does the asus recovery cd erase everything?

"Recover Windows to first partition only" Does that delete everything in the partition? :[

 

Yes. It restores the HD to the factory state

 

is there anyway i can... not delete everythinG? ;/

I really need to know now! im sitting here refreshing this page.

 

If you need to create a backup but your HD isn't booting, you could try booting into a working OS session via a Live CD. For example, the Ubuntu Linux desktop installer is a very powerful live CD that essentially runs the entire operating system streaming off of the CD, a swap partition (if available) and RAM.
From that point, while your optical drive will be in use, you can quite easily back up to a flash drive or an external hard drive.

You might even end up becoming a Linux convert, which is of course my secret agenda here
Really, though, it helps and has worked for me a few times now. There are a few other live cds out there, some even built specifically for this type of job, but I do recommend Ubuntu's since it is a full and very easy operating system, thus helpful for many tasks. (And its helpfulness has doubled with the last release, since it can now write to Windows' NTFS partitions! Hooray!)
Oh, and it comes with some fun games to pass the time

 

LINX!

I really dont want to convert to linux, working with xp-vista-mac is enough of a head scratch, but saving my documents after a os failure sounds interesting

 

Hehe, no problem. I won't pressure.
But yep, since Linux tends to be memory efficient compared to its competition (which conveniently has resulted in much more meaty hardware becoming standard), doing this is very possible -- even with fancy composited desktop effects, which help reduce the stress of the whole ordeal.

A quick tour of places you may be interested in to do this type of stuff with Ubuntu's live cd:

-Burn CD, boot from it, choose "Install or Run Ubuntu" in the menu (first option). Booting will take longer than usual since absolutely nothing is known or remembered about your system; be patient. Do not ever remove the CD! In theory, since it's running off the CD and in RAM, a hard shutdown should not kill anything, but it is best to just not take the chance. The shutdown process has a step where you can pull the disk out, by the way, so no need to rush at it before the power clicks off.

-First off, there are two panels in the Ubuntu desktop. The top one and the bottom one. No need to explain how awesome they are (they are, though), but the important thing to know is that you have a menu on the top left (like a Start menu; you have Places, Applications and System - which has preferences and administrative tools).

-Wireless hardware should (hopefully!) be recognized. Some newer Intel cards are not, however, but that shouldn't be a concern for this stuff. Mind you, there is no telling when Asus will use an Asus wireless card, and I have had some significant pain with those things on a desktop. I recall swearing I would never buy Asus again, actually. Hm... good thing I forgot that! The Notification Area on the right side of the top panel has a Network Manager applet. Hover the mouse over it for tooltips, click on it, etc. - I am sure you can figure out how it is doing. If it is clearly not working wirelessly, a wired network is (of course!) plug & play.

-Firefox is your web browser. It is in the main menu, under Applications->Internet, and I believe there is a launcher on the top panel as well. (It looks like the Firefox logo!).

-Mounted drives appear on the desktop, usually on the left side. Kind of Mac-ish, really. As a rule, do not expect to be able to pull them out as soon as the file manager says it is finished writing to them. Ubuntu, by default, uses a cache sort of deal to write files to external drives when resources are free, (whereas Windows just pumps it all in at once), so you have to unmount them manually first! Right click on the drive (pretty much anywhere it appears) and choose Unmount or Eject. Wait until it disappears or a notification comes up saying that it may be removed. Unfortunately, the computer cannot sense your thoughts so, while one usually only makes the mistake of not unmounting once, that first mistake can occasionally be quite unforgiving.

-The live CD should also automatically find and mount your various hard drive partitions that it can read, such as the Windows system directory. The file manager is pretty self-explanatory. Mounted drives are also listed under the Places pane in there, and in the Places menu. Double click to open them up on the desktop, or open them in the Places menu.

-If you want to play with partitions, the live cd is a great way to do so since nothing in the hard drive (except maybe a swap partition) will be mounted. There is a program called GParted, available under System->Administration in the main menu. It may also be titled "Partition Editor". Difficult to explain its interface, but hopefully you can work it out. Switch devices with selection box near top right, partitions listed throughout most of the rest. Context menus are big here. You can also mount partitions via GParted.
Beware, however, that playing with partitions can be dangerous as Hell, particularly in a relatively unstable live CD environment. If you were to feel that disk, you would understand why; there is no telling when it will just start melting (disclaimer: mine never has, even after 24 hours of continual use). If you really need to do some partition fiddling but want to be a bit more safe with it, (eg: No backups, somehow still trusting of a free partition program with a boring name), I recommend the GParted Live CD; it is much less memory intensive since it only does a single job, so can be quite a bit more stable feeling. (Not that Ubuntu's is unstable - the installer does partitioning with GParted quite successfully - just that GParted's is less so!).
Note that, if a swap partition is mounted, it can be unmounted via the context menu but doing so will lose most settings and things installed during the session. (Although it is incredible to note: Everything stays stable! In fairness, it probably wouldn't if we just killed the partition unexpectedly).

-There is a search tool, but it is unfortunately not a regular search, but a "smart", indexed search engine like Google Desktop. To search for odd files in weird places, the standard GNOME Search Tool gets the job done much better than Tracker or Beagle, (which are the defaults in Ubuntu), since it just searches the dumb way that requires no indexing. Press Alt-F2, (run program dialog) and type gnome-search-tool. There you can select any place to search in, and set a few filters for what to find. Useful for navigating your Windows data.

 

Use linux with NTFS support (ntfs-3g; e.g. the so-called System Rescue CD) to copy all the data files from C: (/dev/hda1) to D: (/dev/hda2 or /dev/hda5 depending on setup).

Then recover to 1st partition only.