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Non Functional Recovery Partition on Cloned Hard Drive

Hello Everyone. I'm a brand new member here. I have been searching all over the web for literally weeks and have made tiny incremental steps toward finding my total solution. Please allow me to get some of the details out of the way first.

Me: I have been doing computer support since 1990; first with Apple ProDOS and Mac OS 6.x through early OS X, then shifting to Windows 9x/NT/2k. I have concentrated on Windows since then, trough XP, Vista, 7, and now 8/8.1. I have "tinkered" with various Linux flavors. My strengths are troubleshooting and Anal Retentiveness. My weaknesses are command line and Anal Retentiveness.

HW/ SW: (1) Lenovo IdeaPad G510 (Intel i5)/Win 8.1 Standard/all orig hw except upgraded RAM. (2) Lenovo IdeaPad G585 (AMD xx)/Win 8 Standard/ all orig hw. (3) Spare 500GB SATA hdd.

The G585 belongs to my teenaged daughter. Both laptops are well outside factory warranties.

My Bozo move: (I won't get into too many details here): I inadvertently destroyed the ability to factory restore the G585 from the recovery partition. Lenovo would not even sell me a replacement pre-imaged hdd. All I could buy were the OS Recovery disks, which wipe all partitions and install a clean OS on a single drive-encompassing partition.

My short term fix: because the initiator of this fiasco was the frequent viral infections my daughter was experiencing, and the fact that she does need her laptop for school, I did a clean install of Ubuntu, which she likes well enough, but prohibits her playing of some PC games.

My Brainstorm: What if I could clone MY hdd, replace her original drive with the clone, then do a factory restore on her system?

FIRST TEST: I pulled my hdd and put it in her laptop to verify that my copy of 8.1 would indeed be able to boot her system. IT WORKED! WOOHOO!

Next step: Clone my orig 500GB SATA hdd to the Spare 500GB SATA hdd.

I have tried multiple cloning tools: Acronis True Image, Macrium, Aomei, and others. (I really like the Aomei interface.) I repeatedly get (seemingly) good clones, that successfully boot and run my laptop. But every single one ends up with the exact same issue: when I launch Lenovo's Onekey Recovery tool, and tell it I want to restore to factory defaults, the tool is unable to locate the needed recovery partition(s) and so cannot reboot into recovery mode.

My most recent attempt: Used Aomei to create a bootable Aomei WinPE CD, put the spare hdd INSIDE the laptop (drive 0) and my orig hdd into an external SATA -> USB 2.0 case, Booted from WinPE CD (without external hdd) and deleted all partitions on the internal hdd, then rebooted (from CD again) and connected external (original) hdd. I then "successfully" cloned the external/original onto the internal/spare. I can boot and run from that latest clone (I'm running off it right now, as I type this post), but once again, when I launch Onekey and attempt to perform a factory restore, Onekey claims it cannot locate the required partition(s).

I know, from my research, that it has SOMEthing to do with the location and/or identification of the recovery partion(s) on the drive. What I don't know is how to resolve that. I have learned how to run various DiskPart commands from within Windows PowerShell, to pull up various reports on the drives, volumes, and partitions. But I really do not understand most of the info that I see, nor how to use and/or modify it.

I'm sure somebody here can provide me with instructions, but please keep in mind that the command line force is NOT strong with THIS Skywalker. So I will need baby step/ newb level instructions - not only on what to type, but (please?) explanations of what it is I am typing and why. Perhaps then, if I run into a minor snafu, I will have enough understanding to sort it out on my own (my absolute BEST way to learn).

I will gladly post my additional steps and results for future reference.

Thank you all, not least for tolerating my longwindedness, but also in advance for any and all positive feedback.

Comments

  • @ganon11000: Thank you for responding. I apologize for such a lengthy post. I was trying to anticipate all of the questions that I might be asked. Unfortunately, too much info apparently clouded the issue.


    I do not wish to simply performa clean OS install on daughter's G585. I want the end result to be a factory partition configuration, which I have successfully accomplished.


    All I need now are the command line instructions (with explanations, if possible) that will allow me to correctly update the appropriate config file (reagentc.xml), so that Lenovo Onekey can find the required recovery partition(s).


    As for your concern about the Intel OS not working on the AMD board, I have already tested and proven to my satisfaction that it does, indeed work. At least in my specific situation. (when I put my hdd from my intel G510 into my daughter's AMD G585, everything works perfectly fine. It did take a bit longer to boot up the first time, so I suspect Windows had to load some needed drivers. But subsequent boots took no longer than they did in my unit.

  • Type reagentc /info at cmd prompt.


    Then try reagentc /setreimage /?


    reagentc /setosimage /?


    The instructions are simple.


    Not sure if that will sort out the oem recovery program - it may expect a very specific partition identifier.


  • To paraphrase Mssr Holmes, once all of the lies have been proven, whatever remains, however unlikely, must be the truth.


    The most common opinion stated throughout all of the comments in all of the forums to which I posted my query was that of the unlikelihood of a clone functioning differently than the original. So in my attempts to prove them wrong, I decided to verify that the original did not in fact have the same symptom as the clone.


    Can somebody tell me which emoticon represents egg on one's face?


    Lo and behold, the original now has the exact same issue as the clone, which proves that the popular opinion was correct and that my copy truly is an exact clone of the original.


    So now my question should be "why did the original lose the ability to locate and boot into the recovery partition?" But you know what? I don't care. I was only waiting until I finished this particular project before wiping my drive and installing Linux as the primary OS, then using virtualbox to run vpc for any other OS I choose to play with.


    I really appreciate all of the feedback I received. Thanks for being such a supportive group!

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