eRecovery - but no optifcal drive

Can someone please explain to me why I can't run eRecovery on my new 531 to an external hard drive or memory stick? I wouldn't have bought the Aspire One if I had known I needed an optical drive.

 

Ironic isint it?


This is pretty much the standard for netbooks these days. In order to save on the cost of media they put an image on the hard drive. Many laptops/netbooks/Net PC's suffer from this, not just the Acer. (or they come with a recovery CD that your cant use!)

I called Acer and requested free copy of the media. It was delivered free of charge about 2 weeks later. it is prety much a dvd that is identitcal to to what if you ran the make dvd option. not a windows xp cd as I had hoped. *last I checked after 90 days? they then charge you for the DVD's. this could have changed*


Another option could be to add a boot sector to your Thumbdrive or Hard drive. then boot to that (dos is all your need) and image the Factory drive with ghost, accronis or some other similar program to an image file on the removable drive..

I personally removed my factory hard drive before first boot. Then instlled it and imaged the drive with all partitions to a ghost image on another PC then made a self booting back up ghost dvd wit hthe image. a bit much for the average user. but is is nice to know i have that image is I ever need it.

The bottom line is, most people wont ever need the recovery CD. it is just a legal formality that the vendor must do to stay compliant with Microsoft.