SRS5 is not working - Should this bother me?

Greetings fellow Knights of Laptopland. I have come from over the seas and have fought many monsters and strange creatures. The latest monster I was forced to put to the sword was Samsung Recovery Solution 5. The reason for this was that I had to fight a terrible battle which involved a migration of OS from C to D drive. Let me back up (ho ho) to explain why, I stupidly downloaded a language file and followed an online instruction to use Vistalizator to change my OS language into English. This was very foolish indeed. It caused a need for a restore with SRS5 which restored the System however for a reason that I do not understand installed it on my old HDD instead of my SSD, where it was running previously.

Due to this I used EaseUS Partition Master to migrate the OS from HDD to SSD. This was successful and I now enjoy the great speed of SSD yet again. Now, thanks to the legendary and gallant Knight Dannemand I was aware that the aforementioned procedure would destroy the F4 link. Due to my greater need for the SSD to be the active OS source I underwent the OS migration anyway. Besides I have a Samsung Recovery Media disc so if I ever need to install the F4 link again presumably using the disk would do so (?). I still have the Samsung_Rec partition, it is just on its own partition now (which has no drive letter assigned) so SRS5 will not find it.

My question is should I try to undergo the procedure to restore the F4 link and make SRS5 active again? After all I have other back-up software. I suppose the easy functionality of just pressing F4 is faster than having to install via Samsung Recovery Media disc or using other means (btw which would be the best recovery strategy?). Nevertheless I would be quite happy to forego the use of SRS5 if I can use a foolproof 3third party software that enables me to back up and restore System and Data in the way that SRS5 did.
After all I still have the Samsung_Rec Partition and a Samsung Recovery Disc. Should I really try to put the F4 link back? Is it worth it? And if so how should I do it?

If you can take some time to ponder these questions of great importance I shall be in your debt.

 

Provided you use SW Update's Export function to make a backup of all the Samsung drivers (a time will come when Samsung might delete the files from their server) which you store alongside the recovery media disc then you can forget about SRS.

The one possible thing that you might lose is any paid-for third party software that Samsung included with the computer and would be in the factory image but not in offered by SW Update.

John

 

Thanks John, just to double check SW Update refers to Samsung Website? About the drivers if you have an image of a working system do you still need to collate the drivers just in case?

I can live without the Samsung third party software I think. In terms of back up strategy however what is your favoured approach? Do you use third party software or Windows itself (manual or schedule)? An image or a different type of file? I read some like to have two external discs which are exact clones at all times, would that be overkill?

 

Well, the gallant knight is in much agreement with the benevolent king ( ): You don't have to worry too much about what you are missing, particularly in the case of SRS5. It contains (1) Windows 7 software, which you can freely and legally download from Digital River anyway and install with your existing Product Key, (2) Samsung Win7 drivers for your model, of which you can download newer versions using SW Update anyway, and (3) the aforementioned 3rd party software (such as the CyberLink suite).

SW Update is NOT a reference to Samsung's website. They stopped posting driver updates there a couple years ago. Rather, it is a utility (downloadable here) which fetches drivers from a Samsung database. It detects the model and OS on which it is installed, and can automatically install appropriate drivers, making new Windows installation very easy on Samsung laptops (use this Win7 install guide). Or it can save/export them locally for later use. Some time after a model has been released, Samsung's unfortunately stops updating its driver list in SW Update. But it lets you hunt for newer versions by looking up other models using the Find Model feature.

Getting Recovery working on a HDD/SSD after cloning with EaseUS is impossible in most cases: The only way to create a working SRS5 (with the F4 link intact) is by using a so-called Admin Tool USB, which had to be created from within Recovery while it was still working. The process requires wiping the HDD/SSD and creating an empty Recovery, then restoring a factory image onto the Recovery partition afterwards (or restoring file and folder contents from the original Recovery partition). This guide summarizes Recovery backup and restore for both SRS5 and SRS6

Your Samsung Recovery Media disc is most likely just a Win7 OEM disc, and does NOT contain the Samsung Recovery Software.

In your case, I would just delete that Recovery partition from the SSD (to where it was cloned with EaseUS) and Extend your Windows or Data partition into the empty space. If you ever need it (for whatever reason) you should still have a working Recovery on the original HDD, as long a you do not disturb the Recovery partition on it -- OR its partition table, which contains the F4 link.

