W8-created recovery disk restore back to resized system?

[alphanumeric]

This is what I have done so far > http://www.eightforums.com/installation-setup/21897-new-asus-laptop-has-no-recovery-disk-utlity.html What I think is going to happen if I boot from my USB recovery drive and do a Reset, is to restore my laptop to the 'first time use" state. On the next reboot it will be like it was the first time I turned it on. I'll pick my language, keyboard layout etc and all the factory installed utilities and apps will be there. The install.wim file that is used is taken from the factory installed recovery partition. I did not delete that partition, I just copied it to the recovery disk I made. I also made an image of my current install with the Windows 7 file Recovery utility. I could use that same recovery drive to restore that image, at least I think I can. I haven't tested any of it. I've booted from the recovery drive and went about as far as you did and then bailed out. I have no idea what will happen if you try to run it on a blank substitute drive. I hope to find out one way or the other.

 

[floepie]

So, Asus doesn't even have a utility to restore the recovery partition and rely instead solely on the W8 method? Well, at least Lenovo has a boot utility that can boot to the restore partition itself and restore its contents. The BIG caveat is that the system partition to be recovered must be the exact same size. And, if you perform a clean install, I have no idea with all of W8's new partitions it creates, that the C drive partition will end up the same exact size.

 

[znod]

Znod, the quote from Brink's tutorial is actually:

A recovery USB flash drive cannot be used to install Windows 8 unless this is an OEM PC that came with Windows 8 preinstalled, and you checked the Copy contents from the recovery partition to the recovery drive box at step 5 below.

Maybe you caught it later in the thread, but I did not see that reference.

If you look at the Help and Support section for "Recovery Media", then select "Create the Recovery drive", there is some information about the OEM Recovery Partition. It mentions if you want to remove the Recovery partition on the Drive, you have that option.

So I will think, although I cannot confirm, the Recovery media made in Windows 8, if the OEM install files are copied, will restore the system to factory specs. And this is what the ASUS manual indicates.

Thanks for the info Saltgrass. Not sure why you stressed "unless." That's what I show in my post #4.

 

[znod]

Screenshot from a ASUS manual for Pre-Install Windows 8.

View attachment 18758

Problem is, it is for Windows 7.

Thanks very much theog. Very helpful even though part related to Win7--perhaps only. I have had some frustration trying to gather sufficient pertinent info from the ASUS site. FYI, I just deleted my post where I mentioned ASUS because I realized that I had misinterpreted alphanumeric.

I am sure you would do extremely well whatever, but, personally, I am finding the whole OEM-preinstalled-Win8/How-Can-I-Get-Done-What-I-Want?/Predicting-What-Will-Happen-If-I-Do-It combination to be stultifying and inertia producing. Fortunately, for MS and the OEM's, the vast majority of consumer computer purchasers are happy if they can just get a computer that doesn't break, one way or another, before a reasonable useful life has been reached. And, for me, too bad I currently am not interested in building another computer.

That procedure listed in the screenshot does not work on my ASUS Windows 8 Laptop. I get a totally different menu. It's all mentioned in the thread I linked to. I haven't tried to do a factory recovery yet. I have plans to try it just before I switch to my SSD drives. I'm just waiting on a part for my second drive bay from ASUS.

Thanks, yes, I saw that in your thread. I am eagerly awaiting your factory restore outcome.

 

[alphanumeric]

So, Asus doesn't even have a utility to restore the recovery partition and rely instead solely on the W8 method? Well, at least Lenovo has a boot utility that can boot to the restore partition itself and restore its contents. The BIG caveat is that the system partition to be recovered must be the exact same size. And, if you perform a clean install, I have no idea with all of W8's new partitions it creates, that the C drive partition will end up the same exact size.

I do believe I can do the Reset from the recovery partition on the hard drive. Pressing F9 on boot up will eventually get me to the "Reset Your PC" option. I did a lot of trial and error to get there but bailed out without actually doing it. I might add that ASUS tech support were totally useless during all of this. I repeatedly asked how to do a factory restore from the hard drive and never ever got an answer.

