Problems booting recovery disc from external optical drive.

So I had the optical drive in my W3v go bad and will have to send it back to ASUS (RMA already requested). No big deal right?

Wrong. In the way of things truly inconvenient the drive departed for a better place halfway through the recovery process, leaving me with no way to boot the notebook internally.

Next I tried using the recovery CD in a Sony external DVDRW to boot via the USB 2.0 port.

Here is where my current problem starts. After changing the boot order in the BIOS the computer will appear to be starting the recovery process normally. Some drivers will load and it will give me the recovery options screen.

However, after choosing a recovery option (ie recover to entire hdd) I will get an error message ( cannot read drive Y:, abort, retry fail?) and the whole process grinds to a halt.

This external drive is a known good unit and will boot my other XP Pro CD with no problem, but not the Asus recovery disc.

Has anyone experienced this problem? It has already screwed me bad in that I needed it (a working notebook) for a trip down to Santa Barbara and couldn't fix it in time.

Nothing more annoying than a paperweight notebook.............

 

First - on the W3v, there is a built-in recovery partition (hit F9 when the system starts)...... that is supposed to be convienent incase you don't have your optical drive with you or obviously the recovery discs....... I'd suggest you use that. However, my first question really should be, why did you have to recover the hard drive already?

 

Yeah I tried the F9 thing, but because I don't like partitions (use external drives for stuff like that) I specified recover to entire HD which must have wiped the hidden partition out.

One thing I have noticed is that when the MSCDEX CD driver starts to load it says invalid drive or drive not found, even though it is in fact reading off that drive. After confirming I want to recover I am now receiving an error saying that the image is not on this disc and please insert disc one.

This has happened with two different quality external drives (a Sony and a Plextor), but yet I know the media is good because it worked last week, and if I pop in my defective optical drive and boot from that it will in fact work for a minute (ie start copying files, which is further thanh I get on the externals) before crashing.

At this point I'm thinking it could be that the recovery disc is geared to only work from the stock drive, which seems a pretty silly limitation. Is that the case or should I get some new recovery discs along w/ the new drive?

Regarding the reason for recovery, I wouldn't say I exactly had to do it. There was some stuff on there I was having trouble removing to my satisfaction and since there was no crucial data on this fairly new machine it seemed like the easiest way was to just hit a few buttons and come back when it was finished. Then the internal drive crashed in the middle of the process, leaving me somewhat stranded in the wilderness over here.

Is there anything else I could try to get this thing working without having to wait for Asus to send me a new optical? How about mounting an image of the recovery disc(s) on an external HDD?

On another note, thank you for your generosity in dealing with my RAM problem. I am a little surprised it went bad as I did in fact borrow a static pad from one of the CompSci guys down at UCSB. Will have to be even more careful this time. I will definitely give ProPortable strong consideration for all my computing needs going forward.......

 

I hear you... I understand those reasons.. First though, your drive should be back ASAP... considering where you're from and how long something like that would take to ship from Asus....... I've had some experience formatting and loading an OS from an external drive, but not enough to tell you if it's a good idea or if it'll work on that system or what options you've got to change. It shouldn't be a problem if the drive is loading as a "removable device", but I mean you could have scratched the recovery disc as well. I suggest when you get it back on, do the recover to 2 partitions... only because it's always handy to have that little hidden partition with the recovery OS and drivers on it.... as you know now.

In terms of the RAM - no problem.... don't take it so much as generosity as it was necessity.... we're wiping out 512mb modules from our configuration pages and we got a super deal on about a 100 1gb sticks that bring them down basically to 512mb cost.... so our site is about ready to change and you were just one of the first to benefit from it... Enjoy - and don't screw that one up!

 

Did you set your external optical drive to be able to boot in your bios?

Oh wait, I'm thinking fully functional bios on desktops, I don't think you have that option in your bios.

I'm disappointed in the options we have access to in our laptop bios. So little options, why?

Justin?

Cheers,
Mike

 

The boot sector on the HDD is hidden, thus the only way to get rid of it and the recover CD section is to do a full format of the hdd, this wont happen using the recovery to the whole hdd option setting. I have used the hdd recovery partition a number of times, using both the split drive or whole drive options and everythime the recovery partition remains intact. The only way I managed to get rid of it was a low level format which took 10+ hrs. So I would give the F9 during boot another go, and try and recover from the hidden hdd partion.
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