Shoutbox

Dear all,

I have a question:

Is there a way to re-format my acer laptop (with recovery or anything else) without losing my partitions?

I created two partitions off the C:/ drive, so am not sure if i can restore windows without losing them (and their contents) !

Your help and enlightenment is much appreciated.



Thanks,
Ahmed

what are you trying to do/achieve?

i am trying to install a fresh copy of Windows Vista on my laptop.

But, in the same time, am reluctant to use the recovery option, as i want my partitions to remain untouched, actually, i have no idea weather it will happen or not, am not familiar with acer

I am having second thoughts that it may disappear and all data on it will get deleted when recovery happens !

So am kinda concerned...

do you have a copy of vista? or just a recovery/restore disc?

with a vista disc it is possible to install whilst leaving one partition untouched. you'd have to move the things you want keeping onto one of the partitions. as you'd have to format(delete) one of them to do a fresh install (unless you have space for a third partition, in which case you leave the first two). not sure with a recovery disc, if possible

why do you want to install a fresh copy?

I don't want to install a fresh copy now.

I was just wondering how things would be done, in HP, i recall there was restore factory original, and another option that only re-installs Windows, and keeps all other partitions intact.

Was wondering how things are on acer...

Considering your question, no i don't have a vista disc, and the laptop doesn't ship with any too. Recovery is done from the 'hidden' partition and thats it i guess...

Well actually with every OEM, you are able to burn your own set of recovery discs for safe keeping, in case something happens to your HDD and the recovery partition gets corrupted. I'd suggest you take advantage of that.

As far as recovery goes, every single one I have seen while working as a computer tech was a destructive recovery, meaning the partition tables are recreated (bye bye partitions, hello fresh install).