Is it possible to backup the hidden vista partition onto dvd?

[richyyun]

Shift is not shipped with any cd/dvd for system recovery
In case of hard drive crash, how are we gonna restore the system?
Is it possible to make system recovery disks by ourselves, just like what sony has been asking their nb buyers to do (to burn recovery disks by themselves)?

[gavmiller]

I think you could backup the restore partition to a DVD using something like Acronis Trueimage and then use Partition Magic or similar to delete the partition and extend the primary partition into this space increasing its size.

To be honest you may be as well do a full image onto another harddisk as a backup and have a suitable Acronis or similar bootdisk to allow a full image restore if the worst happens.

[blitzspear]

I have used BartPE to boot off an external USB DVD Writer.

From within BartPE you can then use Ghost to capture the ENTIRE drive.

The ***Hidden*** restore partition cannot be see by anything, not ghost, not partition magic, not acronis, it simply is not there.

My belief is that this is due to a BIOS restriction and the FN+F3 boot that does allow the restore is either.....

1. A special mode where the bios can see the hidden partition
2. The actual recovery image is on a separate flash area that we can't see.

Either way having the ghost will recover the hard drive.

I have installed both XP and Linux on the Shift and still been able to reboot, press FN+F3 and do a vista re-installation.

This makes me believe the image is on a separate flash device that only the BIOS section can see.

Hope this helps.
Blitz