Techline 4 Teens

Almost all netbooks now come with a recovery partition. Although most people say that backup to an external hardrive is impossible, I have found a way. I have only gtried this on the backup partition of the Acer Aspire One, which cannot be backed up to a cd. This guide should work with other computer models too, but success is far from guaranteed.

First, you need an external HD, obviously the HD must be larger than your restore partition.

In Windows you must go to “Control Panel” in the Start Menu. From there you need to press “Switch to Classic View” on the upper left side of the screen. (If it says “Switch to Category View, then you are already in classic view) Double click on “Folder Options” Then go to the “View” tab.

From here you should see a switch that says “Do Not Show Hidden Files” and “Show Hidden Files”, click “Show Hidden Files”

If you cannot access your recovery partition, then download and install the Ext2ifs Then go to Control Panel, and in Classic View, find “IFS Drives” In the window assign a letter to the recovery partition.

Ok, now this part should be pretty easy. In my computer, simply drag and drop all of the files in your recovery partition over to an external HD. And YES ALL OF THEM!

Now this is the confusing part, you need to install grub, if you have linux, then this should be easy, otherwise it could be a bit challenging. To install grub refer to my previous post right here The menu.lst file is already edited to fit this need.

To install grub, you will need some forum of Linux or grub already. If you can boot off of a usb, then you can use UNetbootin to get Super Grub Disk. Do not reboot yet.

Then you will need the grub files, If you are using my “How to Backup Your Recovery Partition” guide, then the menu.lst should be tailored to your needs, you can download the files from me here unzip these into the root directory of your hardrive. If you are using my “How to Backup Your Recovery Partition” guide, unzip the file into the root of your external hd. If you want to edit your boot commands, you can edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst files.

Now boot your super grub disk (in linux, you can just type “sudo grub” instead”) and press c to enter the command line.

now type the following:
find /boot/grub/stage1
You should get something like:
(hd1,0)
(hd2,0)

If you only got one, you can skip this step, otherwise you have to type:
geometry (hd1) (or whatever number you got earlier)
and you’ll get something like:
drive 0x81: C/H/S = 0/255/63, The number of sectors = 3915775, /dev/sdb
Partition num: 0, Filesystem type is fat, partition type 0xc

If it looks like the right drive (mabie only one partition, with the right partitioning scheme and file system) then type:
root (hd1,0) (or whatever the numbers are)

then type:
setup (hd1) (you get it right, it could be (hd2) or (hd0) or even (hd999))

Then you should have a perfectly working version of grub!

I know of three methods, there may be more!

METHOD 1: To install ubuntu or debian, and many other operating systems on a netbook, you can use my earlier post but with the ubuntu iso which can be found here or the Debian Iso

METHOD 2: However, there is an even easier way that doesn’t involve the use of a U3 smart drive. It is called UNetbootin!
Simply install Unetbootin from their homepage Run the downloaded file, select ubuntu, debian, fedora, etc. from the first dropdown menu.
Then just select the letter of your flash drive at the bottom. Hit enter, when it finishes downloading and setting up you have a bootable usb stick. Hit the restart button and hit F12 to enter the boot menu (if you don’t have a boot menu, then you probably have to hit F2 to enter BIOS, then set your USB as the primary boot device). Then you should proceed with the install following the onscreen prompts!

METHOD 3: The last method is to simply run the ubuntu wubi.exe in windows, this file can be found here Just run the application and reboot when you’re told.

Often people will say that their install “didn’t work” but with three methods…. well one of them has to, right?

Most net books have a recovery partition that can be used to restore windows on the computer. If you have just lost access to that partition, then you can access it with Grub4Dos, which can be installed on a usb flshdrive.

However, sometimes the recovery partition is gone, broken, or simply never existed. There are some methods out there to fix this, however, they often don’t work. This method is clean, simple, smart, and leaves you with a still-usefull usb drive in the end!

First, you need to obtain a U3 smart drive, they can be found here or even at staples.

If you have a U3 smart drive, then a cd drive will be visible in My Computer, don’t worry if you uninstalled U3 from your drive, it will still work.

This CD is like 6MB and is stupid and irritating (starting to wonder why I said you needed it?) However useless this CD is, we can make this CD into the Windows install disk. Pretty clever, right?

You will need the Universal Customizer. Which you can download from me here. Unzip the file, and open up the resulting folder, in here you will find a folder called “BIN”, open this folder and replace the blank “U3CUSTOM.ISO” with a windows xp install disk iso (can be made from a win xp home disk or can be downloaded off of the internet)

If you need an xp iso, you can download it off TPB, email me if you have any questions/concerns.

Once you have replaced the file, simply plug in your U3 USB device, and run “Universal_Customizer.exe” follow the onscreen steps, set a password, and wait until the progress bar comes up, it will instantly get to 50%, and then take hours to complete, this will take some time.

When it is done, reboot your computer (hold F12 if using an Acer Aspire 1, or hold any other key in order to access your boot menu in order to boot off the virtual CD drive. Once you successfully boot, go through the standard install steps, your serial number in probably on the bottom of your netbook.