 

[znod]

I'd just like to add, contrary to what was mentioned in znod's deleted post, Lenovo's built-in recovery software, One Key Recovery (OKR) has been updated to version 8 for Windows 8 pre-installed systems. And, it is a huge step backwards, as there is no longer an option to create bootable restore media (DVDs or USB disk) that you could boot from and restore the entire disk back to the factory fresh condition. It can now only create restore images. Lenovo now wants up $60 for a set of DVDs that are shipped to you that would set up the entire hard drive once again. Apparently, for those who have good negotiating skills, some have gotten them shipped for much less, but YMMV. Perhaps Lenovo hasn't figured out a good way to have OKR create UEFI compatible disks in time before OKR v8 needed to be created and that it may be updated to include this ability in the future.

Interesting. Good info to have. Here is what floepie is referring to from my deleted post:

"Or, does ASUS give instructions for creating a recovery drive (USB) as apparently Lenovo does?"

 

[znod]

Windows 8 on a UEFI system seems to have put a kink in the recovery media utilities that used to work on Windows 7. For example the manual that came with my ASUS laptop tells you to run the AI Recovery Burner application from the desktop to create your recovery DVD. The only problem is its not there on a Windows 8 system because its not compatible. The real instructions are hidden in the back of the Windows 8 User Guide that is also bundled with the laptop. You have to read though the whole manual or look over the whole appendix to find it. I'd be more than happy to just ditch the whole shemozzle and do a clean install but I don't have any Windows 8 install media. None that I trust 100% anyway. I'm also not in a big hurry to go out and buy an off the shelf copy just to get a DVD. I "think" I'm covered if my Windows 8 install goes south but I hope I don't have to find out the hard way.

I have a copy of system builder waiting for whatever I decide to do with it--will do something, of course, one way or another. Did you see my question to you in the "Edit" part of my post #13?

 

[alphanumeric]

@ znod That would be this edit:

Edit: Just read through your thread quickly. All very interesting--at least if one might entertain buying an ASUS laptop. My reaction went from "good grief" to, well, an ASUS laptop might be workable. I just keep coming back to the idea that if I got one, then I'd just give up on the factory install and use the system builder software. Under the criteria I set up for me, in Anticipating Dual Boot with Blue with Safety Net, I'd insist on having just one drive (i.e., no hybrids or HDD's with "helper" SSD's. Do you think I am on a reasonable track here? Also, I noted that you were planning on installing only the ASUS utilities you like--which would apply to me too. Where I want to go eventually is to have a dual boot with Blue.

-----
If I had a Windows 8 DVD I would just ditch the factory install and do a clean install. Then I'd install the latest drivers and only the utilities I actually use. I'd ditch the bloat ware. I wouldn't have to uninstall stuff and then wonder what got left behind. I'm not a fan of hybrid drives either. My laptop currently has a 5400 RPM SATA laptop drive in it. It's the weak link as far a performance goes. My laptop is big enough that it actually has two drive bays. I like to have my OS on one partition and my DATA (personal files) on another. Separate drives is even better. That way I can wipe the OS partition on a reinstall and not touch my personal files. The opportunity came up to buy a few toys for myself so I splurged and bought two SSD drives. A 128 GB for the OS and a 256 GB for my DATA drive. The spinner that's in it will go into an external enclosure for backup and extra storage of seldom used programs.

Write now I'm in a position to test out a few things regarding Recovery. I want to know if they work so when someone else ends up in that situation I can give an yes or no answer instead of a guess. Just before I do the swap I'll run the Reset from the hard drive to see if it does the factory restore. Then I'll try running it from the USB thumb drive on the hard drive. That will save wear and tear on my new SSD. Then I'll run it one last time from the thumb drive on the SSD. Then I'll post back the results. It will likely be next week before I do anything. I likely won't get my second drive bay until Monday or Tuesday.

 

[znod]

So, Asus doesn't even have a utility to restore the recovery partition and rely instead solely on the W8 method? Well, at least Lenovo has a boot utility that can boot to the restore partition itself and restore its contents. The BIG caveat is that the system partition to be recovered must be the exact same size. And, if you perform a clean install, I have no idea with all of W8's new partitions it creates, that the C drive partition will end up the same exact size.

