Formatting ASUS G73JH - Recovery Partition Observations.

Hey,

I recently formatted my ASUS G73-JH which has two 7200 RPM HDs at ~500 GBs each. Specifically, I noticed that my first HD was partitioned in to a "C: drive" and a "Recovery drive" (which is hidden from normal view) and also a "D: drive" for my second HD.

So I thought since I have the ASUS Recovery Disc and ASUS Driver Disc from when I first ordered this laptop I would take the time to delete the partitions on the first HD and format both HDs and install Windows 7 Ultimate on both HDs in order to have a dual-OS boot setup.

Well, this did not go very smoothly, apparently the "Recovery drive" partition serves some other use besides simply containing the same files as the "Recovery/Driver" Discs. I found this out once I used a third party "tool disc", specifically called Hiren's Boot CD to access the HDs and delete the hidden "Recovery partition" and the "C: partition" on the first HD and then consolidate them both in to one single "C: drive" which I would then format and install Windows on.

Once I deleted the Recovery partition - it effectively "bricked" my ASUS G73JH. Specifically, I kept getting errors that there are no HDs to boot from even though I could still access the BIOS and could still see the HDs. The only resolution to this issue was using the ASUS Recovery Disc - trying to use the Windows 7 Ultimate disc and booting from the DVD drive first and doing a clean install of Windows failed over and over.

In short, my experience was that deleting the "Recovery" partition (motivated originally by trying maximize usable HD space on my end) was not the best option to take.

Interestingly enough the ASUS Recovery disc while it was able to recover my ASUS G73JH - I've yet to try to format/install Windows on my primary HD yet - was not able to restore the original "Recovery partition" - so now I have a "recovered" single HD (ie. a "C:") with no partitions.
I've already gone through and formatted/completed a clean install of Windows 7 on my secondary HD and now have the option to boot from that successfully.

I have not tried to overwrite the existing "recovered" "C:" drive and format it/perform a new Windows installation yet - I don't foresee any issues here - but, I figured I would post my experience.

Is it suggested to now format/install Windows on my "C:" since I no longer have the "Recovery drive" partition on that HD?

Also, has anyone else had any similar experience with respect to the "Recovery partition"?

Thanks,

-NRUserII

 

The answer is simple, the boot loader is on the recovery partition. By deleting the recovery partition, you essentially deleted the boot loader so there was no way for the laptop to know where to boot from. A windows repair disc usually allows you to fix this, but it might not work the first time you try it.

 

Hey,

I see.

So, does this mean since I've already deleted the "Recovery" partition on my first HD (which was not recreated), and recovered my "C:" drive via the ASUS Recovery disc and ASUS driver disc - that if I now try to do a clean install of Windows 7 on my "C:" drive, without the "Recovery" partition present, the Windows 7 installation will fail (ie. specifically fail to boot)?
(Even though I already have a "D:" drive already loaded with Windows 7 to boot from?)

If the above is the case - then how would I go about "restoring"/recreating the "Recovery" partition, so that way I can format my "C:" drive without having to worry about "bricking" my ASUS G73-JH (ie. having the laptop failing to boot over and over)?

I definitely would like to know the above since I'm trying to avoid "bricking" my ASUS G73-JH. Thank you for the insight.

-NRUserII

 

If you do a clean install, it will not fail. The boot files will be put on the drive when you install windows. What happened before is that you had an existing installation and you simply removed the boot files. Windows was still there, but the OS couldn't load it because of the missing boot files.

 

Hey,

I see. So, this time since I'm installing Windows 7 on a "C:" drive which already has been recovered via the ASUS Recovery Disc and thus has Windows 7 on it due to that recovery - does that mean it also already has the boot files needed (even though now there is no hidden "Recovery" partition)?

Also, as a precaution in the future is there a way I can recreate the "Recovery" partition with the original files on it, and make it hidden as a drive as it was before?

Thanks,

-NRUserII

 

Afaik, there is no way to retrieve the recovery partition unless someone were to upload an image of it somewhere and at close to 20GB, it's no easy feat.