HOW TO: Preserve AlienRespawn - stock drive to aftermarket drive / AlienRespawn Q&A

[BatBoy]

Hi Everyone... A question came up on the 14x sub-forum in regards to "moving" AlienRespawn from one drive to another. After a bit of discussion with the OP, he suggested we have this located in the main AW forum and I certainly agree. This question comes up quite often with new owners. I have edited the General Info sticky and added a link to this thread for easy reference.

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First things first... What is AlienRespawn?
AlienRespawn is a Dell application installed on your system from the factory. Its not bloatware. This is your 'rescue/restore' option. There are two versions of AlienRespawn.

The 'Basic' version is what you will find on your system. Basic allows you to create a recovery option (Emergency Rescue Media) using either blank optical media or a USB Flash Stick.

The 'Premium' version which has a cost of 39.99 (USD). There are added features with the Premium version of course, however I suggest looking at other third party backup packages... Acronis is a good one and of course I will always support Ghost.

See attached image below... this is a screenshot of AlienRespawn's main screen and shows the different options between premium and basic.


Preserving your Factory Image / Out of Box state...
One of the first questions new owners post is: "What do I do when I receive my system?"

Answer: CREATE YOUR RECOVERY MEDIA

I have seen multiple folks receive their system and fail to do this. They end up wiping the drive and starting a fresh OS install only to become stuck/have something go wrong and have no easy save method of restoring the factory image. Don't allow yourself to end up in this state... Create your recovery media!

Steps to do this - very simple and well worth the blank media or USB stick:

1. Have blank DVDs on hand or a 8GB USB Flash Drive (the size of the flash drive required by AlienRespawn may be higher - this is based on apps installed @ the factory and Windows OS version. If you opted for games or Adobe apps or selected Windows Ultimate, you may need a 16GB stick).

2. Boot into windows and open AlienRespawn (can be found in the start menu)

3. From the left menu, select Backup

4. Select 'Create System Recovery Media'

5. Follow the prompts

6. When done, stash that USB stick or Recovery Optical Media in a SAFE PLACE.


If I create recovery media using AlienRespawn Basic after I have installed my games and other apps/documents, will it preserve them?
Answer: No. The Premium version might do this but the basic version will not. Remember, AlienRespawn takes the data on your Recovery partition and creates an easy route to recovery.


I've created my Recovery Media, now what?
Answer: Entirely up to you. Again, stash that recovery media away somewhere safe. If something freaks out with your system (dead drive, corrupt drive, etc.), this is your only way to get back to that wonderful 'out of box' first power on state. With the recovery media created, its time to decide how to proceed.

For those who want to move on to a clean install of windows, reference this thread:

HOW TO: Clean Windows 7 Install (Driver Install Order) Guide for Alienware Systems

followed by,

HOW TO: Restore the Alienware 'Look and Feel' after a clean install of Windows 7

If you are satisfied with the factory install and do not want to perform a clean install then that is fine also. I have ran the factory install on my 11xR1 and to this day the system performs just fine. No need to feel there is 'bloatware'.

Just remember, STASH AWAY that recovery media in a SAFE PLACE.


Can I use my recovery media to recover the factory state on a new hard drive?
Answer: Absolutely. It does not matter if the original hard drive was a 320GB drive and the replacement is a 500GB drive. AlienRespawn will format and restore the factory out of box state to the new drive. The new drive will still have the correct free space remaining. No need to worry about lost space... Move on to installing your applications, games, documents. Update Java and Flash. Updated Windows via Windows Update. Enjoy your new replacement drive!


Can I use my recovery media to recover the factory state on a new SSD?
Answer: Possibly. Many have reported moving from a larger factory drive to a smaller aftermarket drive is throwing a 'not enough free space' message in AlienRespawn when attempting to respawn. When I initially performed my testing, I used a M17xR2 320GB HDD with AlienRespawn and had no issue with restoring the factory state of the 320GB install to a 256GB SSD. I don't know why some are having this problem. So, the short answer here - be prepared for it not to work. Perhaps just go with a clean install after creating the recovery drive. Creating the recovery drive is still important - if you ever want to drop the original drive back in and recover to the out of box state then this is the best way to go.


