A guide on how to create a recovery partition

Jiffyman

Jiffyman

New Member
Many a time I have had to do a reinstall cause one of my experiments went wrong or because I got loads of spyware and viruses. Maybe you've have had to do a reinstall just because you felt like it.

Anyways I'm just going to get to the point.

First off create a partition of any size that you'll need it to be.

Second you need a copy of Norton GHOST 2003 installed on your computer. The reason I say 2003 is because if you have a version below 2003 it won't work with XP. You must also legally own a copy of GHOST 2003 to add it as a plug-in to your bartpe cD

Third you'll need BART's PE builder. Build your own PE with the Norton Ghost and The Bart PE installer plug-in enabled here is a guide on how to build your own and customize it. http://www.irongeek.com/i.php?page=videos/barts-pe-builder-intro

Third After you have BART PE built you'll have burn it to a CD. Put the CD in your computer while windows is running and if have your CD set to auto run a go menu should pop up on top of your start menu. Click it and goto system>Bart PE installer v2 set the source path to you CD drive in my case it is D: and set the target path to you second partitoin for me its E: Then the installer should have a fifth option choose it and select option 1 DO NOT install option 2 which is to edit the boot.ini file I'll get into this in the 4th step.

Forth after the files are done copying to the second partition you can now download grub which is a boot loader http://linux.softpedia.com/progDownload/GRUB-for-DOS-Download-3507.html
Copy the GRLDR file to your C: drive and rename it ntldr and rename the regular ntldr to ntldrxp now you'll have to make a file called MENU.LIST IT IS VERY IMPORTANT that you make this file before you restart or your computer will not boot here is how I made mine

color black/blue yellow/cyan
timeout 5
default /default

title Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate
find --set-root /ntldrxp
chainloader /ntldrxp

title Recovery (Created by Geofferey Eakins)
root (hd0,1) /minint/setupldr.bin
chainloader /ntldr

After which you can use ghost to make the backup to the second partition and everything should work. When you boot the BART PE environment you have the options in the go menu to restore the backup under GO>PROGRAMS>GHOST. I hope this guide was worth the time and I hope it helps peeps out. If you have any questions or comments post them in this thread.
 
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Here is a screen shot of my data recovery system.

DataRecoverySystem01.jpg
 
Really ya think it's a good guide? Thanks for posting on this one I've been waiting since I wrote it to see what people thought and if they would try it out. As for installing the Grub boot loader it really wasn't that hard if you know what your doing thats why I wrote the guide.
 
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ya really its not a bad idea I guess, but keeping your back up on the same drive never really seemed like a good method to me.

Also, you must legally own a license of most PE apps if you load the plug in. You need to make people aware that they should read the barts PE FAQ about software licenses before they try and make a disk.
 
Cromewell said:
Yes it's easy enough but if you make a mistake you've got problems ;)
Click to expand...

Yeah you do have a good point cause I messed my computer up because I tried to see if the boot loader even worked and I did not add the MENU.LIST, but luckily I had already made my ghost backup before hand and used the BART PE cd I made to restore it. Thats why I made it very clear that you have to make a MENU.LIST file with the oses in it like the one below.

tlarkin said:
ya really its not a bad idea I guess, but keeping your back up on the same drive never really seemed like a good method to me.

Also, you must legally own a license of most PE apps if you load the plug in. You need to make people aware that they should read the barts PE FAQ about software licenses before they try and make a disk.
Click to expand...

Well you can put the backup system on a second drive, but for me I had to put the backup system on my second partition. If you want to put the backup on a second drive you have to make these changes to the MENU.LIST file highlighted in red. If anything goes wrong with the first hard drive where the Boot loader and boot.list files are located you can always use the BART PE cd you made to restore tha backup.

color black/blue yellow/cyan
timeout 5
default /default

title Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate
find --set-root /ntldrxp
chainloader /ntldrxp

title Recovery (Created by Geofferey Eakins)
root (hd1,0) /minint/setupldr.bin
chainloader /ntldr

that should be it as for the FAQ I'll post a link when my dads name server is working again.
 
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