Although I have put my best effort in portray the process without errors I cannot assure that it is error free. So please BACKUP YOUR DATA BEFORE DOING THIS.
Motivation
I am writing this to keep a written and visual log to install & restore my Acer Aspire One and to make it available to all you folks.
Previous thoughts
I bought an Acer Aspire One netbook, the one with a 160 GB HDD, 1 GB in RAM, I'm pretty happy with this machine for one thing that I hate (no offence on it, to clarify), is that it has MicroSoft Windows XP Home Edition (thanks to God that it has no Vista nor 7 OSes) as the de facto operating system. In my country, Mexico, there is almost no way to get a Linux-based netbook (unless you ask for it specifically in a specialised store). When you unpack it you have to live with this OS, and as the MicroSoft EULA states, when you unpack, and boot on it... It bounds you to their legalese and all that tiny print maze that constitutes their EULA. Not for me... I have lived (almost) without Windows for four years and I have no plans to install it back.
Unfortunately, almost all the people in this country use the MicroSoft OS, so I decided to take the risk of making a dual-boot system in this machine, installing a Windows XP Professional and the Ubuntu Netbook remix as the systems of choice. Reading the manuals of the netbook I learned (inferred) that it has a hidden partition to recover the system. Handy, isn't it? For me is a hassle... Who, in this world, hides the recovery partition in the same drive that you use in a daily basis?
But as far as I know there is a limitation to create the recovery disks... You need an optical drive to burn them (specifically an usb-DVD or CD burner), and I have no external drive that meets the specifications nor the intention of buying one (for me they are being starting to be more and more useless) unless you want to have a mile-length pile of toasters, only avoided if you use a RW optical media. So I get stuck in a dilemma: buying an expensive toaster-maker or use my imagination to overcome this limitation.
Later on, goggling I have found some solutions, but there are some drawbacks in trying to install all the data.
The four ways to backup the restore partition
- Buy an expensive toaster-maker, namely a CD/DVD-Writer or tell some friend of yours to borrow one. For the non tech savy. Not an option for me any more .
- Emulate the CD/DVD-Writer through software. Not an option until otherwise proven.
- Do it the Linux way. For the tech savy, this includes using the command line and downloading a partition, but it seems to be the less painful path.
- Do it the Windows way. For the (less) tech savy, but in the end it will require a physical optical drive because it creates a BartPE unless you are willing to create an USB-based XP installation (which hopefully, I will cover later on another post), and it is somewhat tricky.
I have tried some CD/DVD Writer emulators, such as TotalMounter from KernSafe which can be downloaded from here to no avail. It can fool some of the windows software, but for Acer eRecovery Management suite it simply doesn't works. Trust me, I have been pestering and sneaking around on its large (read with sarcasm) Settings options for a week (read with more sarcasm). As far as I know there is no other program that emulates this: Being a CD/DVD Writer. If you know of another free option, just lead me with a link in your comments. There appears to be a hardware check/challenge that this TotalMounter cannot overcome, and therefore it cannot fool Acer eRecovery Management software. The reasoning behind this option is that if I was able to emulate a CD/DVD Writer I will be able to obtain some ISOs images of the disks, namely the factory defaults CDs/DVDs, and the Drivers and Applications Disks. Not feasible, until otherwise proven.
Next, doing some Gooooooooooooooogle research (being each 'o' an hour spent, just kidding), I found a leading page at Andrew Beacock's Blog. He detailed some of the tools that allowed him to make the partition images.
After too much wording, let this craze begin. I will advise you that it will involve too much work and patience to do this, so do this when you have a BIG TIME to spend.
- The standard way
- Software that you will need
- Things that you will need
- Getting to know each other
- Let's image the partition
- Saving partition considerations
- Saving the Master Boot Record
- Building a Linux based disk (also known as: The Linux Way)
- Building a BartPE Windows disk (also known as: The Windows Way)
- Testing the Linux based disk
- Testing the BartPE based disk
- Restoring the saved image
The standard way
Fire up the Acer eRecovery Management application, pretty user friendly... Select the first option, that will make the factory settings disks
Here is the proof that the Acer eRecovery Management cannot be fooled. The unit used was a borrowed one.
Starting building the first recovery DVD
The program uncovers the hidden partition that you have on your HDD
Estimated time to completion
Verifying the DVD
First DVD created...
