Notebooks & Netbooks

[willemm]

I have an ageing Aspire 5100 with its D drive containing a full restore that once needed only 2 DVDs but it now needs 7. As I've never had the need to use either method I'm looking at other ways of external restore to save use of DVDs.

Can an external drive be used, if the D restore folder images are exactly copied to the external drive? I realise the BIOS boot needs to be reset if not using Alt F10 or DVDs but will the boot pick up the required files in the same way?

My OS is XP Media Center Edition, and I've heard of problems associated with XP restores so would like to know if others have successfully used ext drives, and if so do they need to be dedicated with just Acer restore files?

[Acer-Tommy]

Are you attempting to use Windows Backup and Restore or the Acer eRecovery program?

[willemm]

Hi Acer-Tommy

My idea is based on using the Acer eRecovery files stored in the D drive. To have an external source these are normally burned to DVD's but needs 7 of them, so I wondered if instead the recovery files on D could be copied to an external drive and boot from there if/when needed to restore.

[Acer-Tommy]

You're attempting to use Acer Recovery from the "Make a complete backup" option.  Is that correct?

The files that are created should not have a problem residing on an external drive.

[willemm]

Hi

Yes - a complete backup, so it is possible to use an external drive. Thanks for that.

One last question. Does the external drive need to be dedicated to just the Acer recovery files. It is partitioned so I could use one partition for this purpose.

[Acer-Tommy · Accepted solution]

I believe that the files are self-contained, so it should not require an entire partition to itself.

[willemm]

Many thanks. You've been a great help.