Sony Recovery Discs...HDD?

Right I want to make some recovery "discs" but I have a spare HDD laying around and I would much prefer putting it all on there...I cant seem to find the option in the Sony software...has anyone got any experience with the recovery software?
If not has anyone got any suggestions?
Cheers

 

You need some sort of program to create a logical optical drive, and point that to the HDD.

Pasharoo worked on this a bit, here's the thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...d-model-recovery-disk-without-dvd-writer.html

 

that
looks
perfect!

thank you!! just wondering then...so if I create a backup onto a virtual disc then move that onto my spare HDD how exactly would it behave if i ever did need to restore my system?

But thank you any way!

 

That's the million (ok thousand) dollar question... I'm not sure it'll work if the partition is made bootable, perhaps a bootloader is also necessary. It could be that whatever works for USB may work for HDD...

Edit: Actually, it's more than that. I'm not sure how multiple DVDs will work when they're stored on disk. I suppose the other option is to image the recovery partition.

 

To be honest, I would gladly pay the extra few bucks for Sony to enclose a recovery DVD in the box. Oh well............

 

right just made the recovery discs and it looks like they work by using Virtual CD, it boots them just like a CD so I think during the recovery process when it says you need to insert CD 2 you just "eject" the disc using virtual CD and "insert" the other one which is ok...except virtual CD is a demo version unless you buy the full one

I did see about the image thing but I wasn't exactly sure what it was...does it just create a copy of a partition then? :/

 

Hmm just looked at a system image and unless im missing something windows automatically selects what is on this image (System reserved, C: and Recovery System in my case) which it then says could take up to 123GB :/ that seems like a lot :/ is there any way I can only choose the recovery system or something along those lines?

 

What software do you use to build the image? I use Acronis True Image which allows me to select the partition to backup and restore. I think the issue then is the bootloader which needs to be able to boot from the recovery partition.

 

I was using the standard windows software. Just had another little go with the VCD and I have managed to create the back up and instead of it creating a few unknown file names with all the data and one VCD file which you have to click to run the other files (which is what I got the first time) I have managed to make it create a single ISO copy, now I'm not sure about this but isn't a ISO copy exactly what would be on a disc copy? So therefore I think I should have exactly what I need :/ or do I need to make it a .exe or something so I can boot it from the HDD? This is starting to get confusing! Haha think it might have been easier to just go and buy some DVD+R's!
cheers

 

It's always tougher for the pioneers

Since you have an external HDD, perhaps it's easier to just do a backup of the Z's disks, e.g. using Acronis True Image.

Perhaps I should have said this way earlier

 

just ghost (or acronis) the recovery partition to your new drive.

 

Just had a thought...
If I've got these recovery discs on my HDD and need to recover my system from a problem I will have to mount the CD in the virtual drive, but once the recovery process starts working it will want me to switch discs half way through and as its a recovery process wont it have go rid of the virtual drive software? :/

ill try true image now...

 

quick one...does a system image copy EVERYTHING? Basically I was thinking I would do a system image on my bigger HDD so I would have a copy of all the system data in case a recovery was needed, all my documents, pictures, music etc but also all my programs so I havn't got to faf about after installing software or leaving steam on while it downloads stupid amounts of games and only do that when I feel its needed but then on my smaller spare HDD I could set up a auto back up on it for my documents etc...so does a system image do this then?

 

For Acronis True Image, there's the sector-by-sector or 'otherwise' option. Sector-by-sector results in a file the same size as the allocated partition sizes. The 'otherwise' option is smarter, it backs up only the data, so the file size is usually smaller.

Edit: Be careful: I think I saw before that True Image works with RAID drives, while some say (more recently) that it doesn't. I don't use RAID so I can't test that...