I am not sure if this is the right forum for this question. If it is not, please feel free to move it.

My Dell 1525 Inspiron with Vista Home Premium has a bad hard drive and I am getting a new one. I want the new drive to be like the old drive was as it was shipped by the factory.

On the old hard drive there are at least 4 partitions - Recovery (D - FAT32, has the factory image on it), OS (C - NTFS) and MediaDirect. There also is a hidden FAT16 partition with the diagnostic utilities on it and I have the CD that supposedly allows me to recreate that hidden partition on my new hard drive when I get it. But I can't find information about how to recreate the recovery partition.

The MediaDirect partition I can live without. It is apparently in what is called a Host Protected Area and what it allows you to do is to pop in a DVD and watch it on your computer without having to boot Vista. It is a nice feature, but never used on this computer. And I may be able to recreate it from the CDs that came with the computer, but even if I can't, I can live without it.

However, what I cannot figure out how to do is how to recreate the Recovery partition on the new hard drive from the recovery CD. I don't think I can. I can see the recovery partition on the old hard drive and I can boot into DOS from the Recovery CD and access the recovery partition (D). I can use the DOS command robocopy to copy the contents of D: to an external hard drive, then the plan would be to copy it back to the new hard drive. The main things I want to know are:

1) the Recovery partition is FAT32 and the OS partition is NTFS. How will I be able to partition the new hard drive to have both a FAT32 and an NTFS partition?;

2) will robocopy faithfully copy all the contents of the FAT32 recovery partition to an external hard drive formatted in NTFS if I use the /MIR switch?; and

3) if so, will there be any problems copying the contents back to the new hard drive?

Thanks for any input!

thanks again Ricard!!

Originally Posted by richc46

Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - Information and download

The only problem I see with this is what if I get a virus and I have imaged the drive with the virus on it and I can't get it off and I need to go back to the factory state as a last resort. Then I would want the factory image restored.

Am I going to be able to partition my new hard drive to have these hidden FAT32 and FAT16 partitions along with an NTFS partition?

Originally Posted by richc46

Not true you can do what I do.

You are ok now, make an image and put it away.

Then once a month make an image and replace it the following month.

You will always have a good image regardless of what happens.

That's true, but you have to be on top of things to do that. This machine is owned by a young person (21) who I am helping. The whole reason I got involved was because she never backed her stuff up despite that I told her over and over again she better do it (Grrr!).

I wanted her to at least have a way to get back to the factory image using the hard drive in the laptop in case she lost the external hard drive I am giving her (she loses her cell phone, keys, camera, etc., quite frequently so I have no doubt the external hard drive I am giving her will eventually go missing). I am honestly surprised she has had this computer for 2 years without losing it, lol! I told her when I bought this one for her that this was the last one I was buying for her and she will have to buy her own from now on. So maybe that is why she has been able to keep track of it.

I told her this is the last time I will help her if she doesn't back up her stuff so maybe that will sink in this time, too.

Originally Posted by richc46

Wish I could give you more, but thats what I know.

Thanks, you have been incredibly helpful. For now, I am using robocopy to copy the contents of the recovery partition to an external hard drive. When I get the new hard drive installed, I will see if I can use it to return the system to its factory image. If not, then I will do a clean Vista install and reinstall the drivers and software and then image it using your suggestion.

I am having a similar situation with my PC. Did robocopy work?