VGN-TZ31 - copying an image of the recovery partition to create a bootable Vista installation disc

Hello all,

My first post on the forum so please be gentle

I've just bought a second-hand TZ31, complete with Vista Business.

I'd like to format the hard drive and install a fresh copy of Windows 7 on account of it's lower demand on system resources, general superiority to Vista and the fact that the supplied version of Vista also contains lots of unneccessary and and resource-hogging applications.

I've heard of people having problems with retaining all of the Vaio's functions under W7 (webcam, Wifi, fingerprint reader etc) so would like to make a copy of the Vista recovery partition before deleting it, just in case.

I've been trying to do this using Paragon Backup and Recovery Free; I've managed to create an image of the partition (a .001 and a pbf file, which together are about the same size as the partition (c. 7Gb) but when trying to create a recovery / installation disc (or .iso) the output file appears to be only about 64Mb, which surely is far too small..

Firsty, am I correct in thinking that the recovery partition on the hard drive contains all the installation files for the OS and can be copied to DVD to create an installation disc that can be used to install a fresh copy of the OS onto the machine?

Secondly, assuming I can create an installation disc from the partition can anyone suggest where I’m going wrong with the paragon software, or alternatively suggest an alternative piece of software to get the job done?

Thanks

 

hi, if you want to make a copy of vista recovery partition you should boot your vaio tz in 'vaio recovery mode' (i dont rememer how sony calls it but during boot press F11 and it should enter recovery menu) and there you should be able to create backup of sony partition ( it asks you to put blank dvd-dl or 2xdvd-r and burn bootable dvd to recover that partition and widnows vista in the future). Maybe norton ghost can be a good solution, but i never tried paragon backup and restore and i think that you shouldnt experiment with other software.

 

I did a fresh install of w7 and everything works just fine.POP the disk let it do its work install Sony drivers ..easy..

 

Thanks for your replies

It's been a long evening but I think I've almost got there now:

Tried to create recovery disks from the recovery section on booting (F10 on my machine) but it didn't show any option to do this. I then tried through Vista, which also failed as it claimed it couldn't find the software.

Re-installed Vista from the partition which cured this issue.

Went through about 6 DVD-Rs trying to create the two recovery discs; since it just failed to complete the process or claimed there was no disk in the drive..

Saved the disks as images on my desktop for future use, and installed W7 from a flash drive using this excellent guide

Didn't see any way of removing the original partition on the drive, so after all the faffing left it in place

I'm yet to check everything out but the wireless is working out of the box.. will try and source any missing drivers shortly.

Not had a proper play with it yet but according to the performance log it's using a fair bit less RAM than Vista at idle (500mb versus 700mb), predicted battery life seems about 15% longer and there are no nasty pre-loaded software pop-ups bothering me either

Happy days - thanks again for your help