Starting the second recovery DVD
Testing the second DVD
The second recovery DVD finished
Creating the drivers and applications DVD or CD
Starting, the drivers and applications
Testing the drivers and applications DVD
Drivers and applications ended
Software that you will need
- CPUZ, from http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php
- Macrium Reflect Free Edition, from http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.asp
- BartPE, from http://nu2.nu/download.php?sFile=pebuilder3110a.exe, to build the BartPE based CD
- MBRWizard, from http://mbrwizard.com/download.php
- UNetbootin, from http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/, it's up to you to decide the Windows or Linux flavor
- Damn Small Linux, from ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/damnsmall/current/current.iso or another distro of your choice.
- A pendrive, mine is 4GB (I you have two it will be better, because you have to create them only once)
- An spare external hard disk drive, mine is a 2.5" HDD enclosure with the previous disk of my laptop
- A desktop or laptop computer
- A netbook, or our "victim"
- The will to stay seated for a long time
- Patience, a lot
Getting to know each other
Well sort of that. Here is a visual dump of the machine that I'm working on, taken with the aid of cpuz. Having said this, let's take a closer look:
Showing up the CPU
Showing the caches
Showing the mainboard... please note the chipsets present
Do I have to explain it?
Showin SPD...
Showing GPU
And finally... the last tab... About.
XP Home Edition: I probably have no harsh complains if it were a Windows XP Professional or Corporate Editions
Let's image the partition
- Download the Macrium Reflect Free Edition (MRFE, from now on).
- Install it in your netbook
- Take a time to read the help file, remember RT*M
- Lets image the partition
- Fire up MRFE
- Plug your external USB-drive
- Let MRFE scan the drives
- On the menu bar select Backup > Create Image > "Next" button > Tick "1 - PQSERVICE" box > "Next" button > Click on radio button labeled "Local Hard Disk" > Browse until you find your external USB-HDD (mine is on letter "E:", set it up to you accordingly) and place it on a directory (step almost not required, but for organisation purposes, I have chosen a directory called cryptically aao) > "Next" button > "Advanced" button > on the hierarchical list select the item called "Compression" > And in the "Compression level" drop-down list select "None" > Click on radio button "Make an exact copy (clone) of the partition(s)" > Move to the hierarchical item called "File Size" > Click on radio button tagged with "Automatic (NTFS, FAT32, DVD, CD) (Recommended)" > Click on "Ok" button, at which the windows will just close > Click on "Finish" button, the window will close and another dialog box will appear > Leave as it is or mess around (at your own risk) with the options > Click on "Ok" button.
- Let MRFE work on imaging the partition, it will take about 4 or 6 minutes to complete
- In the meanwhile you can go to the bathroom, make some coffee or light up a cigarette, ask for one or two rotatory debuggers (formerly pizza) via telephone or hug your SO.
- Wait for the dialog command to inform you that the imaging process have been terminated, hit the "OK" button
- Click on "Close Button"
For the visual ones here are the screenshots
Firing up MRFE
Where do you have to click, at left side of the image
The MRFE wizard, first dialog box
Selecting the partition to image
Selecting the disk where do we want to save the image files. Note the different options, use them at your own risk.
A previous report before imaging, please note the "Advanced" button, you maybe will need it.
Messing around with the advanced settings, first part
Messing around with the advanced settings, second part
Messing around with the advanced settings, third part
After messing around with advanced settings
Backup Saving options
MRFE at work
MRFE telling us that its job is done
Saving the partition considerations
There is an inherent upper limit for the FAT32 filesystem (The maximum possible size for a file on a FAT32 volume is 4 GB minus 1 byte (232−1 bytes). Video applications, large databases, and some other software easily exceed this limit; larger files require another formatting type such as NTFS), so is better to let MRFE decide which is best. You can also choose the network folder option, as Andrew Beacock suggest, using a Network Attached Storage - NAS, for short - (with the inherent risks detailed above, plus if you do not own the NAS you cannot tell if the filesystem has itself a size limitation and the transfer times involved, but if you want to use it anyway, use at your own risk), but they are intentionally left out from this tutorial.
Saving the Master Boot Record
Saving the Master Boot Record (MBR, for short) is pretty easy. Just shell out to the command prompt (Start->Run->cmd.exe or Windows Key+R) and navigate to the folder containing mbrwiz.exe, and do the following on the command line:
mbrwiz.exe /list
Look for the partition number of the PQSERVICE partition on the disk (this can be identified by it's type, which should should be type 12 or D), although it does not display its name. Also note that the rest of the disk is formatted as a NTFS partition.
Be sure that you are located on the C: disk. (Note for the next image: Here I saved the MBR from another disk, so to be sure, unzip the file that contains MBRWiz.exe on to your hard drive). The process is the same, just type
MBRWiz.exe /save=C:\acer_aspire_one.mbr.
If you want to unhide the partition under windows just type the following: mbrwiz.exe /part=x /type=7d where 'x' is the number identified in the first command in this section.
