ATIH 2012 question on recovery partitions how they're handled
I want to use ATIH 2012 to clone the disk in a Dell M4500 over to a new Dell M6600 to avoid having to reinstall all the programs. My question, Dell creates recovery partitions on their machines, will TI copy over the recovery partition from the M4500? Will it wipe out the recovery partition existing on the new M6600? If so, is there a way to tell it not to so all I get is the programs and files from the M4500 copied over to the M6600 leaving the recovery partition intact?
The problem is we discovered the hard way the recovery partitions are somewhat machine specific you can't use the recovery for an M4500 to recover an M6600 and vice versa.
thank you,
Russ Smith
Firstly, Dells recovery process depends entirely on the original (Dell) MBR being intact. Use Acronis even to image the C drive and then restore it and the Dell recovery process is broken.
As to your question, if you clone an entire disk then that implies all partitions are recreated on the new HDD. So yes, it will I think wipe the recovery partition (isn't that at the "start" of the HDD) but more than that, even if it did not I think you would find the recovery process would fail due to the Dell utility not seeing what it is supposed to with regard to the original sectors and total size. That is to say, even if the recovery partition is intact the Dell utility will fail once the original structure of the HDD has been altered.
A possible workround for safety may to image your original HDD using Acronis running outside of Windows, in other words use Acronis from the bootable disc and make a disk that way.
Or do as I have done (I have a Dell) and just do a totally clean install using Dells supplied W7 disc... much better and it gets rid of all the bloatware. Dell also for some reason seem to put the MBR ? on a different partition from the main C drive holding the OS. Easy to fix by just running a start up repair from the W7 disc.
I got caught with all this installing W7 as a clean install and then realising that the recovery partition was useless. I turned it round to my advantage and used Acronis to make a "just W7 and updates" image then formatted, deleted and merged the partitions, created a new recovery partition to put this new image on and then used Acronis to reinstate the main OS on the new C partition. Thats where another issue showed. Dell put the start up (MBR ?) files on onother partition and my Acronis image wouldn't boot although it was easily fixed by using the W7 disc to do a start up repair and rebulild the MBR on the new C partition.
All good fun and I learnt a lot in the process.
Firstly, Dells recovery process depends entirely on the original (Dell) MBR being intact. Use Acronis even to image the C drive and then restore it and the Dell recovery process is broken.
If you used Acronis True Image (ATI) to create a full disk backup and then restored it to the same drive, Dell Recovery would still be functional.
Dell Recovery partition is useful only to restore the PC to its original factory state. Once you begin installing software and using the computer, such a restore is much less useful and much less appealing.
I removed my Dell Recovery partition and thus freed up almost 20 GB of disk space. But, first I used Dell's backup utility to create the Recovery image to a USB flash drive (you could also choose three DVD-R disks), which could be used restore to Dell factory state if I ever sold the PC. I also moved boot files from Recovery partition to the OS partition.
But, with ATI, the Dell Recovery disks aren't even necessary if you use ATI to create a pre-boot backup image. I also did that (belt and suspenders).
Belt and suspenders are good :) You forget the parachute...
Your much more familiar with all the process than me... it was a one off learning curve as I did it. The boot files ! That would be what I had to restore to my C partition as I mentioned above. I do seem to recall that once you use Acronis to recover an image it (Acronis) then substitutes the original MBR and that is what breaks the Dell utility. That would occur running Acronis from within Windows, imaging the C partition and restoring it. I'm sure that's what happened to me.
I see what you mean about using Acronis to image the whole caboodle and how that should still be OK though. Having what I call a "just W7 and updates" image is far more use than the factory image and means I can do a clean install in little time and put any updated programs and applications in the mix too.
once you use Acronis to recover an image it (Acronis) then substitutes the original MBR and that is what breaks the Dell utility. That would occur running Acronis from within Windows, imaging the C partition and restoring it. I'm sure that's what happened to me.
No. As I say, if you had used Acronis True Image (ATI) to create a full disk backup and then restored it to the same drive, Dell Recovery would still be functional. A full disk backup includes all partitions and the MBR. Your problem was likely that you didn't perform a full disk backup, or didn't restore a full disk backup, so you didn't restore the original MBR.
I see what you mean about using Acronis to image the whole caboodle and how that should still be OK though. Having what I call a "just W7 and updates" image is far more use than the factory image and means I can do a clean install in little time and put any updated programs and applications in the mix too.
Yes, an OEM Recovery is not a great solution to a virus-infection or a failed hard drive. While you wouldn't have to install Windows, you'd have to to everything else: install Windows updates; configure Windows as you want it; install all applications; recreate user settings. And, you'd still be without your user files. That's why, for me at least, I'd far rather have the 20 GB of disk space than the relatively useless Recovery partition. I did create the OEM Recovery media though, which serves the same function as the partition, just in case the next owner wants it. Though, I could always just restore my ATI pre-boot image and he could create his own OEM Recovery media as though he had just received the PC from Dell.
I think your right and that I backed up and restored just the C partition and not the whole disk image. I just didn't realise at the time the implications of doing that.
Would it have made a difference... in the big scheme of things probably not because I knew I would always do a clean install and make my own recovery images. I just felt annoyed that I broke the recovery process I guess but as I say, I learnt a lot from the experience.
Hope all this helps Russ...
It makes a difference because other users may read this thread, and your first statement in your first post was incorrect. That's why I responded to correct the information.
For you though, clean installing Windows wasn't a big deal. For many users, that is beyond them and they want to rely on ATI to backup and restore fully, which it can.
LOL, yes you probably did break the recovery partition, but I don't think you needed it anyway. :)
Thanks for the replies. Both are Win 7 and we have in fact decided to just do the clean install. It means buying new copies of Office and Acrobat etc which is some incentive to not do that and just clone, and cloning actually takes about half the time the fresh install does, but then you have to worry about drivers being different etc so we decided to just do a fresh install.
Thanks for the feedback I definitely learned something new. I do agree on the recovery partition by the way it's a absolute last ditch thing. we don't do full images of systems we do incremental backups so we would have to restore files from that.