I do believe I can do the Reset from the recovery partition on the hard drive. Pressing F9 on boot up will eventually get me to the "Reset Your PC" option. I did a lot of trial and error to get there but bailed out without actually doing it. I might add that ASUS tech support were totally useless during all of this. I repeatedly asked how to do a factory restore from the hard drive and never ever got an answer.

More good info, thanks.

I have not been happy with ASUS tech support on a minor matter or so. They would respond, but tended to not understand the questions, for one reason or another, and to respond nonsensically when they got around to understanding. A big negative for ASUS in my mind.

 

[znod]

@ znod That would be this edit:

Edit: Just read through your thread quickly. All very interesting--at least if one might entertain buying an ASUS laptop. My reaction went from "good grief" to, well, an ASUS laptop might be workable. I just keep coming back to the idea that if I got one, then I'd just give up on the factory install and use the system builder software. Under the criteria I set up for me, in Anticipating Dual Boot with Blue with Safety Net, I'd insist on having just one drive (i.e., no hybrids or HDD's with "helper" SSD's. Do you think I am on a reasonable track here? Also, I noted that you were planning on installing only the ASUS utilities you like--which would apply to me too. Where I want to go eventually is to have a dual boot with Blue.

-----
If I had a Windows 8 DVD I would just ditch the factory install and do a clean install. Then I'd install the latest drivers and only the utilities I actually use. I'd ditch the bloat ware. I wouldn't have to uninstall stuff and then wonder what got left behind. I'm not a fan of hybrid drives either. My laptop currently has a 5400 RPM SATA laptop drive in it. It's the weak link as far a performance goes. My laptop is big enough that it actually has two drive bays. I like to have my OS on one partition and my DATA (personal files) on another. Separate drives is even better. That way I can wipe the OS partition on a reinstall and not touch my personal files. The opportunity came up to buy a few toys for myself so I splurged and bought two SSD drives. A 128 GB for the OS and a 256 GB for my DATA drive. The spinner that's in it will go into an external enclosure for backup and extra storage of seldom used programs.

Write now I'm in a position to test out a few things regarding Recovery. I want to know if they work so when someone else ends up in that situation I can give an yes or no answer instead of a guess. Just before I do the swap I'll run the Reset from the hard drive to see if it does the factory restore. Then I'll try running it from the USB thumb drive on the hard drive. That will save wear and tear on my new SSD. Then I'll run it one last time from the thumb drive on the SSD. Then I'll post back the results. It will likely be next week before I do anything. I likely won't get my second drive bay until Monday or Tuesday.

Thanks much alphanumeric--for sharing you info, experiences, and opinions. I am looking forward to hearing about both your recovery and SSD experiences.

I tend to shy away from having the two partitions you mention mainly because I have such a small amount of well backed up data on laptops especially and, thus, there isn't much point to adding the extra complexity. My problem with the HDD's that have "helper" SSD's is that I don't know if the helpers would function after installing system builder (don't know if they somehow function like good old ready boost, for example--any thoughts on this issue). I think system builder will be the way I head after playing with the factory install for a while. You know my mantra. I want to be out from under the thumb of both MS and OEM's as far as possible.

 

[jerendeb]

So, what have you done so far? Have you created the recovery drive + copy contents of recovery partition?

I just completed mine and it boots fine. Now, it's clear what function would be need to restore to the factory system and that is the "reset my PC" function. I didn't actually push the button to determine what happens, but I'm curious what would happen on a system with a "clean install" (minus bloat) with no recovery partition to regain added space. The question is, would the "reset my PC" function automatically grab the contents off the USB recovery drive and restore that (OEM version including bloat) while wiping partitions and resizing them, OR would the system be restored back to the "clean" state version, just as would be done on a non-OEM system? So many IF's here.

I got a Lenovo ideapad that I planned to return before it arrived. I booted it up to check it out but I thought about trying to make sure there was no evidence that I did this. I misunderstood the RESET MY PC button and did no backup but I pushed the button. Well, it booted up a BRICK. Nothing on the whole system. Gone! I still returned it. Oh well.

