How To Make a Recovery drive ..............

Could somebody please guide me so as to How to re-create the recovery drive after deleting it .............. if it's possible using some utility .................

thnxx in advance ..........

Searching the forum found a method, but it's not particulary easy:

http://en.community.dell.com/forums/t/19244863.aspx

It's much easier to use software like Acronis True Image or Norton Ghost to make a complete image of your disk for recovery.  Better yet, leave the partition alone and install another hard drive if you're that short on space.

Hi joojoeruption,

Since your other posts relate to this one, it's probably good to link to them here for reference:

How to Restore Utility Partition

Problem being faced after creating the Dell Diagnostic bootable flash drive

As far as I can tell you have a bootable flash drive that has the Dell Diagnostics on it and the following things have occurred:

1) Reinstalled Vista using Vista CD (this should have wiped out the Utility partition containing the Dell Diagnostics and the Recovery partition if I'm not mistaken although I may be wrong here)

2) Used the Factory Image Restore (this is where I'm a bit confused because it [the Recovery partition] should have been wiped out in step 1 if you did a reformat, perhaps a repair wouldn't have removed it though)

3) Tried to run the Utility partition which didn't work (see step 1)

So the question is what is on the hard drive now.

The EISA Configuration that you mention should be listed in MB and should be the Utility partition, mine is around 55 MB. It's also a hidden partition so you can really only see it when using Disk Management.

I think the Recovery partition is 10 GB for a reason as I think the system checks the size so trying to use it for data won't work.

As Alexandra mentioned you might be able to image the Recovery partition but trying to get it to work again with the F12 key isn't easy. It's easier to get another internal hard drive or an external for additional storage and leave the Recovery partition alone.

I've been told there is no way to get the Utility partition back onto the hard drive if it's been deleted so you may have to rely on the bootable USB drive or a bootable CD/DVD in order to run the Dell Diagnostics again provided that that partition has in fact been removed.

So the question becomes what is currently listed under Disk Management?

Searching the forum found a method, but it's not particulary easy: http://en.community.dell.com/forums/t/19244863.aspx It's much easier to use software like Acronis True Image or Norton Ghost to make a complete image of your disk for recovery.  Better yet, leave the partition alone and install another hard drive if you're that short on space.

thnxxx a lot for your reply ............

would check that link up and see if i find something useful ...........

Hi joojoeruption, Since your other posts relate to this one, it's probably good to link to them here for reference: How to Restore Utility Partition Problem being faced after creating the Dell Diagnostic bootable flash drive As far as I can tell you have a bootable flash drive that has the Dell Diagnostics on it and the following things have occurred: 1) Reinstalled Vista using Vista CD (this should have wiped out the Utility partition containing the Dell Diagnostics and the Recovery partition if I'm not mistaken although I may be wrong here) 2) Used the Factory Image Restore (this is where I'm a bit confused because it [the Recovery partition] should have been wiped out in step 1 if you did a reformat, perhaps a repair wouldn't have removed it though) 3) Tried to run the Utility partition which didn't work (see step 1) So the question is what is on the hard drive now. The EISA Configuration that you mention should be listed in MB and should be the Utility partition, mine is around 55 MB. It's also a hidden partition so you can really only see it when using Disk Management. I think the Recovery partition is 10 GB for a reason as I think the system checks the size so trying to use it for data won't work. As Alexandra mentioned you might be able to image the Recovery partition but trying to get it to work again with the F12 key isn't easy. It's easier to get another internal hard drive or an external for additional storage and leave the Recovery partition alone. I've been told there is no way to get the Utility partition back onto the hard drive if it's been deleted so you may have to rely on the bootable USB drive or a bootable CD/DVD in order to run the Dell Diagnostics again provided that that partition has in fact been removed. So the question becomes what is currently listed under Disk Management?

thnxx a lot for your useful inputs ..........

Here is some more information about the current stats of my disk management to make things more clearer .

(1).Yes i had re-installed windows vista using the Windows vista DVD but this didn't wipe out my recovery drive (E:) as it a totally separate drive ....... infact it only wiped out my old vista installation i.e. C: .

(2).Used the Factory Image Restore -  this re-installed my os to the factory state and had wiped the C: drive only .

                   after this step the recovery drive (E:) which is of 10 GB got converted to EISA format.

i can still access that EISA partition using LINUX and infact can read-write data in it(using LINUX) .the disk management shows the following stats :-

10GB - EISA configuration partition.

40MB - unallocated partition

139GB-C:(boot partition)

Yes, that makes a little more sense to me now but I'm still surprised about one thing (maybe more) which I'll get to in a minute.

The way I'm understanding it is this:

You have two internal hard drives where you may have only had one to begin with when you got the system.

The initial configuration should have looked like this with all of it on one drive

| EISA Configuration (40 MB) | C: drive (~139 GB) | D: drive (10 GB) |

where the EISA Configuration is the Utility partition (that includes the Diagnostics accessible by ) and the D drive is the Recovery partition.

So this is what I'm wondering now, when you look at the drive(s) under Disk Management do you see this?

Disk 0  | Unallocated (40 MB) | C: drive (~139 GB) | ????? (10 GB) |

Disk 1  | EISA Configuration (10 GB) | Whatever else is left on 2nd drive |  (This Disk may be a different number, something other than 1)

or does it look different? I think your Utility programs and your Recovery programs may both be inside that 10 GB EISA Configuration now. If so then you should be able to see the Utility programs in there. You can probably access the 10 GB with Linux only and not Windows, is that correct? How big is the primary disc supposed to be, 150 GB?

No i just have one internal HDD .......... with a capacity of 160GB (SAMSUNG HD161HJ  ATA device) as stated ..........

Unallocated (40MB)

C: drive (139GB)

EISA configuration(10GB)

yes i can access that 10GB via linux.