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making a recovery partition

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40hz:
There are several very good "clone" type utilities at this link:

http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities/backupandimage.shtml

Possibly one of these apps will meet your requirements.

I've used Selfimage, PING and Durabon.
(BTW: Durabon is nowr eleased under GPL2. The restriction "for personal use" no longer applies.)

f0dder:
Perhaps Clonezilla is up to the job? Never used it myself, though.

I've had OK experience with Acronis TrueImage and it's recovery partition stuff, makes for very fast and convenient image restoration - but obviously requires that the harddrive isn't defunct and there haven't been massive partition tables corruption. (And TI is only good for image based cloning, it's file- based backup sucks).

Hm, sounds like Microsoft SteadyState could take products like DeepFreeze out of business? I wish MS would focus on getting Windows done right, and let 3rd parties handle some of the somewhat more non-standard stuff... but provide the necessary kernel hooks to make it possible without massive reverse engineering and hacky code.

4wd:
Perhaps Clonezilla is up to the job? Never used it myself, though.-f0dder (November 24, 2008, 09:47 PM)
--- End quote ---

Nice find, can't say I'd ever heard of it before.

I was also reminded of another way looking through my assorted squirreled info today, using WinPE 2.0 to boot and restore an image.

As explained here: Dual Booting with Windows XP and Windows PE 2.0

Depends on how much RAM is installed of course, (WinPE boots from/into RAM), but then you can restore the whole HDD from an image, no need for a separate partition - you just need to protect the image file.

40hz:
Perhaps Clonezilla is up to the job? Never used it myself, though.
-f0dder (November 24, 2008, 09:47 PM)
--- End quote ---

 :-*

If you can live with its dos-like interface and non-Windows terminology, Clonezilla Live is easily one of the best apps out there. I'm a big Clonezilla fan. If you have a large deployment to do, or you're supporting multi-seat Linux clients, the Conezlla-SE (server edition) is worth it's weight in whatever you value the most.

Well worth the download. :Thmbsup: :Thmbsup:

Note: If you're going to use Clonezilla with Windows, be sure to look at FAQ item 21 which addresses some potential problem areas.


edit by jgpaiva: fixed quote tag

mikiem:
FWIW would it work to 1) create the partitions, 2) create a bootable backup image on the 2nd partition (basically the same as on a DVD, only on hdd), 3) switch to booting from image drive via bios hotkey during post.

The reason for not using a boot menu is someone is going to restore an image when they didn't want to, and complain of lost work, files, etc. If it's there, someone will press it.  :'(  Fact o' life.
The reason for hdd vs other media is loss... If it can be lost, damaged, or misplaced, it will be.

What I don't know is what will be involved in having the 2nd partition fully bootable & not interfering with the primary, bootable partition. I know it's possible - this is a common feature for laptop restores, triggered by a selection in their bios BTW. If you had any problems it might pay to look at setting the 2nd partition with a file system Windows doesn't understand natively - I know some partition mgr type programs provide/use Windows or Linux boot discs for their DOS/Win apps. And/or might be able to use the HP applet for creating bootable USB sticks?

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