Building a Linux based disk (also known as: The Linux Way)
There is no trouble with creating the Linux-based MRFE recovery disk. It's requires just to hit a button, saving (yes, saving, the ISO image that you will be using) in a known and safe place and voilá you've got it. We will return to it later, when testing and recovering. Save it for now and let it settle for a while.
Selecting the creating rescue disk wizard
Selecting the creating rescue disk wizard, Linux option
Saving the linux based rescue wizard
Linux based rescue wizard at completion
Building a BartPE Windows disk (also known as: The Windows Way)
Building the BartPE based recovery disk is a bit tricky. You need to install the BartPE Builder (Sorry Vista and Windows 7 folks, there is not such tool for those operating systems). You will need to grab the BartPE builder, install it, and let MRFE do the job. Just to test it I will let it create the disk in the standard mode, and show you some of the drawbacks. I have to say that when you start to create the BartPE based disk, your antivirus maybe will complain about changes made to the registry. I am not quite sure if it is its normal way of work, but I have tested the md5 hash with the one provided on the BartPE website, and they match. It will take about 2 to 5 minutes to complete. The first steps deal with the process involved with creating a standard BartPE disk, and the next steps deal with creating the modified BartPE disk (by MRFE) as far as I know they are different.
After you have downloaded the BartPE package, you will need to install it
Where do you want to install the BartPE PE Builder package?
Shortcuts? Well, I will be formatting the netbook, so install them anyway.
Desktop icon?, same as above....
Before installing anything, check it for a the last time...
Installin in your netbook, quick process, it takes for the installer about one minute or less
After installing, besides of the recommendation of the installation program, I restarted the netbook (as if one more boot to MicroSoft Windows will do any harm)
After rebooting, I fired up the PE Builder program, accepted the license... (another license? I hate windows programs, they have a bunch of licenses, most of them not enough clear for me... for the Linux world, there are the standard OSI approved licenses, so you have to read them once, and forget them, just for commenting...)
The most algesic (painful for the lore) Search for windows installation files, just click "Yes", in this particular netbook the program will be able to find them in one or two minutes.
Searching for Windows installation files window...
After finding them you will be presented with the option to build an standard Bart PE, so for testing purposes I will let BartPE Builder build it. The resulting CD image will be about 170 MB vs. the Linux based one, that it is only 7 MB.
PE Builder will ask to create a directory to create the ISO image, let it create the directory
Here comes the legalese, accept the standard Windows License
Building the image, the real part, take notice that it pops some Warnings, BartPE will stop if there is a file missing or there is an error.
Showing the warnings, and finding the log...
Take a close look at the OEM warning... You have been advised
Showing the warnings, modify if there are some problems for you
Close BartPE Builder, fire up the MRFE rescue wizard and select the directory where you have installed BartPE, it will act as a plug-in
Chose the BartPE installation directory
MRFE will copy a custom made menu and inform it to you... Close now MRFE, after this message box and restart BartPE, make another image and you have it, the MRFE Windows based rescue wizard... Tricky isn't it?
Testing the Linux based disk
For this I will state this: Try this if you want, this is an optional step in this tutorial, but for the sake of completeness I will show how it is done, so you won't be surprised by the dialogue boxes and have no idea what to expect about them. I already have a working installation of qemu under Ubuntu Karmic Koala, which is my main OS. As a hint, I use the shared directory as the network share, and you have to install it accordingly. The installing and setting up part of qemu will not be covered here, because it will make an even larger post.
After booting MRFE's Linux based CD on qemu
Please note that you will need to map the drive, just press "Map share"
Values required into quemu to map the share
After mapping successfully the share under qemu
We can view the image previously created
Select the image
Select the disk. Please note that in this emulation the HDD where do we want to work is only 10 GB.
Select for this emulation, the primary partition
Just press next, here you can resize the partition on the target drive, but I really do not advise this.
Verify the image, good idea but, it will take a long time... so you have been advised
Replace the MBR, as we are just emulating here we can chose replace with the one on the partition
Verifying the filesystem integrity at reboot... good idea, let's play with it as it is an emulation
Ready to verify and restore
Verifying... will take a lot of time
Testing the BartPE based disk
For this I will state this: Try this if you want, this is an optional step in this tutorial, but for the sake of completeness I will show how it is done, so you won't be surprised by the dialogue boxes and have no idea what to expect about them. I already have a working installation of qemu under Ubuntu Karmic Koala, which is my main OS. As a hint, I use the shared directory as the network share, and you have to install it accordingly. The installing and setting up part of qemu will not be covered here, because it will make an even larger post.
