Recovery for netbook?

I just got this sony vaio M netbook and i want to create a recovery dvd but dont have an external optical drive. however the provided manual suggests that i can create a recovery partition instead!! but doesnt tell me HOW?? So can anyone please help me????

Also, actually the manual says HOW TO RECOVER YOUR SYSTEM FROM THE RECOVERY PARTITION.
and then it goes on and says press F10 etc and select RESTORE C...
i hope u get i mean! Jus help me with this recovery partition!

 

Sony ships with a hidden recovery partition, the F10 command is how you access it when booting the computer.
You'll won't be able to "see" the partition, but you can estimate about 10GB is allocated to it and not available for your storage needs.

 

Thanx a lot mate! There is a lot of memory which is hidded.. around 30 Gb in my case! Must be for that hidden partition!
Jus one more question, is it absolutely NECESSARY that i have to buy an external optical drive to prepare the recovery disc or is it okay to rely on the hidden recovery partition???

 

Usually about 10GB is what your recovery partition takes up, the rest in your programs and OS that are installed.
The only drawback to relying on the hard drive version is if the hard drive fails... then you'll need the DVDs.
Have done it both ways on computers I've owned. Just luck of the draw, one of mine that failed I had the back-up DVDs for it.

 

In my experience it is definitely worth making the recovery dvd's. In fact I would recommend making 2 sets on different makes of media.

 

Are there any other computers where you live as you could network both computers together and use another computers optical to burn your recovery discs. After that i'm not sure if you put the files on a usb drive and boot of that in event of.

 

Well i do have a desktop with xp pro and a sony optical drive in it! But u'll have to explain the process!! I'm really not good at it!!

 

There are Howto's on networking XP and Vista systems. I'm sorry but I don't have a link, unfortunately. It's a bit of faffing but it can work well in the end.

 

I used remote desktop before to burn some discs when i had problems with a laptop recognising some discs.
However, i was using a laptop with a wireless connection.

There are possibly other ways to do this as well but i've never tried those methods.

Make sure you've called your computers two different names and have a password on both.

Select also allow this computer to connect to any version running remote desktop.

As you want to use your desktops dvd drive you set the connection from your desktop and input your netbooks sign in details.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/...ther-computer-using-Remote-Desktop-Connection

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/mobility/getstarted/remoteintro.mspx

Click on the links at the bottom of the page to expand them. This can be used for both W7/Vista as i've just tried it. It's been so long that i've used XP that i cannot really advise about setup using XP.

 

Thanks a lot Rachel!! I'll try it out and let u know how it goes.

 

I just thought about this again and it won't work that way. It just dawned on me that it worked for me because i had a physical drive even if i never used it.
You might possibly be able to do this using a virtual dvd drive. Look into that some more.
I'm going to move this for you, you might get more responses in another forum on this board.

http://www.virtualcd-online.com/index.cfm

Alternatively go on ebay and buy yourself a very cheap internal dvd drive and convert it over using a usb enclosure. This is probably the cheapest way to get a dvd burner.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Sony-DVD-RW-L...pAccessories_LaptopDrives&hash=item415038f69e

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=250653445341&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT

^
Find one that ships to your country though but you get the idea.

 

I guess thatz a better option. I mean buying a dvd drive. infact i was able to find this samsung external dvd writer which i think is quite affordable!!
But anyway, thanks for all help.