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    Is making a recovery CD necessary?

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by davidt1, Jun 4, 2010.

  1. davidt1

    davidt1 Notebook Evangelist

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    I bought a laptop without CD-ROM. I was gonna buy an external one to make a recovery CD, but there is already one on the hard drive. There is no need to make a recovery CD, if you can recover from the hard drive. What do you think?
     
    davidt1, Jun 4, 2010
    #1
  2. lbohn

    lbohn Notebook Consultant

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    If your hard drive fails you won't be able to (re)install the OS on a new drive using the recovery partition/image located on the original, dead drive. But you could with Recovery CDs ...

    --L.
     
    lbohn, Jun 4, 2010
    #2
  3. Joel

    Joel coffeecoffeecoffeecoffee

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    Yeah, lbohn makes a good point. You could even just borrow someone else's if you need to. Or if you have an old IDE or Sata drive, just buy an enclosure for it.
     
    Joel, Jun 5, 2010
    #3
  4. davidt1

    davidt1 Notebook Evangelist

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    I have a laptop hard drive with an external enclosure. Are you saying I can make a recovery CD on an external hard drive?
     
    davidt1, Jun 5, 2010
    #4
  5. kosti

    kosti Notebook Virtuoso

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    I think he meant get an external enclosure for an optical drive. But you can just make a bootable XP install on your external hard drive if you want. You will need an original CD though.
     
    kosti, Jun 5, 2010
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  6. Joel

    Joel coffeecoffeecoffeecoffee

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    Yeah, I meant optical drive. ;)
     
    Joel, Jun 5, 2010
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  7. ScuderiaConchiglia

    ScuderiaConchiglia NBR Vaio Team Curmudgeon

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    You don't even need an enclosure. All you need is a bare CDR/CDRW drive and something like one of these:

    Micro Center - Bytecc USB 2.0 to IDE/SATA Adapter BT-300

    There are tons of these sorts of adapters on the market. I picked one up with an external "wall wart" power supply for $14.

    Gary
     
    ScuderiaConchiglia, Jun 6, 2010
    #7
  8. newsposter

    newsposter Notebook Virtuoso

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    it takes all of 15 minutes to make recovery discs......

    For every hard drive that lives 5+ years, and every user that claims they have never had a drive failure, there is another drive that dies in 90 days and another user that 'enjoys' 100% data loss.

    There is no way to tell which kind of drive you have or what kind of data loss you might eventually suffer.

    How do you like those odds?

    Make your recovery discs and do your backups.
     
    newsposter, Jun 6, 2010
    #8
  9. davidt1

    davidt1 Notebook Evangelist

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    OK! Making recovery discs right now, but it's gonna to take a lot more than 15 minutes on my netbook.
     
    davidt1, Jun 6, 2010
    #9
  10. ScuderiaConchiglia

    ScuderiaConchiglia NBR Vaio Team Curmudgeon

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    Time well spent nonetheless.

    Gary
     
    ScuderiaConchiglia, Jun 6, 2010
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  11. jason1214

    jason1214 Notebook Evangelist

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    jason1214, Jun 6, 2010
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