Talk:Recovery disc

This is a very Windows-centric article. -Mardus 11:31, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

It is also completely unreferenced, and may also contain "original research". -- Northgrove 08:54, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Suggestions for improvements
Overall, the most clear feeling I get when reading the current article (2007-05-07) is that I'm almost always confused if the article is talking of OEM recovery CD's, disk images, or possibly third party recovery CD's like SystemRescueCD, etc. Perhaps a major reorganization for a section per recovery CD type would be better... -- Northgrove 09:16, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Include the concept of third party recovery CD's not from OEM's, and not necessarily just for Windows. There are for example a wide range of *nix-based recovery CD's that support NTFS and are thus cross-platform recovery CD's. There might be a need for quite heavy revisions to the current material for this, as it seem to assume that this article is almost all about OEM recovery CD's for Windows.
 * The section "Advantages of recovery CDs" really only seem to be talking of Windows? And a quite specific kind of recovery CD at that?
 * IMHO, the section "custom recovery CD's" is a bit "strange" in that it talks of disk images, which while they can perhaps be used as recovery CD's (although I've never heard of anyone doing it), is perhaps better off used as disk backups or other things like test environments and efficient OS installations. It's important here to make the distinction of backups and recovery CD's. A backup is usually not even a CD. And the difference is that backups don't try to recover current data; it simply replaces current data with more or less old data. The "hard" part a recovery CD does is to try recover current data. A backup / disk image completely side steps that issue because it's not part of their design, which may sometimes be what you're after, sometimes not. If all you want is to apply recovery tools to a busted system, you're perhaps better off first trying to use a real recovery CD first.
 * The section "Alternative recovery procedure" is somehow tied to the section "Custom Recovery CDs" in that it still talks of those full disk images and backups, not recovery CD's that tries to recover data.
 * Does anyone else get the feeling that the section at the end named "Aftermarket Recovery Cds" is a shameless plug? Tvynr 15:18, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, I was being bold and renamed some sections, and also moved out a paragraph out of the OEM section, as it ought to be general enough to apply pretty much everwhere (about that recovery CD's being bootable). Here's my changes: Revision before, revision after. I didn't change section text so now they might talk of "recovery CD's" in general when it's more about a special case with OEM CD's, so that should probably be changed later. I also doubt the "Recovery to as former state" should stay at all in the article, but I felt removing it altogether on the spot could be a bit aggressive. -- Northgrove 09:28, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Removed text
This had been added to the end of the article. I removed it en bloc as unencyclopedic, but reproduce it here in case there are bits of it that could/should be useful:

After reading the above article i am listing some more sources of after market recovery cds, restore disks, and many other items that seem to fall into this category. There is confusion between a disk image restore CD or disk and a system recovery cd or boot disk. A disk image recovery cd is the sort of item that Dell or acer have embedded onto your drive. This is a compressed image of the whole of your operating system including windows drivers and preinstalled factory software. Upon activation it will decompress and install, this will overwrite the whole of the usable part of your system.The results arethat this process has reset your machine as though it was just purchased. The downside this is that it will require your license key (situated on your machine) and it will also destroy any data on your system. These types of recovery cds don't try and repair your system they just completely restore it. So these are really restore disks. A recovery cd should try and recover or repair your system, these are also called boot disks.

86.136.251.18 21:57, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

confused as to why the after market stuff keeps being reomived, surely its very relavent? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.9.90.162 (talk) 14:51, 21 January 2008 (UTC)


 * It's written like an advertisement, I may rework it in somehow, but for now... ViperSnake151 16:00, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Removed a bit of misleading text saying that HP and Gateway offer non destructive recoveries, HP hasn't since 2007, and there was no citation for Gateway. ~The Anonymous 03/09

When did vendors start doing this?
I think it would be mildly interesting to point out when vendors stopped including recovery CD/DVD media and required users to burn their own recovery disks. Judging by one of the units I have, toshiba stopped in about 2005. 203.91.84.7 (talk) 08:01, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Could someone add material on "Recovery USB flash drives"?
These days there are some laptops that come without any DVD/CD drive. The only recovery option is to use an external drive of some sort—and users might prefer using a USB flash drive to using some other kind of external drive. Could someone add a few words on this option? I'd attempt it myself, but I'm not qualified to do so. Thanks. W.F.Galway (talk) 15:35, 6 August 2010 (UTC)