Creating a copy of the recovery partition on new drive

[RegEdit]

Lets say a customer's hard drive is failing the SMART test. If you folks install windows from an OEM CD onto a new drive but the "old" drive still has a healthy recovery partition, do you create that same recovery partition on the "new" drive for customers as part of a "standard" repair?

And is this a simple, straight forward thing to do with Easeus Todo's cloning tool? Or can you actually just copy the files to the "new" D partition?

Also do you usually have to install some files and folders on the main C partition of the "new" drive too?

 

[MobileTechie]

If I'm replacing a drive because of sector errors like that I'll more than likely clone the whole drive as is and run the recovery partition to install the OS.

 

[16k_zx81]

Lets say a customer's hard drive is failing the SMART test. If you folks install windows from an OEM CD onto a new drive but the "old" drive still has a healthy recovery partition, do you create that same recovery partition on the "new" drive for customers as part of a "standard" repair?

And is this a simple, straight forward thing to do with Easeus Todo's cloning tool? Or can you actually just copy the files to the "new" D partition?

Also do you usually have to install some files and folders on the main C partition of the "new" drive too?

Nope. I never copy recovery partitions. If drive is failing SMART could just be creating problems. Dodgy hdd goes in bin. New HDD goes in. Customer's data goes on new HDD with fresh OS and drivers.

 

[RegEdit]

more than likely clone the whole drive as is and run the recovery partition to install the OS.

I never thought of the obvious. Good idea.

 

[Tekguy]

I just had a Dell in with a bad hard drive. The main partition was too bad to copy over, but the recovery partition was fine so I copied it onto the new drive & reinstalled from there. It was a .wim file so I had to use Microsoft's AIK program to restore the partition.

 

[RegEdit]

the recovery partition was fine so I copied it onto the new drive & reinstalled from there. It was a .wim file so I had to use Microsoft's AIK program to restore the partition.

So copying (not cloning) the files worked?

 

[JD1248]

I like to try to use the recovery partition if available. Customers get used to those programs that came with the computer. Even though you can usually find a free alternative program, they can't figure out a new program. I use dd_rescue, clone the old drive to the new drive. I'll give the factory recovery 1 shot. If it bombs out, then I just reinstall from disk.

JD

 

[gikstar]

If you are getting a 'SMART' error and the O/S is working OK, then I would connect up a new drive and use Acronis to clone the drive.

 

[RegEdit]

and use Acronis to clone the drive.

I also had problems with viruses and Windows system damage.

So are there files on the C partition that are necessary to do a recovery from the recovery partition? Do I need to copy any .ini files or anything from the C drive? I assume that a BIOS setting instructs to look somewhere when you select to restore the system on an HP computer for example.

 

[MobileTechie]

I also had problems with viruses and Windows system damage.

So are there files on the C partition that are necessary to do a recovery from the recovery partition? Do I need to copy any .ini files or anything from the C drive? I assume that a BIOS setting instructs to look somewhere when you select to restore the system on an HP computer for example.

Normally the recovery partition is self contained and uses some kind of image file and bootable restore function. Some use a custom MBR to offer the ability to restore using a Function key. All that is doing, AFAIK, is to boot into the recovery partition rather than the system one. Often it's enough to clone the partition and set it as active and then reboot. But this doesn't work always.

I think if it gets a lot more complicated than that it's usually quicker just to reinstall Windows from a disk or image.

 

[Tekguy]

So copying (not cloning) the files worked?

Yes. I had to fix the bootsector after the image was restored, but that's easy enough to do with Win7.