105GB drive, and no restore cd?!?

I just purchased a new Aspire One from Best Buy, with the 120GB hard drive and Windows XP. Only, the hard drive appears to be only 105GB. What's more, there is no restore CD included in the box. If the hard drive takes a crap 3 years from now, or I get a virus or something, how do I restore the system? Am I going to have to buy a copy of XP, even though I just bought this system? Doesn't seem fair.

Charles.

 

Maybe contact Acer? It might have been left our of your package by mistake.

 

I agree,
I think it is total Bullsh-t that a restore disc (or the ability to make a restore disc) is not available.
I want to install opensuse, but am afraid of corrupting the hidden partition
I am considering returning the computer.

ACER ------ OFFER RESTORE DISX ON ALL YOUR LAPTOPS, YOU ARE STUPID FOR NOT OFFERING THIS

 

Ok, I think some clarification is needed here.
1st of all, no one should be surprised that Acer did not supply restore cd's/dvd's for microsoft o/s's like xp or vista for the AA1 w/hd.
This is a common industry standard practice in the last few years including HP, Toshiba, Dell, Compaq, Gateway, Emachines and other namebrands except for maybe custom OEM's. I've seen that with all of them regardless if a desktop/laptop with my past purchases.
You can thank HP for starting this concept over 7 years ago. But they all included a utility to have customers create/burn recover dvd's for their computers. Or purchase the recovery disks for those particular models for a small price.

If it's a supplied linux os on a computer, then yes I have seen restore linux dvd's come with my eee pc and my previous AA1 with Linplus.

What does surprise me is that acer didn't include any utility with this AA1 to create recovery disks with an external usb dvd burner.
I'm miffed about that all right. :?
But, there are ways around it short of ordering AA1 xp recovery disks.
Using ghost or acronis or a freeware imager software to backup the partition onto an external usb drive/usb flash drive is one good option. Or if you have a spare oem XP home edition sp/2 cd kicking around, then that should load with manually installing the drivers and not mind missing the preincluded software.

So, don't be mad at ACER not supplying microsoft o/s recovery dvd's as that happens with dell/hp,compaq, etc as well.
But yes......be mad at acer for not including an utility to make separate recovery dvd's for the AA1.

 

Why do you need a recovery CD when you can just recover directly from the hard drive? Besides, there's no DVD/CD drive on the One anyway.

 

Why do you need a recovery CD when you can just recover directly from the hard drive? Besides, there's no DVD/CD drive on the One anyway.

Err, because hard drives fail, and virus-infected drives need to be reformatted, and I'm not going to send my PC to Acer once the warranty is out - I'll used TnkGrl's youtube videos to disassemble it myself.

Now, I did find that there *was* a hidden partition that contains 5GB or so of restore crap. Dunno how, but it's not hidden anymore. Maybe turning off restore points, or maybe adding the CD/DVD ISO drive (rip CD to ISO, mount it as virtual drive) did it, not sure, but I'm unable to change the drive letter. I can see it now though, so I can use a USB DVD burner to make a copy I suppose. (I only have a USB CD drive right now, unfortunately, but I can back this up over the network to my other PCs)

Still, I want a bootable restore DVD. I've never bought a computer that didn't come with the OS on a backup disk.

Charles.

 

The 105GB is because there is a hidden restore partition with recovery tools on it. I don't own the XP one, but I've read about it so can't help you in locating it. That said, how to use it should be in the instructions that came with the laptop, I'd be shocked if that wasn't there.

they started doing this not because of OEM installs, but because hard disks got so big it became cheaper to stuff the recovery onto a separate partition rather than supply a new CD.

I'm sure this has been discussed on the forum before, so before blaming Acer perhaps it's worth doing some research into the matter.

 

I just went to www.acersupport.com and clicked on buying recovery CDs (presumably for windows). It said they wouldn't be ready for 1 to 2 weeks.
I shouldn't have to buy them, I ought to be able to at least create them as Compaq allows you to do. Perhaps I'll try the acronis free trial to do it.
--Walter
PS I did manage to wipe out Windows Vista on my Compaq laptop without making backup CDs when I installed opensuse the night I bought it -- I was hoping to dual boot it.

 

walter: i don't have the XP model, and yet I'm searching the acer website for you.

Are you absolutely certain this does NOT apply to you?

Code:

Problem: 

I don't have any Recovery CD for my Aspire? 


Solution: 

Yes, this is correct. the Operating System is pre installed and you have the option to burn your Recovery CD's. It is also possible to make a recovery from the Image of your Hard Disk without creating CD's. 

If you have no CD copy of your Operating System you may have a Problem once the HDD has a physical error. In this case you will need to send the System in for Repair.

Acer recommends to burn a copy of the Recovery CD's. Please follow the instructions after start up.