If you really want to get Recovery working again on your SSD, you can make your original HDD primary and F4 boot it to create an Admin Tool USB (or download an ISO of SRS5 Admin Tool from member dosibox's post here). Use this to create a new Recovery on the SSD (wiping the drive in the process) then copy files and folders from the original Recovery partition (on the HDD) to the new Recovery partition (on the SSD). Use this post for guidance. Once you have a working Recovery on the SSD, you can use it to restore the factory Windows installation.

As for general backup, I use an old partition imaging tool to save images of my Windows partition (and DON'T let it touch the Recovery partition) and FreeFileSync to backup data files to an external HDD.

 

Verily, good Dannemand you are a light, a beacon in my dark ignorance. I now understand that my Win 7 Recovery Disk only contains Win7 and will not be a real recovery of all that was on the Laptop on delivery, such as the recovery partition. That would be far too simple and obvious, rather Samsung want to make my life a bit fun, what darlings they are.

I also understand now that images of Windows System and backing up data on a single external HDD is sufficient. Now that am I naked so to speak, without the fig leaf of SRS5 covering my shame I really am concerned to ensure I have iron-clad back up. But as far as I understand there is no alternative to the F4-SRS5 restore that provides a system restore as easily, it is a question of doing regular images and backing up and if worst comes to worst popping in an Win PE disk followed by an image followed by data, or using the Samsung Recovery Disk followed by image and data. No more one button comfort lane restore for me (Unless I undergo the root canal of recovery partition clone, image restore etc).

What about your famous adding of the boot file from recovery partition to the Win start menu, is that not another alternative or did that not work in the end? Another one I heard about is assigning a drive letter to the recovery partition starting a recovery booting file and then start SRS5 and the latter was supposed to recognise the recovery partition again. Also unworkable?

I am looking at the options right now and I think a sensible recovery strategy may be the way to go unless a simple F4 revival is doable. What in your view is the best course to follow if one day my RF711 again decided it would not boot windows, to pop in the Win PE or the Samsung Media Recovery disk, always with a view to retaining as much of the data, apps and settings? I am thinking perhaps the Samsung Recovery disk and then an image from an exernal HDD? I am just terrified I am going to do something stupid again and there will be a need to do a recovery of the whole system yet again, but next time around there will be no helpful F4 button to press for a quick restore.

The annoying part in all of this is that I first had just a HDD, then I got the SSD installed and they also put my old HDD back in, so I had the SSD as C and old HDD as E drive, but then after the times of trouble when I used SRS5 to restore it put the OS on my old HDD (but I still had Windows files on the SSD as well). I then backed up the SSD on an external prior to the OS migration from old (new) HDD to SSD. So now I have the SSD as my new C drive with System files, the old HDD with system files and the external with the old SSD system files. When I do an image recovery with Windows I back up 160 GB because it takes the 3 System partitions and backs them all up. I am wondering if this will cause issues if I ever have to use a back up image. I would really like to delete the system files on the old HDD, I suppose I could do that?

 

I'm away from my pc, so this will be a fast one: You are right, you can add Recovery to the Windows boot menu with EasyBCD. That works too, I forgot about that. That DOES require adding a drive letter first, in order for EasyBCD to see the boot image on the Recovery partition. Often Windows removes that drive letter again on subsequent boots, but you can still boot Recovery as long as that menu entry is there.

And that way you can get into Recovery to factory restore and create an Admin Tool.

That said, I still wouldn't worry much about SRS5, for the reasons I mentioned earlier. To be sure, it's easy to factory restore. But then you have a bloated Samsung installation with outdated drivers that need cleanup and updating.

For most people who lose their SRS5 Recovery, I'd recommend clean installing Windows, then save an image backup of the Windows partition. Better investment of one's time.

SRS6 is another matter, since clean Win8 ISOs are not publicly available.

 

Thanks Dannemand. I understand then the best way forward is to clean install windows and and then re-install a previously saved image from a back up on an external HDD. Time allocation was one of my primary concerns here. You've really helped to make me see what is the best option. Thanks again for your time.

 

To supplement Dannemand's comprehensive responses I would add that my backup strategy has two main parts (i) I use separate windows and data partitions and the latter is backed up by a simple copy paste onto an external HDD; and (ii) I use Acronis True Image to make a backup image of the whole drive also onto the external HDD. As extra redundancy, I have two external drives (2 TB USB 3.0) in circulation.

