As you know, unfortunately the "OSes" of the Windows family are not particularly stable in operation. It is they who are most exposed to viruses or malware, as well as unforeseen malfunctions, which often leads to extremely sad consequences when the system becomes impossible to boot. And Windows 7 is no exception. The creation of a Windows 7 recovery disc will help here. How to do this in several ways, we will now consider.
Windows 7 Boot Issues
As for the reasons that can affect the performance of Windows 7, there can be a lot of them. Despite the fact that of all the OSs of this family, the “seven” is one of the most stable and secure, however, and it is not immune from such cases.
Speaking about boot problems, they can conditionally be divided into two main categories: software failures of the OS itself and hard drive malfunctions, including system errors. Quite often, such situations are associated, say, with virus attacks, the influence of malicious codes, improper shutdown, overheating of the HDD, an unexpected power outage, which can even cause physical damage to the hard disk during a short circuit, etc.
But now we will talk about how to create a Windows 7 recovery disk. In most cases, fixing software failures can help fix many problems, even when automatic system recovery from a checkpoint is impossible (in Windows 7 this is very common and is associated with errors on the hard drive or in the partition where the OS itself is installed).
Using Windows 7 recovery disc
Now a moment of patience. Before proceeding to a direct solution to creating a Windows 7 recovery disc, a few words about its use. The fact is that when loading from just such a disk (or flash drive), all saved parameters, drivers, programs, etc. are not loaded from the hard drive, since the system present on it does not have a boot priority.
For the correct use of the Windows 7 recovery disk in the BIOS settings, you must specify that the first boot device will be a CD / DVD-drive or a USB flash drive. This option is selected in the Boot Sequence (Boot Device Priority) section of the First Boot Device row.
Note: if a flash drive is specified as a priority device, it must already be inserted into the corresponding USB port before turning on the computer.
Where to begin?
So let's get started. Immediately it is worth saying that many users do not particularly bother with creating a recovery disk for Windows 7, preferring to use the original installation or recovery kit.
On the one hand, this is a fairly simple solution, but it is suitable either for installing the system from scratch, or for accessing the recovery console (if there is one on the disk). The problem is that not all users know how to use it. This is where the manually created disk comes in handy, especially since using it you can restore not only the system, but also data from the hard drive.
Windows 7 recovery boot disk
There are several ways to create a boot disk. To begin, consider the standard tools of the Windows OS itself.
The first and easiest method is to use the “Control Panel”, in which the “Backup and Restore” section is selected. In this section, you must select the line “Create a system recovery disk”, after which it will be offered to select the device as a boot tool (optical drive). It remains only to insert an empty "blank" into the drive and start the recording process.
Just note that in most cases for a 32-bit system a regular CD-ROM is enough. The amount of recorded information will be about 150 MB. If you will use the recovery disk of Windows 7 64-bit architecture, it is better to take a DVD-drive.
This is not the only method of accessing commands. You can also use the main Start menu, where in the Maintenance section you select access to backup and restore or the direct command to create a system boot disk. You can use the recdisc command in the Run menu (Win + R). The essence of this does not change.
Creating a system image
No less effective may be the image of the system. This method allows you to get copies of all disks and partitions necessary for the correct operation of the “OS”.
In the section above, instead of creating a recovery disk, the option “Create a system image” is simply selected, after which you will need to select the backup storage location (hard disk or its partitions, optical disk or network location). In principle, the procedure is almost the same as that described above.
What you need to restore your hard drive
Naturally, recovering the Windows 7 hard drive can be done in the manner just described, but it is better (and this is proved in practice) to use special utilities. One of the most powerful is the Acronis True Image program. In it, you can create both an image of the recovery disk of Windows 7, and a backup copy of the entire hard drive and its partitions.
In this case, in the program menu, you need to select the "Create archive" item, after which you can choose what exactly needs to be copied. There are two fields here: “Entire hard drive or separate partitions on it” and “Files and folders”. It is clear that you can make a full copy of all the data on the hard drive, but here it is worth considering one important aspect, namely the amount of information placed in the backup.
This is where the problems with the lack of disk space begin. For a complete image, it is better to use removable HDD-drives connected via USB ports, and in most cases a regular flash drive is suitable for saving individual files and folders. It all depends on the volume of the “screw” itself (files and folders) and the volume of removable media.
3rd party applications
A fairly simple solution to the question of how to create a Windows 7 recovery disk image can be the use of popular utilities such as UltraISO, Daemon Tools, and many others. As a rule, all software products of this type have at their disposal the appropriate tools for working with images.
In this case, the image itself (of a system or hard drive) is created first, and then it is recorded on the corresponding removable storage medium.
If nothing helps during recovery
And now a few words about the problems with the boot, if the boot disk recovery system Windows 7 does not help.
A system crash could be triggered by viruses, so even booting from a disk will not fix the problem. A copy still “picks up” the virus from the hard drive, because the recovery does not affect user files and folders (and viruses are masked just under them).
In this case, it is recommended that you use utilities such as Kaspersky Rescue Disc, which are capable of loading before the start of the OS itself, before recovery. As practice shows, they remove viruses much more efficiently than stationary antiviruses, whose operation directly depends on the state of the “OS”.
In some cases, the problem, if the system has not recovered, you can try to solve it by using utilities to check the HDD. Among them, there are also those that start even before the start of loading the Windows OS. However, the use of antivirus and then a system recovery disk in most cases helps very well. Checking the hard drive may be required only if problems are found that are associated with physical defects or system failures that cannot be fixed using standard methods in the form of bad sectors.