how to get my recovery d drive back?

One thought on “how to get my recovery d drive back?”

1. Steve says:

   January 19, 2010 at 8:04 pm

   Review one of the following HP manuals for the ‘HP Pavilion dv4-1125nr Entertainment Notebook PC’ and ‘HP Pavilion dv5-1125nr Entertainment Notebook PC’ for a possible solution —

   http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c01662115.pdf

   http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c01597750.pdf

   http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c01662219.pdf

   This section from the manual MIGHT answer your question —

   "Recovery Manager works from a dedicated recovery partition (select models only) on the hard drive or from recovery discs you create."

   "If your computer includes a solid-state drive (SSD), you may not have a recovery partition. Recovery discs have been included for computers that do not have a partition. Use these discs to recover your operating system and software. To check for the presence of a recovery partition, select Start > Computer. If the partition is present, an HP Recovery drive is listed in the Hard Disk Drives section of the window."

   Since the manual says that these laptops (as of the print date) have one of the following drive capacities: 120GB, 160GB, 250GB or 320GB, I would first check to see if the capacity of the C:\ partition matches what you were led to believe is it’s capacity. You can use this conversion tool to help — http://webdeveloper.earthweb.com/repository/javascripts/2001/04/41291/byteconverter.htm

   If it is 10-20GB less than it’s noted capacity, I imagine you have a hard drive partition which includes the default software setup, but is unmounted and hidden (since the average person shouldn’t remove it) – though I may very well be wrong — especially reviewing the manual excerpt. You may want to search your laptop for this software (as noted in the manual): **** ‘Recovery Manager’ **** and read through the above manuals and attempt to create a recovery disk, then backup your current system BEFORE attempting a ‘restore to factory settings’.

   See — http://www.pctechbytes.com/2009/08/01/hp-recovery-cd-creation/

   Or — http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&cc=us&docname=bph07143

   I’ve used another partition manager in conjunction with an OS loader – Ranish Partition Manager with XOSL — http://www.ranish.com/part/ It has been many years since I’ve used them, but I know you could unmount and hide partitions, though this had to boot from a floppy (or USB drive) or load before Windows did, if I remember correctly. It is not a very user friendly application, despite what it can do. Though there is documentation.

   In any case, I hope the manuals and the ‘Recovery Manager’ software fix your problems.

   Hopefully there is another piece of software that is more user friendly to allow you to create a Recover Disk and restore your laptop, if ‘Recovery Manager’ isn’t available.

   Maybe this — http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

   or this — http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities/partitioneditors.shtml

   or especially this — http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Simplest-Way-to-Unhide-a-Hidden-Partition&id=497809

   see ‘ptedit32.exe’ and ‘PartInNT.exe’ (run as administrator) near bottom — http://mirror.href.com/thestarman/tool/FreeTools.html

   CAREFULLY read through this — http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/partitions/partition_types-1.html — or through some of the links here — http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/partitions/partition_types.html

   Hopefully you read as much as possible (and do a full backup), if it is necessary for you to take these measures to restore your laptop.

   Again, PLEASE do a full backup, in case any of my suggestions are ill-informed or you hastily make a change to your partition table!

   This might be a last resort — http://www.hprecoverycd.com/, though I hope HP could offer it to you for far less — http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&cc=us&docname=bph07143

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