Vaio Z create recovery flash drive?

I have a beautiful new i7 Z series laptop and wanted to create recovery media using a 32gb flash drive. I don't have an external DVD. I don't see any option iin Sony Care, although it does reference being able to use a USB drive. I'd also like to back up the original software apps before I start cleaning everything out. Is the USB flash recovery media option working?

I did read how to create a bootable windows flash drive, but I want ALL the software on there.

 

I am also trying to do the same thing as you.

When you create a recovery media, doesn't that contain all the factory software as it is a recovery media like a recovery disc? Does that make sense?

I did try to create this with my HD but it stated that i can only do so on a USB Flash Drive. So looking to purchase one this week.

I did however use the back up option. This saved like 60GB worth of folders, which i can was my C:. But why would i need this if i create a recovery media?

Oh sorry the USB flash option should work. I don't know if you got the paper work which shows you how to do it. It states where you go and what to do and once you go through it, it comes up with the option of inserting a USB flash drive.

 

The recovery disc made by Vaio Care lets you restore your drive to its factory settings. The apps are in a proprietary Sony format but you can use mod2wim to extract the setup files.

The disc lets you retain or delete the recovery partition of about 15GB. You can also choose to partition your drive during recovery, much like a regular Windows setup disc.

You may use a USB flash drive (at least 16GB) or DVD-R, but not blu-ray. I used a USB drive, made an image and put it in a couple of BD-Rs as an insurance.

Sent from my Galaxy Note
Sent from my Galaxy Note

 

May I ask you how exactly did you make an image of a USB drive?
I was investigating the possibility and my search on the web turned negative, no utility is capable of imaging a USB drive.

 

I used UltraISO.

Sent from my Galaxy Note

 

I see.
I however remember complaints from people using UltraISO to image their flash drivers that the program missed something and the disk was inbootable after the image was burned to an optical media.

Personally I'll stick with a USB drive and keep the original HDD with the original recovery partition. Should be fine.

 

Does anyone know how to create a bootable USB flash drive with the files of the recovery partition?
I've copied it all, but I can't get the Z to boot from it....

 

Make sure you've marked the partition on the USB drive as active.

 

You need to use Vaio Care to create the recovery discs. No need to configure anything, just let it do its thing.

 

Before I did a fresh Windows install on my Z3, I created recovery media with Vaio Care on a 32gb flash drive. I checked it this morning, and it looks to be a normal FAT32 partition.

I didn't check to see if the boot block has some special code in it - that is required for the flash drive to be bootable.

I wonder, because I would like to not have to keep that 32gb flash drive used up with the recovery data, but would rather keep that copy on a hard drive somewhere, and restore it to a flash drive in case I needed to boot into recovery. Why waste a perfectly good flash drive if it can be offloaded somewhere until needed?

Anyone know if the boot block is "special"?

- Tim

 

^ you can use Norton Ghost (or similar programs) to take a complete image of the USB stick and store it on the hard drive.

 

So that will copy the boot block as well? For some reason I always thought making ISO's from USBs and then writing them to other USBs didn't copy the boot block.

- Tim

 

A ghost image should copy of all of that. You would then use Ghost to wipe/rewrite to the USB when you need it (and the boot block would go back on there).

 

Thanks for your advice!

- Tim

 

I created recovery DVDs before wiping the ssd completely clean. I also didn't have a big enough USB stick then. But now I do!

 

yes, you can use the -ib switch from command line to instruct Ghost to read the boot block as well. but it will not save the image in ISO form, rather in its own format (.GHO); but you can always restore the image with Ghost again.

 

Yes, sorry if that was unclear in my message, make sure to use Ghost's proprietary format for this. It's not as flexible but should be the most comprehensive.

 

How did you create those recovery DVDs? If you did use Vaio Care and it's not booting, you need to fix that first before creating a recovery USB stick since you've wiped out your original partition. You can try recreating the damaged DVD by copying fhe files and using a Windows 7 boot image that works.

Sent from my Galaxy Note

 

I now got it to work, and it loads Sony recovery - only to break off saying something like "Recovery media or partition cannot be found", and then reboots.
I then tried restoring directly from the DVDs, but I get the same error.
It's true, I did delete the recovery partition and installed Win 8, but I thought that's what I have those DVDs for!

 

Hello, any idea where to find latest mod2wim ? Rapidshare no longer exists, thank you