Internal Hard Drive Confusion

TonicUK

Hi

I've searched for hours trying to find a solution to this and hope one of you will be able to kindly help me.

Last week my Samsung Q330 laptop suffered a complete hard drive failure. It originally showed as having no operating system installed, but nor would the recovery partition work. On putting the hard drive into a caddy and connecting it to another computer, the drive spins up but is not recognised at all. As such I've ordered a replacement hard drive.

As I see it, there are two options to get everything back up and running:

1. To make a bootable USB stick as featured in several guides online, using a downloaded copy of windows from digitalriver.

2. When I bought the laptop, i made some recovery files which are stored on an external hard drive, but I have no idea how to use these files on the new hard drive. They're have names like "user1.wo2". I think this would be my preferred option as it would save finding all of the drivers, but I have no idea how to use these files.

Any help would be very much appreciated. I have tried the Samsung website, but seem to encounter nothing but technical problems trying to use it.

Thank you.

NiftyDigits

Samsung Drivers

TonicUK

Thanks NiftyDigits, although I still don't know what to do?

Using Samsung Recovery, I made some kind of a back up on an external hard drive when the computer was brand new, but have no idea how to go about restoring it all when the new, unformatted, hard drive arrives.

Figment

What format do the backup files use (i.e. what file type are they?)

NiftyDigits

Don't worry. When the HDD arrives, we can install the OS, Drivers and applications first and worry about the Recovery files later.

You can rebuild the partition on the new HDD, I wrote a guide for it, but don't have access to the guide as I'm travelling.

However, if you are fluent in French

TonicUK

Top stuff, this is sounding encouraging

Figment, the files are:
User1.w01 (roughly 4.2GB)
User1.w02 (roughly 4.2GB)
User1.w03 (roughly 1.5GB)
User1.wcl (roughly 4.2GB)
User1.woo (1KB)

NiftyDigits - When the HDD arrives, will I have to create a separate partition for the recovery files when I format it and if so, how big does it need to be?

Your help is really appreciated.

NiftyDigits

TonicUK wrote: »

Top stuff, this is sounding encouraging

Figment, the files are:
User1.w01 (roughly 4.2GB)
User1.w02 (roughly 4.2GB)
User1.w03 (roughly 1.5GB)
User1.wcl (roughly 4.2GB)
User1.woo (1KB)

NiftyDigits - When the HDD arrives, will I have to create a separate partition for the recovery files when I format it and if so, how big does it need to be?

Your help is really appreciated.

The Admin Tool for Samsung Recovery Solution 4 USB image can initialise the HDD, then you can place those files in the appropriate place.
The link won't work on this forum. You'll have to remove the spaces from the f i l e f a c t o r y . c o m part.

TonicUK

You are an absolute legend :money:

I'll be trying that when the drive arrives. Thank you so much.

andy2004

if you cant read french how about english

http://www.sammynetbook.com/forum/threads/12024-%5BN140%5D-SRS-Partition-Admin-tool-made-%5BF4%5D-functional-again.
seems to be the same as Nifty's link
and I also found this out.
http://www.sammynetbook.com/forum/threads/15796-Samsung-Recovery-Solution-III-amp-the-Recovery-Partition
Samsung Recovery Solution III is essentially a re-branded version of WinClon, a commercial drive-imaging software.

it also states on this page http://www.sammynetbook.com/forum/threads/15796-Samsung-Recovery-Solution-III-amp-the-Recovery-Partition
2. USE SRS TO CREATE A RECOVERY DISC DVD. If you happen to corrupt or delete the recovery partition for any reason, this disc WILL re-create the recovery partition. Guess you'd use this if you had to replace the HDD.

NiftyDigits

1. Download the SRS Admin Tool 4 from the link above.
2. Find a USB Flash Drive (perhaps 1 GB)
3. Format the USB Drive with FAT32 (Quick Formatted)
4. Open the ISO file with WINRAR and extract files and folders to USB Drive
5. Insert USB Drive (on the right side-I don't know if it is necessary. You can try other ports too)
6. Boot machine via USB (change settings first in the BIOS)
7. Wait until USB Drive loads SRS Admin Tool 4

Then you can continue from Section 4.2 onwards, customising the instruction to your needs(perhaps a recovery section of 20GB as you have Home Premium instead of Starter).