What to do with an empty Recovery folder on FACTORY_IMAGE (D:)?

[WAWood]

@tpannone 

Just wanted to finish with a few comments:

The HP Recovery Media does not make the Recovery partition useful again; instead, it completely reformats the drive and recreates it -- but it erases everything else in the process.  So, it is not really a way to get that partition back.

The only way I know to make HP Recovery Media, other than the Cloud tool, is when the Recovery partition is intact -- and I would not do that myself as I have a basic mistrust of built-in recovery solutions as I have found them to be generally unreliable.

Instead, what I recommend is following the instructions below to create your own recovery media:

I prefer to use third-party recovery solutions for the following reasons:
1) More flexibility and reliabilty -- can make recovery media as often as you like, not restricted to one attempt, which if it fails, then you are stuck.
2) More media options -- can create media in DVD, USB stick, or external drive format
3) Mounting option -- can "mount" the save images as virtual "drives" and extract individual files and folders
4) WinPE boot option -- can install a special boot option that allows you to boot to recovery information and do a repair or restore from there -- when Windows will not boot

What I recommend is the following:
1) Download and install Macrium Reflect (MR) from here: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
2) Run MR and choose the option: "Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows" to write a full backup to an external drive, USB stick, or DVDs
3) Use the option to create a boot USB stick or CD

My experience is that MR, when using the High Compression option, typically can compress the saved image file to about 50% of the USED space in the OS partition. This means if you have an 80GB OS partition, and 40GB is used, MR only needs about 20GB to store the image file.

I use this all the time and it typically takes less than 15 minutes to do the image backup and about the same time or less to do a restore. Plus, MR has the option to Add a Recovery Boot Menu entry. This allows you then to boot into WinPE, and you can then use that to do a restore -- when you can't boot into Windows!

NOW, you have the means to restore a full working system from the external drive, USB stick or DVDs in only a few minutes.

Good Luck

[tpannone]

Understood.  So now I have a 8.84GB partition (D:) that I can do whatever I want with.

Thanks for the assist.

[tpannone]

Hi WAWood,

That's great information, thanks.

[Prométhée]

Yes, but again this is another topic, why not just talk about it in another thread ..
There are a number of solutions, in order to create a system image
It seems to me that I have even seen software that allows you to use an option such as a recovery partition.
But sometimes, a good and fresh installation can also be very useful!

I used all three options and in some cases the installation by re-branding everything from the beginning and more suitable!