Media for burning Asus AI Recovery discs

I recently purchased an Asus N56VZ laptop, which is a fantastic machine. One thing I need to get done shortly is create a set of recovery discs. Asus does not provide any disc media with the machine, so this is rather important.

 

The backup utility that comes pre-installed is Asus AI Recovery. When you run it, you select one of three options:

 

Backup to DVD/BD

Create ISO backup files for DVD

Create ISO backup files for Blu-Ray disc

 

I have regular DVD-R's, but this way requires 4 discs. I also have Double-Layer DVD's which I would prefer to use if possible since it will only take 2 discs. Blu-Ray disc would be nice, but considering the cost probably not since I already have other media on hand.

 

Has anyone created a backup set using DL-DVD's with AI Recovery, and which choice was selected when doing so? Thanks!

Good point. I guess I'll stick with standard DVDs. Better to know I have a greater chance of a working set of recovery media if they are ever really needed. My choice has been the Taiyo-Yuden Watershield discs. I have never made a coaster with them, and the gloss printable face looks as good as commercially produced media.

I've run into a problem following a restore from a just-created DVD set. The Asus Preload Wizard appears to partition the HD as requested, but simply loops back to the beginning of the Wizard procedure (the select your language dialog box). Tried shutting down, going into BIOS to change the boot order, but the only devices shown are Win 7 Boot Manager and the optical drive, which is empty. I successfully created a set of restore DVDs with AI Restore, which req'd 6 discs, probably because I have installed programs since I got the laptop. I used the verify after burning feature to be certain the discs were valid. I decided to test the restore on a spare HD, rather than take the risk of messing up the working OS on my current HD. So I formatted the spare HD and switched it into the laptop, then put in the 1st restore disc and rebooted. The restore successfully loaded from all 6 discs, taking a little over 1 hr to ingest. After restarting, the system comes to the Select Your Language box, next you select which partitioning option you want, and it's automatic from there. But it just ends in a loop back to the beginning as noted above. Watching the progress, it appears to format 2 partitions and a bunch of other commands before finishing. Doesn't matter which of the 3 options have been chosen, it always fails with the same dead-end loop. I can't find a way to get around the Boot Manager, it always comes up when the system is started. Even tried using my Windows 7 DVD to do a disk repair if the MBR or boot sector is fouled up, but it's the wrong version (7 Pro, laptop is 7 Home Premium) and won't do a repair for me. Where do I begin troubleshooting? It looks like the disc set which I created works OK, but I can't seem to get out of the Boot Manager startup cycle created by the restore image into Windows itself.

I'll give that a try shortly, headed home in a few mins. Not to worry, the HD is a spare, I wouldn't dare try this on the one with my only working OS. I'm making sure this works as it should before I'll let it near my HD. I just can't understand what's borking the boot process Last resort try Seatools and low-level format the stupid HD before trying again.l
Edited by garykf16 - 10/20/12 at 8:02am

OK, I tried the shutdown trick as the system is booting into Boot Mgr, but it did not work. It only changes the BIOS order back to the optical drive, presumably in an effort to check it for a bootable OS.

 

I pIaced the drive on my desktop PC and downloaded Minitool Partition Wizard, using it to completely delete ALL partitions from the drive. Windows 7 Disk Management could delete the large Data partition, but not the small 100MB one, Delete is grayed out there. Also, it only shows 2 partitions in the console, but Partition Wizard sees all 4 created by the AI Restore DVD set. They can then be deleted, wiped etc. So much for Windows Disk Management!!!

 

Right now I'm waiting for the Wizard to complete a zero-fill wipe before running the restore set again. I believe possibly there may have been partitions on the HD which weren't deleted before my first try. The drive is actually the one which came with the laptop, and I replaced it with a Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid 750 GB 7200 rpm unit by cloning it over. Great drive. BIG difference in boot time. So doing a total drive wipe, getting rid of ANY partitions, I'm hoping fixes the issue. We'll know in a couple of hours.

