Creating recovery disc - problem

Hi all again!

the problem:
I have a serious problem. Short after unboxing my laptop, which was bought about a month ago, I started filling it with things, and did not create the recovery disc. I quickly became afraid of losing my data, and support is far more difficult to obtain in here because I'm brazilian and there are no Toshiba laptops being sold here, but only "STI" ones, a subsidiary of Toshiba that produces low-end (lower quality) notebooks.

So now I opened the disc recovery creator utility and is asked for 3 4.7 DVDs. Ok, I put a blank DVD on the drive, let it burn and went to shower. When I'm back, I see the message that is has not completed successfully.

I browsed to the DVD drive in Explorer and saw that the drive has "8.3GB" of total size. Why? Did the program actually asked me to burn a Dual Layer DVD? They stated 4.7GB. Then prompted me to retry burning that same disc, ignore and go to the next, or abort the entire operation.

I couldn't get the error message; I'll probably have to repeat the operation just to see the message.

The questions:
What I want, actually, is to bipartition the HDD, separating the OS from a data partition, and at this one I'd like to save a copy of the OS created with Acronis True Image Home 10. I'm afraid to, when I partition, I damage the hidden stored factory image, so I'll be unable to recover again when necessary. does this concern have any logic?

What can I do to securely backup my computer from the state it is by now? If possible, I would like to have the option both to have it reverted to the current state or the factory-original state.

thanks!!

 

I like the idea of buying a second hard drive installing the operating system and saving it for a backup. HDD's are pretty cheap, my second 7200rpm 320gb was $40 from newegg.

Of course, since Toshiba doesn't offer recovery disks you will have to make some then install factory image on blank formatted HDD. Or borrow a copy of Vista from someone and install OS on new HDD, put key in from bottom of computer Windows label, then save second HDD as backup.

 

but that, in here, is not an option, unfortunately. Newegg does not ship to international and 2.5" laptop HDDs are expensive here. So that is exactly the problem: creating the image disc. How to do it, and why is this happening?

 

You have to burn 3 recovery cd's right? I would try it again, sometimes it rejects brand new disks and you have to try other ones. I went through like 10 disks trying to find 5 that the burner software would accept, all from the same new package of disks.

 

Once you have successfully created your recovery disks, and the need arises to recover, you will have the option to remove the recovery partition and restore to factory image. You will also have option to recover operating system without removing factory image partition. In that case you will use the recovery disk that has Toshiba drivers to install after OS installs.