The terms Recovery disc (or Disk), Rescue Disk/Disc and Emergency Disk all refer to a capability to boot from an external device, possibly a

thumb drive A flash drive (also thumb drive, memory stick, and pen drive/pendrive) is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. A typical USB drive is removable, rewritable, and smaller than an optical disc, and u ...

, that includes a self-running

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

: the ability to be a boot disk/Disc that runs independent of an internal hard drive that may be failing, or for some other reason is not the operating system to be run. The focus of recovery or rescue is not to lose the data files on the hard drive; the focus of restore is to restore the

's functionality (and subsequently restore the contents of one's latest backups). The rescue/recovery tool uses media containing a

backup In information technology, a backup, or data backup is a copy of computer data taken and stored elsewhere so that it may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. The verb form, referring to the process of doing so, is "wikt:back ...

of the original

factory A factory, manufacturing plant or production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery, where workers manufacture items or operate machines which process each item into another. Th ...

condition or a favored condition of a computer as configured by an OEM ( original equipment manufacturer) or an end-user. OEM supplied media are often restore tools shipped with computers to allow the user to reformat the

hard drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating hard disk drive platter, pla ...

and reinstall the

and

pre-installed software Pre-installed software (also known as bundled software) is software already installed and licensed on a computer or smartphone bought from an original equipment manufacturer (OEM).

When a

factory reset A factory reset, also known as hard reset or master reset, is a software restore of an electronic device to its original system state by erasing all data, settings, and applications that were previously stored on the device. This is often done t ...

is done, user data is lost. The term "OEM recovery" refers to that type of "recovery." What is "recovered" is the original system.

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...

, using the term ''System Recovery'', describes it as destructive recovery. They even advise removing "extra hard drives" to prevent loss of this too. Although non-destructive alternatives do exist, the standard OEM Systems Recovery of

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

-based

operating systems An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

involves booting from a separate

partition,

CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains computer data storage, data computers can read, but not write or erase. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold b ...

, or

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

, reformatting the hard drive and then copying operating system and software files. After the recovery process is completed, configuration such as the Windows

Out-Of-Box Experience An out-of-box experience (OOBE ( )) is the experience an end-user has when taking a product after unboxing, or for digital distribution, runs the Installation (computer programs)#Installer, installer, and is preparing to first use it, as opposed t ...

wizard is first run (along with any other additional setup the computer may perform), as it was on the initial startup of the computer. Most recovery systems use specialized software, though

Toshiba is a Japanese multinational electronics company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, elevators and escalators, electronic components, semiconductors ...

and

Dell Dell Inc. is an American technology company that develops, sells, repairs, and supports personal computers (PCs), Server (computing), servers, data storage devices, network switches, software, computer peripherals including printers and webcam ...

licensed Norton Ghost technology for their recovery systems at one point. As of

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

, Dell uses a

Windows Imaging Format The Windows Imaging Format (WIM) is a file-based disk image format. It was developed by Microsoft to help deploy Windows Vista and subsequent versions of the Windows operating system family. Design Like other disk image formats, a WIM file c ...

based image on a partition along with a tool launched from the

Windows Recovery Environment Windows Preinstallation Environment (also known as Windows PE and WinPE) is a lightweight version of Microsoft Windows, Windows used for the deployment of PCs, workstations, and servers, or troubleshooting an operating system while it is offlin ...

's command prompt.

Details

Recovery partitions

Most modern PCs store their recovery (non-destructive) or restore (destructive) tool on a hard drive partition rather than on bundled CD-ROMs or DVDs. They're typically accessed by using a specific key combination during system startup. There's less cost to the OEM, but exposes the user to hard drive failure. An application used to create recovery discs or

flash drive A flash drive is a portable computer drive that uses flash memory. Flash drives are the larger memory modules consisting of a number of flash chips. A flash chip is used to read the contents of a single cell, but it can write entire block of ce ...

is sometimes offered to allow a backup of the recovery data. Recovery CDs can also sometimes be ordered directly from the OEM. For some computers, they can also recreate the recovery partition. Other recovery systems, such as those included with recent

Apple Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

models, permit users to download the recovery partition over an internet connection, enabling successful recovery even if the hard disk fails or is replaced. Some third-party software has the function to create a factory recovery partition and one key system backup and restore for Windows PC and Server.

Disk image recovery

The advantages of OEM recovery media can be had, without some of their disadvantages, by using

disk imaging A disk image is a snapshot of a storage device's content typically stored in a file on another storage device. Traditionally, a disk image was relatively large because it was a bit-by-bit copy of every storage location of a device (i.e. every ...

software such as

Mondo Rescue Mondo Rescue is free disaster recovery software. It supports Linux (i386, x86-64, IA-64) and FreeBSD (i386). It's packaged for multiple distributions (Red Hat, RHEL, Fedora, CentOS, OpenSuSE, SLES, Mandriva, Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo). It also ...

Acronis True Image Acronis True Image is a proprietary backup, imaging, cloning and cybersecurity suite developed by Acronis International GmbH. It can back up files, data, clone storage media and protects the system from ransomware. In 2021, the product was renam ...

to create a bootable recovery CD containing an image of the machine in the desired initial state. For example, a user can install their operating system, install all device drivers for their hardware, install other desired software, and configure other personal settings. Some smaller OEMs even use bootable CDs generated by this software as the actual recovery CD or DVD itself.

Criticism

Many manufacturers do not supply a physical "recovery disc," but instead store th
"recovery" (destructive) software tool
on a partition of the hard disk. Some software that was preloaded may not be included; likewise some device drivers.

Alternatives

Prior to the use of recovery discs, one would use a

boot disk A boot disk is a removable digital data storage medium from which a computer can load and run ( boot) an operating system or utility program. The computer must have a built-in program which will load and execute a program from a boot disk meeting ...

to boot the system, then reinstall software as necessary from the original installation media. A contemporary alternative, particularly used in

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

, is the installation disc or discs for a

Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...

, or a

Live CD A live CD (also live DVD, live disc, or live operating system) is a complete booting, bootable computer installation including operating system which runs directly from a CD-ROM or similar storage device into a computer's memory, rather than lo ...

or Live DVD – a bootable disc. These can be used to boot the system and then either manually troubleshoot and repair problems (in the case of a live disc), or re-install or re-configure the operating system. In the case of

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

, operating systems can legally be re-packaged and distributed, and thus there is no barrier to making the full installation available. However, in the absence of a backup of system-specific configuration, which is provided on recovery discs, a re-installed operating system may require re-configuration.

Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012, made available for download via Microsoft ...

includes two built-in recovery options, Refresh and Reset; Refresh re-installs Windows while preserving most user settings, while Reset performs a full restore back to its default configuration, similar to a factory restore function.

References