System restore on Vista.

yoshytoshy

I'm not sure if windows vista needs a seperate partition for system restore. I recently re-installed vista on an XPS M1330 and only made one partition.
Is it possible to use an SD card for system restore ? ,if so how would I go about doing this.

Thanks.

Overheal

Are you talking about the system recovery when you reset the OS or restore when you rollback a couple days?

You need a seperate partition or other suitable media, such as DVD. SD Im unsure about. It would be up to the PC to be able to read the card without drivers installed..

Voodu Child

The System Restore function doesnt need an extra partition, so if that's what you're referring to, you don't have to worry. If you have an extra partition, it'll just give you the option to automatically create a restore point for that disk too.

I don't think you can use an external disk for the restore point(s).

yoshytoshy

Thanks for the replies ,it's indeed system recovery I was talking about. From looking at other dell vista machines I have ,they all seem to have a 10GB recovery partition. So I was worried I fooked up things to be honest.
I thought because the latop has the card reader built in ,the bios would control it rather than a driver in windows.Device manager lists it as SD reader ,so I'm probably stupid to think that it would work before windows loads. I priced 8GB cards and they are only around the 35 euro mark now.

All this started with me ,because my Hard drive started getting thrashed when I wasn't using vista. Literally the machine would use the drive like I was doing a full system virus scan or defrag. I've since turned off indexing ,media sharing and some prefectching tool. I re-installed vista ,because I wanted to see what would start the drive grinding again ,seems ok for the moment.

Thank you.

Voodu Child

If you've wiped the Dell Recovery partition then it's gone for good. They don't include a CD for re-creating it (afaik?).

But when you activate the Dell Recovery partition, it completely wipes your C: drive and reinstalls Vista.... which is the exact same as what you've just done, except using the install discs. So there's no real need for the recovery partition, that's there primarily for users who aren't comfortable with doing a clean install using the OS disc.

So I wouldn't worry about it tbh.

The only thing i'd be careful of is the Dell Media button. If you remove the Dell media partition, pressing the button can nuke your install in some instances. I havent fully looked it up, but its something to be aware of.

Overheal

In that case, make the 10gb partition, write the recovery file to it, and write a copy of the recovery file to SD.

when you go to restore you can try from the SD and if that should fail the partitioned backup will work.

my 1st post referred to recovery of course: the backup cannot be on the partition being written to during the recovery operation.

yoshytoshy

Thanks for the help ,I get the picture of what it's for now. I thought recovery was only a settings removal tool ,I didn't realize it completely re wrote the vista envoirnment.
With media Direct ,I had to partition the drive first with the media direct disk (3GB Partition).It seems to use old DOS files like himem/fdisk to create a basic shell.
It's funny that you mention nuking the install ,twice yesterday my new install was botched and missing loading files. What I eventually had to do was load all dell drivers ,update vista via internet(important updates only), lastly load the media direct CD.


I've looked at the recovery options and cannot see how I can choose where the recovery file is written. I only see which drives I want to recover ?

Overheal

From Start, launch Backup and Recovery center. Or simply type B into the search bar, it should come right up. UAC will ask you for access, click OK. You now have options to backup your files.

Click Backup: you now choose where you want to save the recovery file at, either on a drive or a network address. In your case it should hopefully be able to read your SD card at this step.

After clicking Next you choose which Drives you want to backup FROM.

Click next again and you can choose what types of files you want to include in this backup (pictures, video, email, compressed files, etc.)

On the next screen you choose how often you want the backup to be updated. Since this is your first (and only, in this case) backup, it will create a full backup now, using your preferences.

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If you cant see the SD you do need a new recovery partition.

Start > Computer Management

on the sidebar in CM select Disk Management.

Right click on your partition (C:\) and choose Shrink Volume

CM calculates the space of C:\ ... you can then choose how much space you want to take from C for your new partition.

etc etc etc...

You now have unallocated space showing in the main window. Right click that and there should be an option to use that space to create a new partition. Assign a Drive letter and name it if you like.

Then just use that partition for your backup operation.

yoshytoshy

Thanks again for that info. I'd no idea you could adjust the volume of an active drive. The SD option is only a last measure ,to avoid reformatting my drive again.