Windows 7 Protecting Recovery files in W7

[meridius10]

I have recently acquired a new Toshiba laptop. The HDD is divided into:

C drive
D drive (Data)
SYSTEM RESERVED (not sure what this means - only viewable in defragmenter)
Q drive (Office 2010 Click to run (protected))
E drive (DVD)

The D drive has the files:

HDD Recovery
R16067NH.tag

I was advised to hide the files, but this makes no sense to me as a user might format the D drive and hey presto, no recovery files. These files are accessible through F8 options on boot, should the user not have their recovery disk.

I am looking at protecting these files from accidental deletion but still keeping them visible to the user in the D drive. Any ideas?

 

[patcooke]

There will be a built-in utility to burn bootable recovery disks from the recovery partition. You should burn at least two copies of these and keep them in separate places for security. You could then, as I have done, remove the recovery partition if you wish and use it for additional storage.

 

[meridius10]

Yeah, but then I won't be able to use F8 to reinstall from the recovery partition, if the disks become misplaced, which is why I am looking to prevent the file(s) being deleted for my reasons above.

 

[Saltgrass]

Was this system new or had someone altered the normal install from the factory?

I always thought the recovery partition was labeled as such and may even, in some circumstances, be formatted with a different file system.

How large is the D: partition?

You don't happen to know anyone with the same type computer you could check their configuration?

Have you checked the files to see if they are Read Only?

The System Reserved is where the boot files are and should be marked as active and be around 100-200 mb.

 

[meridius10]

Hey Saltgrass, Good series of questions which made me think again.

It was my mistake as I actually can't fully delete 'HDD Recovery' and had made a mistake in testing, although I think it is possible to delete 'R16067NH.tag'.

These are both in the D drive (labelled as Data) which is a 233 GB drive and includes a 13.6GB Recovery folder ('HDD Recovery'), although I am guessing that if I formatted it, I could still delete it?

Is there any way to set things up so I get a Folder Access denied msgbox "You require permission from SYSTEM to make changes to this folder" in relation to 'R16067NH.tag' (whatever it is...)?

I just want to make sure all this is sorted in my mind before transferring my data over and if it is possible to prevent this file being deleted (as is the case with 'HDD Recovery'), that would be very useful for me.

The laptop is a brand new Toshiba and is at factory settings.

 

[whs]

How about imaging the system to an external disk. It is a lot easier to pull an image in than to reinstall in case of disaster. And if you like, you can image the recovery partition too - although that one I always delete after I made a couple of images. But do NOT use Windows imaging. Use free Macrium or free Paragon - they are much more reliable and flexible. But move the bootmgr first from the 100MB system partition (or the recovery partition if you have a Dell) to C using EasyBCD. That makes life a lot easier.

 

[patcooke]

I applaud your efforts to maintain a secure system and being prepared for possible problems but do feel you re making things unnecessarily difficult for yourself. I keep full sets of secure recovery disks and have reassigned recovery partitions as I mentioned earlier. I also, as whs suggested maintain the most recent three versions of a backup image of my system drive (I use Acronis TI) on an external drive. This is most economically and effectively done if you limit your system drive to the operating system and install apps, using a second data partition for storage of all user data. This should ensure that you never need more than about 40gb for your system drive which will generate compressed images of about 20gb. With all this in place you can feel confident in recovering your system from any problems - without need of a recovery partition at all.

 

[meridius10]

As a temporary measure, I have hidden the folder and file. Luckily the 'HDD Recovery' folder cannot be deleted normally. I don't know what 'R16067NH.tag' is or if it is related to 'HDD Recovery'.

This is a flawed design by Toshiba. If they would have placed this folder/file in a separate partition like the Q drive and denied access, it would have been a better solution.

The only solution I can see, if this is possible, is to repartition the drive by reducing it to 20GB for the existing recovery files and then having the other 213GB as a new partition for my data.

I have created backup disks and my data is not that important to me at the moment. I will look into Acronis if this becomes necessary in the future.