system restore

[carlos-67]

how much cd/dvd space will i need to make a system restore disc. i just got this laptop and want a backup disc. just in case my hardrive crashes.

[WAWood]

@carlos-67

Hello;

Allow me to welcome you to the HP forums!

The HP Recovery Disk set is three DVDs and a drivers/utilities CD -- so that implies you will need the same number of disks to make a backup.

Making backup "disks" is long, tedious, and risky -- as any scratch to ANY of the disks renders the whole set unusable.

Why not go with a USB stick instead?  A 64GB stick will give you more than enough room and is more robust than a set of disks.

Also, I personally prefer to use third-party Recovery solutions as they tend to be both more flexible and more reliable than any built-in solutions.

Macrium Reflect (MR) provides a FREE version that can be used to image and restore partitions or entire drives: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

What I recommend is the following:
1) Download and install Macrium Reflect (MR)
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 or USB stick
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 WinRE, 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 or USB stick in only a few minutes.

Good Luck