Windows doesn't fall over as often as it used to 10 or 15 years ago, but redundancy in backups is prudent. These days the biggest hazzard is on the user side of the keyboard.

John

 

Thanks John, this is actually one of my main concerns, how to develop a proper back-up plan. I understand then that you have two partitions on your main internal HDD or SSD, one with windows and one for data and that you back up the data with a simple copy and paste on an external HDD. May I ask why youse Arconis to do the backup image and not Windows? When you say you have two externals do you copy only data on them as back up?

I read about someone who has two external HDD and clones his C drive on both, which seems safe but maybe overkill.

 

It's actually more than 2 partitions for historical reasons with all except the Windows partition being data that is easy to copy. Some, but not all, of the files on the C drive are also copyable which is why it is best to use another program to do the copying when Windows isn't running.

I've been using Acronis for years. Primarily for cloning drives but also for making backup images. All I use is the bootable flash drive and don't normally have it installed because it then sits in the background trying to be clever. This approach also means that I've not got my data in files created by some notebook-specific backup system which could be an obstacle if one discovers a few years later that something is missing. The best approach is to create an image of the whole drive complete with the partition structure and boot files which is why the 2TB drives are useful and have room for plenty of backups.

Why two drives? Sometimes my work takes me travelling so one of the backup drives goes with me in case I hit a problem and one stays at home. Normally, backups should be done on alternating drives so there is a little time to discover if anything has gone wrong before overwriting a good backup with a bad one.

John

 

Speaking of software doing funny things, the day before yesterday I switched on my laptop and suddenly found a bios type message from EeaseUS Partition Master saying "the cloning was finalised successfully". This was quite spooky as I had done the cloning two days before that. I have Ease US PM on my laptop, maybe I should put it on a usb stick. To cap it all today, this morning, AFTER I had done the successful OS clone my laptop booted, but from the old HDD which I had left in third place in the boot priority and had not erased. I have now erased this internal HDD and will use it to back up the back ups on my external 2TB HDD until get another 4TB external HDD soon.

I have to confess I don't see how you can do a backup with Windows not running, do you have to go into BIOS or how do you do a backup without the OS? I discovered that EaseUS Todo Backup saves backups in a proprietary format, so that you have use it to restore the backups as well, and I am not so keen that. I do agree that an image of the whole drive is the best way to go, it just takes up so much real estate. I have spent 1300 Euro on 13 external 2TB HDDs for my sat receiver recordings and just found out they fail after 5-7 years. Just had one fail on me the other day. I am now looking to save photos and the like at least on M-Discs, the only fool proof long-term guarantee of data retention I am aware of. Again, very expensive though.

 

My Acronis images use their own format. However, all my data is also stored outside the image files. The images are for ease of restoring the computer should an unwanted event occur.

How many operating hours have those external drives done in their 5 - 7 years before they start dying?

I've just pulled a 10 year old 60GB 2.5" HDD (originally an internal driver and then put in a USB enclosure) out of my drawer and plugged it in. It still works. It might have clocked up 2,000 hours of everyday usage before getting superseded. Once in the enclosure if only gets used if I'm looking for something.

I prefer HDDs to tape (the only other very high capacity option) because tape drives and formats are viariable and some people make a good living by recovering data from tapes for which the drives have died. However, even my HDDs sometimes die. I've just tried a 1.4 GB drive from the past century and it made some interest noises from clunking heads but couldn't read the data.

John

 

When you store the data outside the image file do you do by hand, ie copy and paste, or how do you do that?

How long do hard drives actually live for? | ExtremeTech

I switched on my laptop this morning to find a windows bootloader message asking me to pop in the Win 7 disc. Erasing the old HDD with System yesterday obviously caused some issue, though it should not have as I had changed the boot priority. It is almost as if this Bios has problems recognising an SSD. What fun.

 

Yes, simple copy > paste (or more precisely drag and drop in the Totla Commander program I use). It takes longer than writing images but one can get on with using the computer. Once a backup disk has been written then new backups are faster because I copy the files to the same folders and select Overwrite if older, which means that anything that hasn't been updated doesn't get rewritten.

Thanks for the interesting link on the HDD longevity. My drives never get to the usage level where they start to physically wear out.

