Recovery Partition

[Mike]

Can you please tell me how to image a 500GB OEM drive on my Lenovo i7 (2992) to a 256GB SSD? While I have imaged the drive once, and the computer boots and runs fine, the SSD is not offering to do a recovery with the Lenovo_Recovery partition. I've even read the manual, but I'm missing something along the way.

What I have:

SYSTEM_DRV - 2.42 GB NTFS
Windows7_OS - 420.38 GB NTFS
Lenovo_Recovery - 42.96 GB NTFS

What I want:

SYSTEM_DRV - 2.42 GB NTFS
Windows7_OS - 200 GB NTFS (estimate)
Lenovo_Recovery - 42.96 GB NTFS

Thanks.

[TeraByte Support(PP)]

What method did you use? Entire drive or single partitions? What were the resulting partitions on the SSD?

Partition/disk changes can often break built-in recovery options since it expects a certain configuration. Usually, it can still be triggered manually.

[Mike]

I apologize for not responding sooner. Apparently I forgot to tell the site to notify me of responses.

I tried moving the partitions one at a time using IFL. The resulting partitions are as below (as read from Computer Management from within Windows):

Windows7_OS (C:) 100.89GB
SYSTEM_DRV 596MB
Lenovo_Recovery (D:) 10.31GB

The partitions are listed in this order on Disk 0:

SYSTEM_DRV / Windows7_OS (C:) / Lenovo_Recovery (D:)

The issue and the question are, what is the proper way or the proper Terabyte Unlimited tool that allows me to image a larger hard drive, such as the one that comes with a new computer, to a smaller SSD and still maintain the ability to boot into the recovery partition? When I got the computer to boot with this configuration, the ability to boot into the Lenovo_Recovery partition disappeared. If there's no way to do what I want, then I may as well delete the recovery partition and reclaim 10.31GB of valuable SSD space. However, that's not what I prefer to do.

In my case, the factory recovery partition on the new computer was way too large. It's still too large. However, when I tried changing things, they broke. The solution may be as simple as editing the boot.ini file, but that's something I have not been able to master after many years of using and recommending Terabyte Unlimited products.

[TeraByte Support(PP)]

Factory booting to the recovery partition will often break when the partition is moved or modified. I don't think there are specific steps that will always work to prevent it or fix it. Usually, they can still be booted manually by setting the partition active.

Have you checked if Lenovo has a program (might already be installed) or a download to reactivate booting to the recovery partition?

[Mike]

Paul, I have not been able to get an answer to this question even after searching Lenovo's resources. There is no doubt in my mind that Terabyte knows partitions as well as or better than anyone at Lenovo, so I don't understand why there is not a clear answer to the dilemma. After I made this post, I did some research and saw a reference to making changes with BCDedit, but I can't find any help in understanding editing boot configuration data. Maybe the answer lies there.

The answers are probably on this forum, but some of the official responses are so short that they are of little value to those of us who struggle to learn and understand these things.

Thanks for your help.

[TeraByte Support(PP)]

On that system, how are you instructed to boot into the recovery partition? Is it a special button on the computer? A key-press on boot-up? Boot directly to it from Windows?

There are different ways used to boot into a recovery partition (depends on how the system is configured). Is the BCD file still the original? If so, and it used a BCD entry, it should still be there and updating it may help. Run the following command from an administrator command prompt:

bcdedit /enum all > c:\bcdoutput.txt

Then attach the bcdoutput.txt file to a post.

[TeraByte Support]

When you do the entire drive copy or restore (with scale to fit) you'll need
to use the option to install the standard mbr code to overwrite the old
rapid restore type mbr code. Then it will boot normally. To get back the
rapid restore, you'd have to reenable that - it used to be in the control
panel I believe when they were using the xpoint version.

If you're doing one at a time, I presume system-drv was the active one? if
so, restore that first, with standard mbr code, and set active. Then
restore your other two and ensure set active is NOT enabled, but do enable
the Update Boot Partition option.


"Mike" wrote in message news:7755@public.image...

I apologize for not responding sooner. Apparently I forgot to tell the site
to notify me of responses.

I tried moving the partitions one at a time using IFL. The resulting
partitions are as below (as read from Computer Management from within
Windows):

Windows7_OS (C:) 100.89GB
SYSTEM_DRV 596MB
Lenovo_Recovery (D:) 10.31GB

The partitions are listed in this order on Disk 0:

SYSTEM_DRV / Windows7_OS (C:) / Lenovo_Recovery (D:)

The issue and the question are, what is the proper way or the proper
Terabyte Unlimited tool that allows me to image a larger hard drive, such as
the one that comes with a new computer, to a smaller SSD and still maintain
the ability to boot into the recovery partition? When I got the computer to
boot with this configuration, the ability to boot into the Lenovo_Recovery
partition disappeared. If there's no way to do what I want, then I may as
well delete the recovery partition and reclaim 10.31GB of valuable SSD
space. However, that's not what I prefer to do.

In my case, the factory recovery partition on the new computer was way too
large. It's still too large. However, when I tried changing things, they
broke. The solution may be as simple as editing the boot.ini file, but
that's something I have not been able to master after many years of using
and recommending Terabyte Unlimited products.