After booting MRFE's BartPE based rescue CD, emulated on qemu
Let's configure the network and fileshare support
Configuring the network, it will take about 15 minutes or so
Installing TCP/IP support for the network and fileshare support
Network almost configured, please observe that BartPE's network configuration script complained about that there was an error (NET HELPMSG 2221 refers to a non existent username). As it is an error triggered because the qemu configuration we can proceed further.
Starting the MRFE menu
The MRFE menu showing
Mapping the network share
Values required to map the network share on BartPE's based rescue disk
Starting the restoring wizard
The standard MRFE image restore wizard
The share that we have just created showing on menu, after selecting, it will show the images available
Select the partition that you want to restore, in this case PQSERVICE
Selected...
Select the target disk, in this case as above, is just an emulation, so I formatted a 10 GB drive to work on it
Primary partition, comments about this steps are just on images above
No resize, play with it if you want
Check the filesystem integrity at reboot
Verify image before restoring
Replace the MBR with the one stored in the backup
Previous step before starting to verify and restore, comments above...
Verifying...
Verifying, It will take about one to two hours...
Restoring the saved partition
After this convoluted process you finally have the images ready to work on them. Here we will use the last tools, to say the a GNU/Linux ISO image, the Linux based image of MRFE (I will try to make a complementing post for the BartPE based image later, if feasible) and the UNetbootin package. Here I just will show the process of making a UNetbootin bootable image and the fdisk (under the package cfdisk, present almost on all distros) process. For the restoring process I used an external USB-drive which show on the My Computer treeview (this avoid the need to map a drive).
This involves the next steps
- Create two linux pendrives, with the aid of UNetbootin, one with the MRFE linux image and the second with the Linux distro of your taste, the one presented here is DamnSmallLinux
- Boot with the pendrive holding MRFE Linux based disk, plug your external drive
- Boot with the pendrive holding the other distro (this may be an aditional step, but I really do not know if MRFE contains cfdisk or even fdisk, neither found the root's password on this custom made distro), change the partition types to the ones described above and shutdown
- Restart your computer, paying attention to the defaults described below, and press Alt+F10
After starting up UNetbootin
Select the ISO image, select the thumbdrive and click OK
Let UNetbootin work
UNetbootin finished, just click on Exit
The process is somewhat similar to the one described above where I emulated the restoring process. Just keep sure that you meet the next requirements:
- The BIOS under its Main tab has an option to make the SATA mode AHCI versus IDE. Be sure that is under AHCI (Remember that Windows XP does NOT support natively the AHCI drivers, unless you build them in a BartPE image. Note to myself: another post is coming...)
- When restoring, be sure to replace the MBR with the one present on the MRFE's image.
- Be sure that you delete the remaining partitions after restoring and set the second partition to HPFS/NTFS (this can be done via any GNU/Linux as specified above) and make it bootable.
- Boot up with the pendrive holding the Linux distro, in this case will be DamnSmallLinux
- Shell out to the prompt
- Enter root mode by issuing sudo su and start cfdisk by issuing cfdisk /dev/hda
- Select the second partition by moving around with UP/DOWN keys
- Select the [New] option with the LEFT/RIGTH keys and hit Enter, select [Primary] then hit Enter. Take up the remaining space by hitting Enter again
- Select the [Bootable] option, hit Enter in this option to make it bootable
- Select the [Type] option, hit enter
- When asked which type of filesystem, type 07, and hit enter
- Move to the [Write] option, hit Enter, and enter yes when required
- Exit by selecting [Exit] and Enter
- To shutdown your computer type shutdown -h now
- When asked, remove your media and hit Enter again
Select the path to shell out to a command line interface
Select Exit to prompt
After sudoing to su (sudo su) and selecting the primary drive via cfdisk /dev/hda, and selecting the second partition
After selecting the partition
Selecting the type of partition, please note that the cfdisk program makes a type 82 partition by default.
The NTFS type selected
Making bootable the partition
Before committing the changes
Reboot, press the Alt+F10 and wait for the Acer eRecovery Management to restore the partition, it will take about 20 minutes or so.
Final thoughts
Although a convoluted process, it is feasible to backup the recovery partition on an Acer Aspire One. The part when we saved the MBR is to have a backup file to restore it if something goes really wrong, but for the options selected here it seems to be quite safe to left this out. The entire process will take about 3 to 5 hours depending on your expertise. Gathering the entire process took me about 20 days or so, and for the time spent making it, I hope you wil find it useful.
PS: Be gentle with some grammar mistakes and typos spread here and there. English is not my mother tongue, so if you stumble upon a grammar mistake, just let me know, and I will correct as soon as possible. Also forgive the language mixing on some images, but my system was in Spanish.
