540-tutorial-make-up-date-alienware-respawn-image.html
While I have not tried the process the OP outlines in the linked thread, it may be of some use to you.

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09/06/2012 Moderator Edit: The latest version of Alienware Respawn allows installation of Respawn on a new OS installation and creates a new recovery partition.

12/10/2012 latest version can be downloaded here: http://www.alienrespawn.com/en-us/Index.html

 

thanks man...very helpful advice if and when I decide to replace my harddrive.

 

Nice, thanks!

 

Very good advice, thanks.

Has anyone tried doing this with a crucial M4? If so, were there any ill effects? I'm planning to install one on my m17xr3 when it gets here, I've never used a ssd before and if this works fine on it, it sounds like I'll have no problems installing one. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

I think its also worth mentioning that if you have an M17x R2 and have updated your 5870M card/s to the latest vbios from Dell the installation might blue screen on final boot up.

I have not tried respawning so I cant say for certain. But the fact that the combination of the new vbios with the older dell driver saved in the factory image are not compatible with each other. If your system shipped with the driver released with the new vbios this wouldnt affect you.

 

Hello everyone. I am trying to restore windows with the backup disk i made ( system image )

But i keep getting this message.

" Your hard drive size is not supported for this process. please use a hard drive at least 465 GB in size "

this is because i am trying to copy the the system image onto my new SSD. does this mean i Cant do this ?

 

I forgot to make recovery disk before installing windows. Now I'm trying to create recovery disk but keep getting error when try to install alienrespawn.
I do have recovery partition and still getting error.
"AlienRespawn cannot be installed because your hard drive does not have a backup copy of your factory image."

 

Can you provide more detail? When you say system image I think you mean an actual recovery image using AlienRespawn Basic - right?

If you removed the recovery partition before creating your rescue media then you wont be able to run the emergency rescue media creation option - there is nothing for AlienRespawn to use to create the media - the factory image is gone.

 

I didnt remove recovery partition. I still have recovery partition. I thought disk that came with laptop was recovery disk so I used it to install windows on SSD.
c drive SSD
d drive recovery partition
e drive 289GB(original 320gb)

 

Doesn't matter. The recovery partition is no longer visible to AWRespawn.

Since you installed AlienRespawn using the other thread, best to check there - http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/537394-where-get-alienrespawn-dell-datasafe-software.html. Not sure if you will be able to recover from this. Best bet, get the system setup the way you want and then use a third party app to image the drive.

 

Looks like im out of luck.
I downloaded both datasafelocabackup and alien respawn but I cant install either of em. Its giving me same error(can not find recovery partition).
Copied recovery partition to SSD and still getting same error.

 

Ok so i have done the fresh install on windows 7, but where do i get the alien respawn software from ? i will probably upgrade to premium so i can make a new system image

 

You can always go with an aftermarket choice to image the drive. Not sure if AlienRespawn Premium will 'create' a snapshot of the drive image in the same manner the factory image was created. Before purchasing, I certainly would check on this with customer support or even tech support. For the price, you could easily go the route of Acronis or any of the other choices.

I'm not even sure you can purchase AlienRespawn once you wiped your system and created a clean install - it may not be possible to install again (other than using your recovery media you created yesterday).

Try this post -
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...awn-dell-datasafe-software-2.html#post6936655

 

I am having exactly the same problem....

have you found a fix yet ?

add me to steam if you want to chat

chaosavenger88

 

Hi guys
just got my R3 couple days ago
trying to install my SSD vertex 2 120gb but getting stuck
tried the the alien respawn and i get this error message
" Your hard drive size is not supported for this process. please use a hard drive at least 465 GB in size "

then went for a clean install and as soon as i install the rapid storage driver the comp block and gets BSD , any ideas what im doing wront or why alien respawn doesnt to install on a new drive??

 

Hey RIKO same problem here as well, i think what's happening is the alien respawn thing makes an image of the hard drive and it includes empty space in the image so for example you need 430 GB of empty space and 30GB for os and other drivers and stuff.. seems ridiculous.

i tried making my own system image and try and trick alienware into thinking its the factory image but that failed... I think BatBoy is trying to help us on this issue so hopefully there will be a fix for this issue soon

 

i just managed to have both drives working good times
also been talking to another member in the forum and he said not to use rapid storage driver with ssd gonna try that see if it works , ill keep u posted

 

when you say you got both drives to work, what was wrong with them in the first place ? i have one that seems to randomly disappear for no logical reason and thats the one in the optical drive.

And does this mean you got alien respawn working ?



