Making DVD Recovery discs

Peter Hull

I bought a new computer in November and I wish to make DVD recovery discs

The DVD writer does not seem to respond whena put the disc in. It whirrs for a bit then chucks out the disc.

The writer is a HL-DT-ST DVDRW GSA -H21N

Hewlett Packard say i can only make one set of recovery discs but I have tried several times but without success.

I have tried seraching for updates on the HP Web site and came across one which I uploaded but stiil no joy

I was advised to use Panasonic DVD-R but I wonder if this advice is wrong and I sould be using DVD +R

Any help would be appreciated by those more experienced with these things.

Peter

any one out there

jbv

Welcome to CDFreaks Forum.

I would guess that the H21N is a special HP model, that do not support dvd-r.

Try with a dvd+r disc.

coolcolors

If you still have your purchase reciept tell them that you want them to send you some recovery CD or DVD media for your make and model. I think HP should do that out of customer service. Also what does the manual say about media support? Could be you also have a bad drive as well. So how long have you had this computer desktop or laptop?

Bob

Try Acronis True Image 10 Home. Works great if you have hard drive space > http://www.acronis.com/

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aekdb

I'm partial to Norton Ghost myself.

You can make as many backup/restore DVDs (assuming you get your DVD burner working) as you want.

PC Magazine had an article about making backup images in a recent issue - they used Ghost & Partition Magic. They created a small partition on the hard drive and saved the image there. This way if you ever need to reformat, just set it to boot to drive D:\ instead of C:\ and 10 or so min later you're back up and running. I'd advise making a DVD copy as well - just in case the hard drive gets zapped.

coolcolors

First off did you contact HP support directly phone or email before asking the users here about the problem? And I think Peter Hull is talking about the recovery image of what the computer came installed as from factory....for those telling to us other image program-my advise if you can get the original install recovery disk from HP that would be your best bet....so give HP a email or call about getting those recovery disk that HP should include in their package rather then making you make your own recovery disk.

aekdb

While the HP produced disks are good to have, they're not necessarily better than a home made version as I, and others have suggested.

With my method, your restore disk can be kept up-to-date. When you restore, you just have to download updates from Jan 07 on, rather than having to go back to the SP2 release. You can also add a copy of Office, or any other program into your image (and keep them updated too). You can have your ISP settings in there as well, and any other settings, etc.

Plus if you do the partition idea, then once you've restored & updated your system, you can make another image & keep it for when you restore again.

Peter Hull

Thank you all for your replies. Yes I have emailed HP and expressed my disspointment that these were not included in the original package. I have checked the device manager and the DVD drive appears to be working properly.

I have a Seagate external hard drive which stores my files automatically but the XP operating system appears to be stored on a partition labelled 'd' drive. I am not absolutly certain that my Seagate stores the XP operating system files which exist on the d drive as well as my MS Office files etc.

I want to be sure that I can restore the XP OS as well as my normal files in the event of a major crash.

Does anyone know how the OS system files are identified, they may be already on my external backup drive without me knowing!!

Thanks for the Norton Info I will look into the Norton Ghost sound useful.

Happy New Year to everyone

Peter

jbv

AFAIK HP save the Recovery at D: partition.

What Directory's are present a D:

Peter Hull

Hello JBV
I am not sure what you mean by AFAIK HP

The recovery files in the D: ( a partition of the C drive) but it appears to be locked (with padlock sign) I have just tried to save these files on my J: drive (Seagate external drive) but it gave an error and stopped the process after a while despite the drive having plenty of capacity (250GB).

The D drive is labelled 'Presario_RP' - Recovery partition - it has files totalling 5.81 GB with 923MB free space so should have plenty of room for these files on my EXT hard drive. It won't let me copy them which is rather frustrating. I think HP or Windows have put some protection that prevents us copying them. It says you can only make one copy of the DVD recovery discs>

Peter

jbv

AFAIK: As Far As I Know

The recovery partition is locked and you cant copy it.

I succeded with Norton Ghost.

I took a backup of the partition in dos.

Rockrz

He's write! Scrub the DVD recover disc idea and go with Acronis...they rule

And don't even think about installing Norton as it slows down your computer due to being a resource hawg

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Evil_Himmler

norton ghost is this the best program?

Bjproc

have you tried Acronis True Image yet ?

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deanimator

Got the same deal with my Sony Vaio laptop: No recovery discs supplied, but a protected recovery partition of about 6GB.

The system includes a program which allows one to make recovery discs from (Start/Programs/Vaio Recovery)...produces 2 DVDs (or 6 or 7 CDs, as you wish).

I´ve not had to resort to using these yet, but I also have Acronis v10
I´m going to have to go through this process of a full reinstall shortly cos my HD is dying.

One thing that Acronis is supposed to be very good at is making a mirror image of your HD...I´ve done that on an external drive and keep it unplugged in case things go haywire.

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Rockrz

Now you're talkin

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Prof. Honeydew

Hi Peter - getting back to your original question:
You have a full back up of your hard drive as it was purchased with the computer in the locked partition D. If you need to restore your pc in the event of C partition disaster due to virus / need to reformat etc, then you can restore from that. It's locked so that you can't accidentally mess with it
On an HP, you should be able to make the one time recover CD / DVD set by clicking on:
Programs > PC Help and Tools > HP Recovery CD-DVD creator
Have you been trying this creator wizard to do it?

If you need to do the full restore from D, choose > HP System Recovery from the same menu. Your backup is already stored here, and the discs are really a safeguard.

You mentioned that you verified that the burner is working from device manager? Have you actually burned a CD or DVD with it yet?
I would try that first by copying an audio CD or back up some of your office files, to confirm that you definitely 100% have a working burner. Try different media too - you can make your back up on CDs, but you need about 20 I think!
If you can not make the recovery CD/ DVD because of a problem with the burner, then it would probably be wise to sort that out first

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pices2282

dear forum members,
i stuked in a shit situation that i buy a HP NC6400 notebook and i also made that set of recovery dvds,but now due to scratches that dvd is not able to run properly in the dvd rom but in another computer home pc i can able to navigate into the dvd and i can also copy the data of the dvd,please help me to how can i clone that dvd's because i also didnt have any recovery partion left in my notebook,my notebook is totally crashed,please help me,waiting for your answere.

DrageMester

If you can read the DVD in another computer, and if that computer has a DVD burner, you can make a disc copy of the DVD onto a new blank DVD.

If you don't already have a burning program capable of making an exact copy of a data DVD, you can download the free ImgBurn program and then use the Read function to store an "image" of the DVD and then use the Write function to write that "image" onto a new blank DVD.

Welcome to CDFreaks!

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