I think the HD itself is OK, it's the one which came factory in the laptop. No errors anytime else. I cloned it to a new Seagate XT hybrid drive, got that for faster bootup and 7200 rpm.

Sorry for the delay.... *doing other stuff, etc*

 

Partition Wizard is a really good tool, but I had to figure out how to "remove" the 4 partitions, they were still there after deleting (unallocating) them. My fault, I didn't understand , after the primary is formatted, you use Resize by dragging the partition bar, the other small partitions are then gone. Drive now shows up as a single partition. Back into the laptop again for a re-try at restore from the DVD set. See if all this makes it happy this time!!

OK, successful reload from the DVD restore set. Rebooted and started the auto-partitioning process. I selected Option 3 this time....restore to entire HD with 2 partitions. Everything happens in a command prompt window. Diskpart.exe runs, then imagex64.exe runs, progress % is shown as the image is being written to disk.

 

No joy again. an exact repeat of the same loop-back the the start of the preload wizard. Everything went properly with no errors of any kind. I don't understand how to get the system not to boot into Windows Boot Manager? I don't get it. I have heard that "possibly" the system needs to reboot a bunch of times, but this is just a dead-end loop, doesn't continue past this point. All I have done here is enter the language choice, click Next twice and select the recovery partitioning option. After that the rest of the process runs by itself, with 1 reboot at the end, which loops back as previously stated.

 

What am I missing? Looks like hardware and software are working correctly, everything completes OK except this.

I'll have to take this up with an Asus chat rep. Either that or keep wasting time + DVDs.Or just not worry about it. Keep my data backed up, if the HD ever kills the OS, I'll just get a real Win 7 disc and not worry about it.

Will do, the expertise and assistance are appreciated. For the time being, I'll back up an image to the spare HD until a resolution is found to the core issue.

I finally decided to abandon using AI Restore after reading more about issues others appear to be having, and receiving an unintelligent reponse from an Asus tech rep who didn't understand the problem and just told me to make sure the optical drive was set to boot first. Not the problem. My solution was to download an .iso of Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit from the MS download site, not easy to find via Google, but referenced from another site. Apparently they have released the ISO's for free download, you must still enter your legal sticker registration code to activate it. Here's the link I got Win 7 HP 64 from: http://msft-dnl.digitalrivercontent.net/msvista/pub/X15-65733/X15-65733.iso The ISO is about 3.2 GB, so use a fast connection! After you get it, burn to DVD-R using ImgBurn, be sure Verify is ticked, best to burn slower (2.0x) to avoid coasters, to be safe. The finished disc boot Windows setup perfectly, and installs fine, about 37 mins total. Registration from my original sticker activates it fine. I got my drivers from Asus' download site and began installing them, back to brand new, and I can avoid the bloatware I'm not interested in. Also, durung setup, I have the choice whether I want a single partition with everything on it (Windows does dictate a 100MB partition for System files as P1) or I can have a separate Data partition, which I may use if I decide to re-size the primary using Partition Magic later. So, I'll be uninstalling AI Restore, too bad it doesn't work as it should. The last thing I need if there ever is a crisis, is to discover my Restore DVDs are useless. This way, I have a real, working, installable copy of Windows to fall back on if my HD ever takes dump. All I have to do is create a backup ISO of my data and programs with ImgBurn.

I'll be home in a bit, see if I can help you walk thru ImgBurn. Works flawlessly for me. Could hsve been a bad disc. Does your optical burner do OK for other burns to the same type discs? I use DVD-R's, Taiyo Yuden Watershield inkjet printable. Any quality -R disc should do. Good idea to not be playing with anything else that could interrupt the burn buffer and cause a data underrun during the burn. What speed did you burn at? I try to use a slow speed, at 2X it took just over 10 mins but made a good disc. The tray will cycle open/closed by itself after the burn before verifying. I leave all the settings at default except to select slower burn rate.