 

[alphanumeric]

@ znod, I only briefly looked into hybrid drives. I think its all automatic, the drive electronics decide what goes on the SSD part and what goes on the platter. I do believe it looks like a regular hard drive as far as Windows is concerned. It just has a bigger cache than a regular drive.
Hybrid drive - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[znod]

@alphanumeric

Thanks for the info on hybrids; what you say is good to know. But, actually, I have not run into any laptops that come close to satisfying my criteria that have hybrids.

I'll clarify what I have described several times probably badly. Remember good old ready boost. Well, some laptops I have looked at have small SSD's that store frequently used instructions for faster access than via the associated HDD--apparently similarly to the way ready boost works. I am thinking that you have to choose an option via OEM proprietary software to "activate" the SSD/HDD connection rather than going through the OS--as was done with ready boost. So, I am thinking that having what I crudely called a "helper SSD" several times would be a waste if I installed system builder. What do you think?

 

[alphanumeric]

Ok, I don't know anything about those, that's the first I've heard of them. It's not something that I see myself ever buying into.

 

[theog]

I've created a recovery disk using the built-in recovery disk generator and selected the option to copy the contents from the OEM recovery partition. This is not a "normal" system image, which creates an image of the current C drive.

1. Will booting from this recovery drive followed by a restore will restore back to factory conditions?

2. Is is possible to restore back onto a re-sized system partition? Or, is it necessary to re-create the recovery disk *after* the re-size of the system partition? Or, is there something specific on the OEM recovery partition which states it *must* be restored to the partition size the way it shipped?

Thanks.

As the OP has a Lenovo, What help is this ASUS talk?

 

[alphanumeric]

I've created a recovery disk using the built-in recovery disk generator and selected the option to copy the contents from the OEM recovery partition. This is not a "normal" system image, which creates an image of the current C drive.

1. Will booting from this recovery drive followed by a restore will restore back to factory conditions?

2. Is is possible to restore back onto a re-sized system partition? Or, is it necessary to re-create the recovery disk *after* the re-size of the system partition? Or, is there something specific on the OEM recovery partition which states it *must* be restored to the partition size the way it shipped?

Thanks.

As the OP has a Lenovo, What help is this ASUS talk?

My laptop just happens to be an ASUS. The procedures and end result may be similar or the same. It's not like its totally off topic. But if it bothers you I'll refrain from any further comments in this thread.

 

[znod]

I've created a recovery disk using the built-in recovery disk generator and selected the option to copy the contents from the OEM recovery partition. This is not a "normal" system image, which creates an image of the current C drive.

1. Will booting from this recovery drive followed by a restore will restore back to factory conditions?

2. Is is possible to restore back onto a re-sized system partition? Or, is it necessary to re-create the recovery disk *after* the re-size of the system partition? Or, is there something specific on the OEM recovery partition which states it *must* be restored to the partition size the way it shipped?

Thanks.

As the OP has a Lenovo, What help is this ASUS talk?

Likely helped to some extent; seems like mentioning procedures across machines could be useful. My part didn't help.

 

[floepie]

Likely helped to some extent; seems like mentioning procedures across machines could be useful. My part didn't help.

Yeah, it's interesting. First, the OEM's stopped shipping OEM versions of Windows. Then, they stopped shipping OEM versions of their own recovery DVDs. Now, their own recovery software is not allowing users to create restore DVDs on their own. Not only Lenovo and Asus as mentioned here, but I've also read in a Dell forum how their recovery software has removed the ability to burn total system recovery DVDs.

 

[znod]

Agree--that the current situation with Win8 OEM preinstall is a mess in general--including the topic of interest to you specifically.

 

[floepie]

Now, this is interesting. This link was just shared on the forum with instructions as to how a W8 generated recovery drive can and should be used to reinstall the contents on the recovery drive AND to repartition the drive with a clean (OEM) install using the "reset my PC" from the USB drive. I had been getting rather unsure replies regarding this specific question. So, apparently this is the preferred method and could be why OEMs no longer provide their recovery software with the ability to burn whole system recovery DVDs. It's a Lenovo specific article, but there isn't really anything specific to Lenovo machines themselves.

Methodology to create Recovery Media and reload a Lenovo Think system with Microsoft Windows 8 preload