John

 

Thanks for the intro to BCD editors. On the Visual BCD website going through the how to section I also found this nugget:

http://www.boyans.net/CustomActions.html

This would suggest that you can in effect create your own boot shortcut, so losing SRS5 could become less annoying. Quite a project to create that shortcut though.

 

I use EasyBCD and cannot speak to other BCD editing tools. But they should all do the same thing, editing the BCD store. I was not aware that you can add keyboard shortcuts too, but I assume the result is the same as if you simply add a boot menu entry as previously discussed. That procedure is described in this post.

On the backup question, I am (again) in much agreement with John: I make image backups of my Windows partition by booting something other than that Windows installation. In my case I have a small 8GB XP partition added to my boot menu; but if need be, I can boot a USB stick and run my imaging tool from there. My Win7/8 partitions are just 48GB, and the images are usually less than 10GB (Win8.x is more compact than Win7). I don't include hibernation and page files in the image.

All my data files are on a separate Data partition, so I can swap Windows images in and out as I like without affecting my data (including going back to an earlier backup if things get messy, or switch between Win7, Win8 and Win8.1 installations).

For data backups, I too prefer regular file copies (similar to the copy-paste mentioned above) but I use a sync tool so that only new or changed files are copied. Deleted files will also be deleted on the backup drive, but they stay in the Recycle Bin, along with old versions of changed files. For many years, I used Microsoft's SyncToy, but have since switched to FreeFileSync (an open source tool) which I like a lot.

Personally, I would get rid of EaseUS: As you found, it runs in the background even when not used. I don't know what it does there, but I don't want it. It is also quite spammy and somewhat difficult to completely get rid of.

The boot issues you ran into may be caused by your boot partition and disk being different from your Windows system partition: The BIOS Boot Priority page determines which disk is booted. The partition on that disk marked Active (Bootable) determines which partition is booted (normally a small Microsoft Reserved partition, so-called MSR). And the BCD store on that boot partition determines which Windows installation is booted (of potentially several).

When you cloned your HDD to your SSD, then changed BIOS to boot the SSD, it is quite possible that the MSR there still pointed to the Windows partition on the HDD. A good cloning tool would make sure to update the partition IDs to avoid this. But again, EaseUS is NOT a good tool if you ask me

When you clean install Windows, Setup will add the new installation to any existing MSR if that partition is still active. If you install onto a blank disk Setup will create a new MSR and make it Active. Otherwise it is important to specifically mark Active the partition you want as your boot partition. I prefer having a self-contained, bootable Windows partition (no MSR) which requires creating the partition before giving it to Windows Setup.

Note that all of this applies ONLY to legacy BIOS/MBR setups (which I believe you have). On UEFI/GPT setups it's different, and all booting goes through the EFI Syste partition (so-called ESP).

 

Thanks for reposting that post Dannemand, it may come in very handy if I continue to have booting trouble, I just did not close down the laptop all day to have some use of it during today.

My Win7 image is gigantic, 120 GB, mainly because Win 7 somehow included the previous orginal HDD system files (which I had not deleted at the time of the image) and another drive where I had saved the previous backup of the system, in fact my SSD, but when it no longer ran as active OS, it's all a confusing mess I know. That was another reason I deleted the original HDD, that the image somehow grabbed all Windows files, even those on another drive, apart from the problem of having my laptop boot on the original HDD yet again despite the EaseUS OS migration.

I have to say I am a bit disappointed with EaseUS because after the OS migration I again got the DOS "file migration has finalized" message two days after it was done, that was really concerning. Then indeed it has processes running at when it shouldn't, I disabled it for start-up with msconfig but it is persistent. The proprietary format of the back-up is not something I expected either. Still, it did the migration I suppose. I just find it so odd that the laptop is working great for a few days and then all these things happen, EaseUS message, booting from the wrong drive, not booting at all. If something went wrong, you'd have thought it would cause an issue straight after the OS migration.

Thanks for the explanation of why the boot issue arose. I still find it odd why the laptop booted entirely from the orginal HDD instead of the SSD, after booting fine from SSD, it's as if BIOS didn't find the SSD one day, which is just odd. You're quite right that I have the old BIOS not UEFI. I have to say I am completely perplexed now as I have just checked what partitions there are with EaseUS and I get the following:

Disk 1 (MBR), ie my old HDD, has three partitions, including a System partition. This perplexes because I had formatted the old HDD. I thought all files would be gone. However, they are not, the Samsung Rec partition is still there, as is this old System partition.

