Recovery Drive

So this laptop came with the main partiiton and a recovery partition. I had at one point turned off recovery but have since turned it back on. How can I make sure it's using the recovery partition to save the restore points? I see absolutely nowhere to set which drive you want to use. Thanks guys as always!

If you type ... Backup and Restore ... in the start search you can bring up the window. Click on Change settings and pick the drive where you want it stored.

That's for the backup settings. I am looking for the recovery settings which are different aren't they? I'm talking about where you set the system restore settings for a drive.

Press "Windows Key + Pause" then goto "System Protection".

On a side note Windows System Recovery has nothing to do with the Manufacturer's Recovery Partition.

1) What if I don't have a Pause/Break key? LOL

2) Y'know that makes sense because if I make the Recovery partiition not active, the machine won't boot.

Type system in the search box and select system from Control Panel option. This will take you to the same place as "Windows Key + Pause".

The manufacturers recovery partition generally doesn't even show up as a drive letter. That is where they store the OS rather than give you DVDs. I'm not sure how you would enable or disable that; the most I ever did with one of those is remove the partition and recover the space.

Sorry I couldn't help.

That would explain why a) I didn't get a disk and b) when I killed that drive by deleting the partition and marking it inactive, I no longer could boot. LOL!

Ok so it looks like the recovery settings can't be modified to point to a different drive (like backup can). Oh well. It was worth a shot. I just hate the idea of it constantly putting more crap on my main drive. Bleh. LOL

If you haven't had you computer long, you can still make recovery discs, eliminating the need to rely on that recovery partition. Refer to your owner's manual for details. It will usually take around 3 to 5 DVD's (the non-rewritable ones), and about an hour of your time. This way, you don't have to rely on that partition at all.

I used to be a firm believer in having that recovery partition, but it's a waste of a valuable primary partition for me, as I need three or four for my OS's.

A solid backup plan is far better than those recovery partitions are. With Acronis True Image, there's a recovery manager, all you have to do is press F11 prior to the boot options being displayed, and you'll be led to recovery. But I've not yet had to revert to it yet.

The best thing that I've found the recovery partition for is to "start clean", and revert your computer to factory settings. But the discs will do the very same thing.

Cat