Recovery Disk.

[Darkfalz89]

About a year ago I purchased a prebuilt system from ibuypower and received a windows 7 64-bit recovery disk. Every so many months I like to clear my hard drive and start anew until recently. As of a month ago I realized I lost my recovery disk so i was posed with a few options. I called Ibuypower and they said they can mail me a new one for 35 dollars, a friend said i can burn a recovery disk but i think they are getting recovery and "repair" disks confused, or i recently found a disk being sold on amazon for 5 bones:

http://www.amazon.com/Windows-System-disc-comparable-Professional/dp/B004RDCEQO/ref=sr_1_1?s=software&ie=UTF8&qid=1324162614&sr=1-1


What do you guys suggest? Would this CD work just fine for me or do i need to order the CD directly from the people i purchased the PC from?

 

[Darkfalz89]

Anyone?

 

[hang-the-9]

Windows 7 has a backup utility that will make a restore disk set, but it will only do so using the current settings, meaning not as the PC was when new.

That disk you linked is not what you want to use for system re-imaging. The ones from ibuypower would be.

 

[Darkfalz89]

When you say imaging you mean make a copy of your desktop, registry e.t.c. Rather than a fresh install. Meaning ibuyower has the original image of my comupters factory settinngs? Or is it the actual os disk that can reformat my hard drive?

 

[hang-the-9]

They won't send you just a Windows 7 disk, although their restore disk will have Windows 7 on it. It's the OEM package that they have on the computer when it's first turned on.

Yes, imaging the computer now will copy everything on the hard-drive as-is.

 

[Darkfalz89]

So your saying that if i built my own system and lost my recovery CD, i would then have to purchase the OS again if i wanted to reformat my HDD? Ive never given much thought as to how recovery (not repair and not imaging) disks worked if you lost them. What im trying to ask is where does the OEM disk/substitute work if I build my own system?

 

[hang-the-9]

So your saying that if i built my own system and lost my recovery CD, i would then have to purchase the OS again if i wanted to reformat my HDD? Ive never given much thought as to how recovery (not repair and not imaging) disks worked if you lost them. What im trying to ask is where does the OEM disk/substitute work if I build my own system?

If you bought your own Windows disk, and lost it, you can contact MS to see what they can do. They should send you a replacement disk, as long as you did not lose your license key as well. If you lost both, would be tough to prove you bough it in the first place and then you'd have to buy a new license. Recovery disk, repair disk, imaging disk are almost all the same.

Recovery and Repair are pretty generic terms, they both mean about the same thing, with some slight differences. Imaging also, but imaging is a full disk process, it takes a full snapshot of a partition or full disk as it is at that point in time, you can then use that snapshot file to restore the whole thing, as it was. Recovery is just a term meaning something you'd use to try to fix a bad installation, replace files from a virus attack, disk crash, etc... You can use an Image to perform a Recovery. As well as a Repair disk which is just a Windows disk and you run a "Repair" setup of Windows which checks the computer against it's files, and replaces any files which were changed or missing. So a "Repair" disk or an "Image" can be used to do a "Recovery". It's like cutting up a chicken and labeling parts "Lunch" and "Dinner". Does not really matter which one gets eaten when, it's all the same chicken.

 

[Darkfalz89]

Best answer selected by Darkfalz89.

 

[Darkfalz89]

Thank you so much for all your information. I found a OS OEM version that you can download from microsoft and since I have my serial i am free to download it rather than pay 35 dollars for Ibuypower to ship me the same thing lolz.

 

[nikorr]

This topic has been closed by Nikorr.