Disk 2 (MBR), the SSD, has two partitions, System (capacity 20GB with 30MB used). My guess is Windows did not fix the problem and I am going to spend another morning battling with my laptop.

If I have to do a clean install of Windows do I understand you correctly that I should delete the old HDD System partition and completely wipe the SSD so it is blank when I install Win 7 on it? With EaseUS I can see that the System partition on the SSD is marked as "Active", the system partition on the old HDD says "System".

Should I perhaps try to create a new BCD store rather than go for a fresh install? I'm not 100 per cent what I am doing with BCD editors. Bear with me if my next reply takes a bit longer than usual, as I will have tried to reboot, my next reply could take a while as I may not get the system to work again, I may have to go for a clean install. Thanks for all your comments.

 

In your situation, I would do a new clean install onto the SSD. Specifically regarding your partitions:

1) I would NOT delete partitions on the HDD, particularly if your Recovery is still intact on it and you care to preserve it. Just leave it. Ideally, disconnect the HDD while you install and connect the SSD as Disk 0 (so the HDD becomes Disk 1 when you re-connect it later).

2) Make sure the SSD is selected as Boot Device in BIOS. If you select the DVD as boot device, Setup will try to guess which disk is your boot device and may choose the HDD (if it's still connected). Of course also disable Fast BIOS/Fast Boot and enable AHCI if your BIOS has those (you can re-enable Fast BIOS/Fast Boot when everything is up and running).

3) Boot your Samsung Win7 DVD by tapping F10 (maybe Esc on your model) immediately after power on to select the DVD as boot device. If you miss it, just power off and try again.

4) On Windows Setup Advanced page, delete all partitions on the SSD and create a Windows partition of suitable size: Again, mine is 48GB, because all data go on a separate Data partition. If you have large games or other big apps, you may need a bigger Windows partition. On relatively small SSDs it makes sense to just have one big Windows partition and keep data there, instead of wasting space on multiple partitions (which all must have some free space). Regardless of how big you make the Windows partition, Setup will insert a small Microsoft Reserved partition (MSR) in front and make it the boot partition.

5) When asked for a Product ID, use the one on the Windows seal underneath the laptop or on your power supply. You don't have to activate yet (you have 30 days after completed installation).

6) Once everything is up and running, you can create a Data partition in the empty space.

7) Finally (after a few reboots) re-connect the HDD, which should now no longer disturb the boot process.

Beyond this, use the exact steps in this Windows install guide. Particularly, make sure you save WiFi drivers on a USB stick or memory card before you start, since Win7 may not have built-in drivers for your WiFi adapter. Or you can just use LAN (cable) until everything is up and running. Some prefer saving all drivers beforehand, while I prefer to let SW Update automatically install everything except the specific drivers mentioned in that guide.

 

Thanks, Dannemand, the Windows install guide is extremely helpful, particularlyas regards what SW shouild not install. Whilst I have now booted the laptop twice without problems, except for slightly increased boot-up time (though that may have to do with the new programs I installed) I may well not be able to avoid doing a clean install. Though the Windows repair appears to have fixed the boot issue for now I now get the sound you get when you connect a USB device, this du-dum sound, constantly. I can not seem to trace what causes it. It is as if something is trying to connect to a USB slot and failing always yet trying again.

I will then leave the old partitions on the HDD, they don't take up much space anyway. I was just concerned the System partition may seduce the BIOS again.

I always left DVD as the first in the boot priority though I knew this would increase boot time, now that you clarified that BIOS can sometimes guess wrong I will ensure to change the boot priority to put DVD in third place on my next boot.

My images were all done either with the old HDD running as OS, or post the OS migration to SSD, so I suspect none of them will be of any use now, that I am running the OS on SSD and have found that the BOD Store had issues. An image restore is not really an option, is it, it would have to be a clean install?

 

There are other devices using the internal USB bus.

Search through Device Manager to see if there is anything of interest.

John

 

Thanks, John, that did the trick regarding stopping the USB sound. I searched through device manager and saw a yellow mark.Bizarrely though windows event viewer was talking about hard disk the device was a card reader I had connected to my usb hub. Once this was removed I have had no more sounds.