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Copying HP Factory Image to an ISO?

ShadowProphetShadowProphet
in Hardware

I recently picked up an okay-ish HP Pavilion desktop, one of those machines that, on their own, aren't too spectacular, but can be easily upgraded to something fairly decent. It came with a WD Blue 350GB HDD, which I intend to replace with a 64GB SSD and a 2TB HDD. The 350GB HDD still had the original factory installation of Windows 7 on it and even had the Factory Reset partition. While I intend to install Windows 8/10 on it and download the drivers for the parts on their own, I'd still like to have that factory image around for good luck or whatever.

I have a SATA-to-USB thing that I can use to plug the HDD into my laptop, and I can then view all the partitions of the drive, but I'm a bit apprehensive about what to do from here.

Do I just open a program to make ISO files and tell it to make an ISO from the factory partition? Would the factory image know if it had been put onto a flash drive and refuse to work? Would it require itself be on the main hard drive of the system?

Comments

  • ChesterCarlNiro_pi_pewChesterCarlNiro_pi_pew
    edited February 2018

    You mean like using a LiveDVD to copy the directory or even, if you know what you are doing, something like this?

    • blkid | grep "[Rr][Ee][Cc][Oo][Vv][Ee][Rr][Yy]"
    • # verify a recovery drive or whatever it is labeled
    • mount -vvvv /dev/backupdrive mnt/hd
    • # mounting as vfat allows Windows to use it as well;
    • # just make certain there is enough free space
    • cd /mnt/hd
    • # Now back it up as
    • # a mountable image
    • #
    • # szPartBs is the block
    • # size of the original partition;
    • # /dev/recoverypartition is the partition
    • # mentioned in the aforementioned blkid command;
    • # Win7RBak.img is random name that you are able
    • # to use or change at liberty (match name to your OS;
    • # it avoids confusion
    • dd if=/dev/recoverypartition of=Win7RBak.img bs=szPartBs
    • # Now it is saved as a backup you can mount or inspect with
    • # WinImage or another utility, I think; if not, you can mount
    • # it in Linux or FreeBSD
    • #
    • # DO NOT ATTEMPT WITH A NTFS FORMATTED DRIVE AS
    • # YOUR BACKUP DEVICE AS CERTAIN NON-WINDOWS OR
    • # NON-NTFS SYSTEMS PROBABLY WILL FAIL TO COMPREHEND
    • # THE DRIVE!
  • Windows7User2010Windows7User2010

    I was going to point out, in Linux, you can make an image of the recovery partition onto another HDD (disk image file) by selecting the partition, clicking on the menu icon (three horizontal lines), and selecting create disk image. It'll ask you where you want to save the file at (make sure your HDD that's the target for writing the disk image file has enough space, mounted, free from errors, and can be read and written.

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