Shadow Protect and Acer Laptop

[Long View]

A friend has just bought an Acer Laptop and I was thinking of recommending
Shadow Protect. As I don't like laptops I have no experience of how likely SP is to work. Many laptops have hidden partitions and unusual MBR etc ? I keep reading about imaging and problems with Dell.

so anyone ever used SP with an Acer lap top ? My guess is that there should be no problem but as it is not my machine I just want to be careful.

[Brian K]

Long View,

I can't answer your question but this is an issue to check. Hopefully it has been corrected in the last year.

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showt...hlight=acer#75

[Peter2150]

I don't know about Acer, but I've used SP on my THinkpad laptop which does have that hidden partition. I've not installed SP, but just run it from the CD.

Pete

[Long View]

Thansk for the replies. The acer does have a hidden partition and C: is NTFS but listed as FAT 16. PTEDit32 wouldn't run - some problem with Vista ?

anyway - Acer has it's own backup of C: it took 59 minutes and I have no idea where the image is stored. will take another look in the morning.

[Brian K]

Originally Posted by Long View

Thansk for the replies. The acer does have a hidden partition and C: is NTFS but listed as FAT 16. PTEDit32 wouldn't run - some problem with Vista ?

As mentioned in that other thread, this is an unstable situation. You could fix it with PTEDIT.exe from DOS or with Acronis Disk Director.

[Long View]

Thanks Brian - I would like to fix this BUT I have to wonder why Acer have done this. Is there any chance that this is done to allow the Acer image program to work ? Before I fix I think I will want to find out where they store their image and probably to make an imge to an external USB or CD/DVD

[Brian K]

I understand your caution. My reading is that Acer have messed up.

[BJStone]

Be careful Long View... I have an acer notebook, a Travelmate using XP.

Those acers tend to come with three partitions: a C and a D partition of equal size. Before the C partition probably is another partition of somewhere between 4 and 10 gigs, depending on the model and the loaded OS. This partition is hidden. There's a special key combination (for me it was F12 IIRC) which invokes the restore procedure.
With this you can restore the laptop to its initial state, if you followed the advise at first start up of the laptop to make (=create) an image. That image is probably stored on the D drive in compressed form.

The above was how it once was with my acer. With those newer models it is possible they changed a couple of things, like making the image directly after the first start up.
I would study the laptops manual carefully and see what it mentions. It probably is in there like it was in the manual of my laptop.

What was the model/type of that acer?

[Long View]

It is an Aspire 5720.

and yes there are 3 partitions C: for OS and programs D: for data and a hidden partition. when I used the acer program to make an image I could not find where it was located. D: does have some hidden data which based upon the saize looks like it could be the image.

so 3 questions

1) where is the image ? so I can copy
2) Is there any way to make a CD/DVD to be able to restore if C: gets damaged 3) Is it a good idea to fix the FAT 16 issue/instability ? or is this needed by Acer to allow their restore system to work ?

Now I know why I hate laptops ?

About 5 Years ago I bought an Acer for my wife. The first thing I did was to remove everything and re-install. 2 years ago I bought here a Samsung. This came with an XP CD and allowed me to reinstall without all the junk programs

will have to read the manual in more detail.- Thanks

[ratchet]

I have an Acer (10 months old) and I just deleted (I may have even formatted, can't remember) their backup on the D and now I just store Paragon Express images there.

[Long View]

bad news. Just to be safe I used the Acer backup program to make an image of C: direct to 2 DVD's. This took about 50 mins.

Then used Sahadow Protect to make an image. Then restored. all seemed to go well. checked with Acronis Disk Director and C: which had been NTFS (Fat16b) was now simply NTFS.

Rebooted and could not log on. Admin plus 2 user accounts all refused to load as activation was now required because of drive inconsistencies.

Put the Acer DVD in the drive and eventually restored the factory settings.

Have no idea what Acer are doing. In the past I would have deleted everything, including hidden partitions and done a simple clean install and then used Acronis or SP. Now Acer seem to have done a dell and messed things up. Avoid Acer now seems to be best.