Cannot restore system on new hard drive using USB recovery drive

[usasma]

This is a summary of the efforts used in attempting to use a USB recovery drive to recover an Asus G750J with an Intel Series 530 SSD (180 gB) using a Windows 8 Recovery Drive.

Spoiler:

Read More:

The cure here was to be sure to use a hard drive that is the same size as the original hard drive. This was reported to us and we have not tried it ourselves (and I doubt it's the cure).

There are other ways around this (they involve DISM and DISKPART) - and that's the purpose of this post.

This is my initial post:

Cannot get Windows 8 to install from the Windows Recovery Drive (w/recovery partition copied over)
Have done this with HP and Toshiba - but have used their Recovery Managers to create the drive, not the Windows Recovery Drive (Asus doesn't have a Recovery Manager of it's own).

Any hints on how to access/mount/use the Recovery Partition from the USB drive? (F9 didn't work)

Have run many DISKPART and FORMAT commands on the SSD w/o success

FYI - we can clone the disk easily, but want to use the Recovery Drive so we have experience with it when replacing hard drives. Don't want hacks for this - we're looking for a legitimate way to use the USB recovery drive to reinstall the OEM OS onto a new hard drive.

Thanks!

We have solved this issue at work, but not as it applies to this topic (we cloned the old HDD to the new SSD). We also damaged the new SSD by repeatedly doing things in DISKPART - so we had to use another SSD (this time it was a Samsung).

Numerous techs have worked on this attempting to solve it. My friend Ash discovered the solution on a closed forum - so I want to share the stuff that isn't proprietary so that others can figure this out.

 

[usasma]

Links o' plenty:

Microsoft KB articles:
HOW TO: Use the Diskpart.efi Utility to Create a GUID Partition Table Partition on a Raw Disk in Windows
How to create a system image to refresh your Windows 8 PC

MSDN Blogs:
How to install Windows RE on the hard disk - Windows RE Notes - Site Home - MSDN Blogs (from 2007)
Creating Window RE Using Windows AIK - Windows RE Notes - Site Home - MSDN Blogs (from 2006)
Refresh and reset your PC - Building Windows 8 - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

Create a Windows 8 image with recimg.exe to preserve your Desktop apps after a refresh - Matt Harrington - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

TechNet Blogs:
Windows 8.1 - Unable to "Copy Recovery Partition" when building Recovery Drive? - KeithMayer.com - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

TechNet articles:
Remove Duplicate Firmware Objects in BCD and NVRAM
What is Windows RE?
Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM) (Windows)
Deployment Image Servicing and Management Technical Reference
Recommended UEFI-Based Disk-Partition Configurations
REAgentC Command-Line Options
Reagentc
DISM - Deployment Image Servicing and Management Technical Reference
Windows RE Troubleshooting Features
Configure UEFI/GPT-Based Hard Drive Partitions
Repair a Windows Image
BCDboot Command-Line Options
Create Media to Run Push-Button Reset Features
Deploy Push-Button Reset Features
Capture and Apply Windows, System, and Recovery Partitions
Samples: Applying Windows, System, and Recovery Partitions by using a Deployment Script
Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM) Command-Line Options
Hard Drives and Partitions Overview
Customize Windows RE
Configure BIOS/MBR-Based Hard Drive Partitions
Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) Overview
DISM How-to Topics (Deployment Image Servicing and Management)
REAgentC Command-Line Options
Deploy Windows RE
Create and Manage a Windows Image Using DISM
Sample: Configure BIOS/MBR-Based Hard Disk Partitions by Using Windows PE and DiskPart
Sample: Configure UEFI/GPT-Based Hard Drive Partitions by Using Windows PE and DiskPart
Add a Custom Tool to the Windows RE Boot Options Menu
Push-Button Reset Overview
Add a Script to Push-Button Reset Features
ResetConfig XML Reference

Other links:
Mike's Blog | Jack of all trades, master of a few
DISM GUI - Home
DISM - Fixing Component Store Corruption in Windows 8

 

[usasma]

Cloned the 1tB HDD to a 240 gB SSD
Could not make a recovery drive (failed when attempting to create)
Ran the 3 DISM commands and recovery drive was able to be successfully created:

Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth
 
Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth
 
Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

I attempted to use the recovery drive to install onto a larger hard drive and it failed (320 gB W-D SATA drive)
I booted into UEFI and tried to get into Windows (to get disk recognized as GPT), but didn't get all the way there (ran out of time at work)
Rebooted and attempted to install - failed again.
Stopped testing for today, don't want to get the boss any madder (and I'm waiting for the other tech to come in to discuss other options).

Instructions on how to use the USB recovery drive on a Lenovo: Methodology to create Recovery Media and reload a Lenovo Think system with Microsoft Windows 8 preload

 

[usasma]

Discussed with the other tech and we decided to stop messing with this for now (it's a customer's computer, so we don't want to keep it longer than we quoted).

We think that the problem lies in the system recognizing the new disk and will experiment later on with setting up the blank disk as GPT, partitioning the GPT disk, and formatting the partitions (along with a slew of DISM and DISKPART commands).

Will post more the next time that we get one in.