Thanks

Jon

 

on my first 2 attemps to the clean install only the ssd showed up under My computer, even tough that in devices driver they were both there, on my 3rd attemp i format each one while installing windows and that seem to do the trick both drives now show under my computer.

now installing the drivers

 

i also did that but the hard drive disappeared while formatting and i was asked to reformat when wondows first booted up , we shall soon find out if it works, but i thought i did that before lol

only time will tell

 

so far so good, installed all the drivers on the disk, still got a unknown device and sm bus controller, still have to work out wich drivers they need.
doing the windows updates at moment

the only strange thing so far is alien osd , it installed but i cant find it anywhere , lets hope after all the windows updates it shows up and and the devices work proprely. ill keep u posted

 

ok cool, just a quick question for you.. when you get to the windows screen does the wifi box pop up every boot and say something like wifi now activated or something like that ? down in the bottom right hand corner above the time and date

 

my wifi is 1501 and so far havent seen that, i will be changing it cause it says its n but it doesnt find 5Ghz wifi so calling dell today and get then to get me a real n card

 

So is there any actual fix for this message or do I really have to do a clean install? I'm trying to restore to a M4 256GB SSD.

 

Thanks Batboy

I am going to fallow your advise and just use AR on my new SSD! If no happy with it then i will do Option 2 W7 clean install as you very well described.

My questions are>>

1 Buy an M14x

2 Buy 16 GB usb

3 Creat a out of the box AR on it

4 Buy an SSD driver

5 Open your machine and swap the hard driver

6 stick your usb key with AR in it

7???????????????? I am sure i am missing something!

 

That about sums it up. Hold off on picking up a USB drive until you receive your system. You can go with higher capacity USB drive but may only need 4 or 8. Size is determined by what OS version (Home Premium, Pro or Ultimate) + any apps you added (photoshop elements, wow, eve online, etc.).

 

Well the only thing i did out of the box, is upgrading to Ultimate to get inglish, i dont know if after i do the repow thing i will get the W Ultimate in english.

Never mind i will manage to do the upgrade.

My new concern is I bought an Intel x25 160 GB ! Can i just swaped taking out the original hard disk?

Is it going to fit right there? Do I have to do some formating first? or Alien Respow will do everything for me?

Thanks i have it all just waiting for the GO to do it!

 

Respawn will restore the system to the moment you first powered it on. So, no, it will not restore the English Ultimate version.

Install your drive, insert your USB key, F12 @ the BIOS screen for one time boot options and select the USB flash drive. Follow the prompts - AlienRespawn will automatically start.

 

Hey everyone! I just received my refurb m17x r3 today!
I just tried running alienrespawn but for some reason when it tries to setup I get a "rp error 1"' or something very similar and it fails. Any advice?

 

Did you encounter this error when creating rescue media or when attempting to restore the factory image?

I have not encountered this error before. Suggest you contact AW support and see if they can assist. Let us know what you find out.

Thanks.

 

So I take it there is no way to use restore on a smaller drive.

Like many before I have installed a SSD (120gig) and the alieware restore backup says I need at least 298G/Bs (actual size of the original HDD).

 

I was wondering the same thing, I plan on going from 320 HDD to 256 SSD.

 

as far as I can tell you won't be able to do it.

Unless you make a raid of 2x256 and then try the image on that.

 

I will have to do a fresh insall then. Wish me luck!

 

Hello Batboy

Could you tell me if and how to put the AHCI mode before Respawn on my SSD ?

I was reading that it gets quite a nice speed advantage over the standard IDE mode

Also and last, I dont have to formate the SSD right? Respawn will do that for me right?

Million thanks I will try to do that tomorrow if all is clear out!

 

Is this true? is not what Batboy is been saying?

Please need confirmation in this as i am planing in respaw from a hard driver 750GB to an SSD of 160GB

Thanks

 

Myself and others in this thread could not respawn to a smaller drive. Even though the image itself is 10gigs when it tries to respawn it looks for a similar sized drive. Regardless if its a mostly empty drive before the respawn image it still looks for the same size.

I am trying to figure out a way to respawn on my 120gig vertex3 drive from my 320gig (298 usable) drive that came with the laptop.

 

I have used AlienRespawn to restore the factory image from a single drive system (320GB HDD) to a 256GB SSD. No errors were encountered. It could possibly be just in systems which were originally configured as RAID-0 although some of you I believe were not in RAID-0 originally - very puzzling. I will test this later today and post back my findings.

I'll see what I can come up with...

Has anyone tried going the route of imaging the drive using Ghost or another 3rd party app and then restoring the image to the new (smaller) drive? That would be my suggestion in this case...

