Recovery CD
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A recovery CD is a CD-ROM (or, more recently, a DVD data disc) that is included with many PC computers manufactured by OEM companies which run under Microsoft Windows. The recovery CD or DVD contains a complete copy of the entire contents of the hard drive in its factory default state. Computer manufacturers provide the recovery CD so that the end user can quickly and easily restore their system to its factory default state without having to worry about installing individual pieces of software or device drivers. However, users must be aware that the recovery process may involve destroying all information they have added to the hard disc.
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[edit] Experience
For most recovery CDs, the user needs to configure their system to boot from CD-ROM. In the early days of recovery CDs, before computers were able to boot from CD, manufacturers included a floppy disk containing the software used during the recovery as well as device drivers to access the CD-ROM drive. Today, all recovery CDs use the bootable CD method to start the process.
Most often, after booting, the user is presented with a welcome screen with copyright information. Upon continuing, the user may be presented with one or more license agreements for the various software that is bundled onto the CD.
After license acceptance, the user is warned that the contents of the hard disk will be erased and that the original factory contents of the disk will be restored. Once the user confirms this (some setups may require two or even more confirmations to make absolute certain this is what the user wants) the process begins. From here on, it is mostly automatic.
Typically, if the disc uses an imaging program, the user will see a progress indicator showing approximately how much of the image has been restored. On modern CD-ROM and hard disk systems, recovery can take only minutes, restoring a few GB at a rate of perhaps 15 to 30 GB/hour (in 2006). After the image has been restored, the system will reboot.
Some systems at this point are finished, and will boot into Windows first startup, requiring the same user actions as when the machine was first set up (for example, Windows XP's "Out-Of-Box Experience" Wizard, which walks the user through product activation, registration, and user account creation).
Some IBM systems, at this point, will run several scripts to automatically reinstall and reconfigure the system.
[edit] Advantages of recovery CDs
The primary advantage of a recovery CD is ease of use. Since most typical users will not wish to go through the process of reformatting the hard disk manually, installing Windows, installing any necessary drivers, then installing software applications one by one, the recovery CD allows all of this to be taken care of automatically. The CDs that use a hard disk image are by far the simplest; the end result is essentially an exact copy of the contents of the hard disk as they were when the computer shipped.
Another advantage to recovery CDs from the point of view of the manufacturers and software authors is distribution control and license compliance. Since many CDs contain simply an image of a hard disk filesystem, it is usually not feasible to extract individual software applications from the image for installation onto other computers. On top of this, most recovery CD's are software-locked to run only on a machine of a specific type. Since there is no copy of an actual setup program for the various software on the system, it is very difficult to transfer that software to another machine. Due to this, many manufacturers are omitting copies of product CD's in favor of the single recovery CD to prevent unauthorized distribution of preloaded software.
[edit] Problems with recovery CDs
The most notable problem with the use of recovery CDs is the lack of actual software discs with the machine. Some systems come with merely a recovery CD or DVD, and no other media whatsoever. While the recovery CD is convenient, it does not allow any latitude for power users and experienced technicians to customize the installation process. One common complaint among power users of OEM systems is the very fact that they can come loaded with so much software. Some users wish to begin with a fresh install of Windows and, from there, install only those applications they need to install. A recovery CD prevents this type of activity since, as stated above, actual copies of the software installation CDs are not typically included with systems using a recovery CD. For these users to perform such activities, they would need to purchase new licenses for any software which came bundled with their system, just so that they could obtain an installation disc for that software.
Another potential problem with a recovery CD is hardware changes. If a user purchases a system, then over time replaces or upgrades components in the system, the recovery CD may fail to install drivers for the new hardware.
[edit] Custom Recovery CDs
The advantages of a recovery CD can be had, without the disadvantages, by using disk imaging software such as Norton Ghost, Acronis True Image, or others to create a bootable image of the machine in the desired initial state. For example, a user can install their own licensed copy of Windows XP, install all device drivers for their hardware, install other desired software, and possibly most useful, configuring the system with all the users settings for email accounts, passwords, etc. This does require the purchase of software, and the limited expertise necessary to install and run it. It has the advantage that the process is not dependent upon Microsoft Windows; a machine running almost any operating system can be imaged. The disadvantage is if you make changes to your system or settings in any way (i.e. you change e-mail accounts, you replace some hardware, and so on) you'll either have to produce a new recovery disc, or remember to re-perform all those steps after using the recovery disc.
[edit] Alternative recovery procedure
As of 2006, the size of the recovery image of a machine with significant installed software is becoming too large for a CD; even a DVD may be too small. Hard disks are so big that a recovery image will take up only a small fraction of available space. An alternative recovery procedure that is used increasingly is to store a recovery partition, with exactly the same image as would be stored on a CD, on the hard disk. This has the major disadvantage that, while it will recover from a data corruption problem, the recovery partition will be lost in the case of a hard drive failure.
