The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    How does the restore partition work...

    Discussion in 'HP' started by agentphish, Jul 31, 2008.

  1. agentphish

    agentphish Notebook Geek

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    88
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    So, I haven't really been using PC's much in the last 5-6 years (mac guy) but I got one a month and a half ago, which is now getting replaced with a dv5t (as some of you may have seen in other posts).

    I noticed the one i got had a restore partition on the drive... What exactly is contained there, and when the computer told me I could press F11 to do a system restore, does that mean I wouldn't NEED to make the restore discs from within Vista...(Yes i realize that would be bad if the HDD crashed to not have the discs...)

    But I'm interested in how exactly it works.

    Thanks
     
    agentphish, Jul 31, 2008
    #1
  2. deeastman

    deeastman Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    977
    Messages:
    1,095
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    The restore partition contains all the programs necessary to reimage the harddisk in your notebook so that it contains exactly the same data, drivers, etc. and allows the notebook to work the same as the day you took your notebook out of the box.

    F11 will perform the restore and you don't need to make the recovery discs but everyone will recommend you do. You will probably be sorry someday if you don't spend the time to make them. They also reimage your notebook the same as the restore partition but also re-install the restore partition in case of HD failure.

    If the above is to superficial for you there is a thread on this or one of the other forums here about extracting the data from the recovery partition and making a full readable disc of all the data. If I find the thread I will post it for you. I did that as well as I was curious also.
     
    deeastman, Jul 31, 2008
    #2
  3. agentphish

    agentphish Notebook Geek

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    88
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    Excellent, thank you. Thats what I was looking for.

    So...IF i imaged that partition to an external then I'd still have it too, and I could always restore that if needed?

    Is it possible to do the restore from an External drive?

    I will make the restore discs too, but I will definitely do a clean install of Vista.

    Is it possible to somehow image a clean install of Vista onto that partition instead?
     
    agentphish, Jul 31, 2008
    #3