 

Well while waiting your confirmation, could this be an alternative solution
Windows 7 System Image Disc Recovery | Windows 7,System Image,Restore,0x80042403,0x80070057,Recovering Windows 7 with System Image Restore Disks,Instructional Guide: Recovering Windows 7 with System Image Restore Disks and Resolving Failed Errors 0x8

Upgrading HDD to SSD

In our specific example, the HP Pavilion notebook we recently purchased from the Microsoft Store included a large system restore partition on the primary hard disk drive, but did not include any optical CD/DVD media containing Windows 7. Our goal was to replace the slow HDD with a much faster SSD, and install Windows 7 without any of the extra and unnecessary software (aka bloatware) that came pre-loaded on the drive. For these tasks we would need the Windows 7 Home Premium installation DVD, specific to HP's OEM edition. After several frustrating calls to HP, we were finally able to communicate our needs and was directed to an area where restore media could be separately purchased for our HP Pavilion laptop. Unfortunately, the DVDs contained even more unwanted third-party software than we originally received. The final solution involved uninstalling the unwanted software, and creating a system image for the purpose or restoring to the SSD.

http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.p...sk=view&id=439&Itemid=38&limit=1&limitstart=4

ou may recall my advice earlier in this article (you read the whole article, right?), in which I suggest that to use the Shrink Volume features available in the Windows 7 Disk Management tool (inside Computer Management) and reduce the size of all primary drive partitions down to their smallest size possible. In this particular instance, I was able to reduce the 320GB hard drive partition size down to approximately 9.2GB, but decided on 10GB since it allowed some room for unexpected growth. The restore-to drive (a 128GB SSD) must equal or exceed capacity of the original drive partition (now resized down to 10GB) used to create a Windows 7 system image, and the partition can always be expanded using the Extend Volume feature.



This time around, the system image restore process was successful. After the system automatically restarted, I was able to access the Windows Disk Manager tool and increase my partition size from 10GB to the full amount possible (119.14GB). To open Windows Disk Manager, either right-click on the My Computer icon and choose Manage, or click the Start button → Control Panel → System and Security → Administrative Tools and then select Computer Management. If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation. In the left pane, under Storage, click Disk Management and then choose the current volume. Right-click and choose Extend Volume.

 

Only problem is that after I finished the respawn image I formatted that drive thinking it was safe to do so at that point. On hind sight I regret doing it now but BatBoy finds a fix then im out of ideas!

Help me BatBoy your my only hope!

 

I haven't done anything and will not do until BatBoy comes with a secure find

But i dont understand why this seems to be so complicated as is a very comun thing for all Gamers to swap hard drivers for SSd

 

My M11X R3 restore usb key also gave the size error when trying to restore to a 500GB drive. I bought it with a 750.

 

Did you read this ? http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.p...sk=view&id=439&Itemid=38&limit=1&limitstart=4

It may be a solution NO?

 

whats sad is that even if I buy a second vertex3 120gig drive and run both SSD on raid it still will not be enough size to run the respawn.

So I either spend over a thousand dollars for a large size SSD (not an option financial wise for me). Or I try and fix the current image.

Sadly I am out of ideas for the image

 

I was able to restore my deleted partition from the original harddrive now assuming that all the files are there whats the best way to transfer them from my 320gig HDD to my 120gig SSD since respawns size issue wont help.

 

oni, you might want to proceed under worst case - worst case being, this is just a limitation of Respawn. If you already created the rescue drive, you might want to perform a clean install of W7 on your SSD. With the rescue drive saved, you can always use it to restore the system to an out of box state with the original HDD.

I'm not sure what may have changed but as I said earlier and why I wrote my original post of this thread based on my experience, I was able to use the AlienRespawn Rescue drive from a 320GB HDD M17xR2 and drop a 256GB SSD into the system. I dont have an answer yet as to why that worked. Something may have changed or perhaps it has something to do with the OCZ SSD, I just dont know at this point.

 

I appreciate all the help you have given to everybody. Do you recommend any other software that can clone a bigger drive to a smaller one (asuming the actual file usage fits.)?

I was able to restore my previous partition and asuming all files are still there then I might be able to redo an image.

 

With the rescue drive saved, you can always use it to restore the system to an out of box state with the original HDD Well if is that I dont see why we need an usb key, since the out of the box partition will be in the original hard driver.

 

Because AlienRespawn dumps it into a nice little easy to boot package

Just having the recovery partition on the factory hard drive is one thing... restoring from it after wiping the C: partition is something entirely different.

I dont know why some of you are getting this available space error - I wish I did. Sorry for that.

 

The answare is well splaine here, in how to avoid getting the space error, but I wish some one try it first, as i cant aford doing it because i will endeup on a chinese system if it fails

How to do respow with out sapce error