RED ALERT! My system is completely dead and I have not used an imaging app such as Acronis or Ghost to preserve my drive. What do I do now?!?
Answer: If you took my advice and preserved your out of box state by creating the emergency rescue media, don't freak out. Retrieve your rescue media from that wall safe you installed to protect it and boot up your system with the media inserted. Use FN+F12 @ the boot screen to access the one time boot menu. Select your rescue media (either USB or Optical Drive) and follow the prompts. AlienRespawn will go to work and you'll be right back to the state you were in when you first unboxed your very cool Alienware system.



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Well, I think that about covers it. If you have any questions on AlienRespawn, post away and I'll try to answer them.

Note: Please also see this thread: Tutorial: make an up-to-date Alienware Respawn Image
While I have not tried the process the OP outlines in the linked thread, it may be of some use to you.

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[Starscream]

thanks man...very helpful advice if and when I decide to replace my harddrive.

[Widows Son]

Nice, thanks!

[dumber]

Very good advice, thanks.

Originally Posted by BatBoy

Can I use my recovery media to recover the factory state on a new SSD?
Answer: Up to you. This is a very debatable question. Some will tell you no - you shouldn't as it can impact SSD performance in a negative way. Others will tell you its fine. My personal experience, its fine and you wont notice a difference if you do recover to an SSD. I've done this before and the system performs just fine with gaming and everyday tasks. Again, this is your call and I suggest you review as much information on SSD's as you can before deciding.

Has anyone tried doing this with a crucial M4? If so, were there any ill effects? I'm planning to install one on my m17xr3 when it gets here, I've never used a ssd before and if this works fine on it, it sounds like I'll have no problems installing one. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Nospheratu]

I think its also worth mentioning that if you have an M17x R2 and have updated your 5870M card/s to the latest vbios from Dell the installation might blue screen on final boot up.

I have not tried respawning so I cant say for certain. But the fact that the combination of the new vbios with the older dell driver saved in the factory image are not compatible with each other. If your system shipped with the driver released with the new vbios this wouldnt affect you.

[Paddon]

Hello everyone. I am trying to restore windows with the backup disk i made ( system image )

But i keep getting this message.

" Your hard drive size is not supported for this process. please use a hard drive at least 465 GB in size "

this is because i am trying to copy the the system image onto my new SSD. does this mean i Cant do this ?

[joon82]

I forgot to make recovery disk before installing windows. Now I'm trying to create recovery disk but keep getting error when try to install alienrespawn.
I do have recovery partition and still getting error.
"AlienRespawn cannot be installed because your hard drive does not have a backup copy of your factory image."

[BatBoy]

Originally Posted by Paddon

Hello everyone. I am trying to restore windows with the backup disk i made ( system image )

But i keep getting this message.

" Your hard drive size is not supported for this process. please use a hard drive at least 465 GB in size "

this is because i am trying to copy the the system image onto my new SSD. does this mean i Cant do this ?

Can you provide more detail? When you say system image I think you mean an actual recovery image using AlienRespawn Basic - right?

Originally Posted by joon82

I forgot to make recovery disk before installing windows. Now I'm trying to create recovery disk but keep getting error when try to install alienrespawn.
I do have recovery partition and still getting error.
"AlienRespawn cannot be installed because your hard drive does not have a backup copy of your factory image."

If you removed the recovery partition before creating your rescue media then you wont be able to run the emergency rescue media creation option - there is nothing for AlienRespawn to use to create the media - the factory image is gone.

[joon82]

I didnt remove recovery partition. I still have recovery partition. I thought disk that came with laptop was recovery disk so I used it to install windows on SSD.
c drive SSD
d drive recovery partition
e drive 289GB(original 320gb)

[BatBoy]

Doesn't matter. The recovery partition is no longer visible to AWRespawn.

Since you installed AlienRespawn using the other thread, best to check there - Where to get AlienRespawn (dell datasafe) software. Not sure if you will be able to recover from this. Best bet, get the system setup the way you want and then use a third party app to image the drive.