Swift SF3114-511 Using Emergency USB Drive

Hi there

Not sure where I should be posting this so please accept my appoligies if in the wrong place.

I have just bought the E-recovery USB drive and would like to test it out to ensure it works so I am looking for instructions of correct use and have a couple of questions.

Will Laptop automatically boot from USB drive when inserted and laptop powered up or do I have to change something in BIOS? Or is there a key (for example F12) that will bring up a boot choice?
Will using USB drive remove changes made to (default) SSD?
At present I use EasusToDo to backup/restore my laptop. If I use the recovery drive will I still be able to restore/recover back to my OS (as it is at present)? using ATD recovery drive (Again I would need to boot from ATD USB drive).
Will using recovery drive remove the Win PE from laptop? (this needed to run recovery mode for EasusToDo) Or would I need to install ATD onto recovered OS? (This coud cause problems with ATD registration if there is any difference in latop details after using Acer Revovery drive as this - ATD - is registered to one device only)
Can I make a copy of the E-recovery USB drive and store away from normal location of pen drive storage?

A separate question to the above.

Does Acer do a clean install of Win 11 or is this upgraded over pre-installed windows 10? If so what OS will does emergency disk install?

I hope I have been clear with the above questins and some of my questions might seem trivial but I don't want to end up with a bricked or unusable paid software installed.

ErnieK

[Edited the thread to add model name to the title]

Accepted answers

ErnieK

Thanks Bisley.

I will checkout the F12 key availability later today. If I need to enable it in BIOS do you have any idea where abouts?

Laptop is Swift SF3114-511 supplied with Win 11 installed.

Another question that poped in to my was as follows.

At one time there used to be a hidden recovery partion on the HDD. Would it be possible to create this on the istalled SSD? If so how would I go about creating it and to ensure that it is hidden. Also what F key would need to be pressed for this to start? Or is this not possible and Am I just showing my age 😊?

Ernie

billsey

I assume you mean SF314-511. :) The option should be on the Main tab:

The recovery partition is part of the stock software load. You can see it using Disk Management, typically as a about 1GB partition in addition to the 100MB EFI partition and the system partition. Most Acer products get you to that using Alt-F10 at startup.

All comments

billsey

You may have to enable the F12 boot menu in the BIOS, but then you can choose the recovery flash drive as your boot drive using the F12 menu. Using the recovery will completely wipe out everything on your system and replace it with what came stock from the factory. To restore your Easeus backup you would have to reinstall the EaseusToDo software after recovery. If that software requires a WinPE environment then it will install that for you if not already present. And yes, you can make a copy of the recovery drive, you just can't give it to someone else.

If your machine came with Windows 11, then the recovery image is also Windows 11. If your machine came with Windows 10 and then was upgraded to Windows 11 then you will need to do the upgrade again after the Windows 10 image is restored. Acer didn't do the upgrade for you, that was Microsoft.

ErnieK

Thanks Bisley.

I will checkout the F12 key availability later today. If I need to enable it in BIOS do you have any idea where abouts?

Laptop is Swift SF3114-511 supplied with Win 11 installed.

Another question that poped in to my was as follows.

At one time there used to be a hidden recovery partion on the HDD. Would it be possible to create this on the istalled SSD? If so how would I go about creating it and to ensure that it is hidden. Also what F key would need to be pressed for this to start? Or is this not possible and Am I just showing my age 😊?

Ernie

billsey

I assume you mean SF314-511. :) The option should be on the Main tab:

The recovery partition is part of the stock software load. You can see it using Disk Management, typically as a about 1GB partition in addition to the 100MB EFI partition and the system partition. Most Acer products get you to that using Alt-F10 at startup.