Using GParted to copy Windows partition. Boot flag on Recovery partition

07
2014-07

Jslick

I am trying to understand how booting works with a Recovery partition. In the past when I have restored a Windows partition using GParted with a copy that I made earlier, I needed to use a Windows recovery disc to repair the partition because it would not boot.

Now I have done the same process again, except this time Windows boots immediately after with need to do a repair with a Windows disc. The difference that I notice is that with this laptop, the boot flag is on an ntfs partition called Recovery. I assume that this must be the reason why it is able to boot without a repair.

Can anyone explain to me what is happening here?

Answers

Cornelius

Boot is used by some commercial operating system boot loaders. The boot flag indicates the partition is active or bootable. Only one partition on a disk device can be active.

Source: GParted manual

Boot is just a... flag.

I needed to use a Windows recovery disc to repair the partition

Yes, because restoring the partition probably didn't restore a working bootloader.

Now I have done the same process again, except this time Windows boots immediately

Newer Windows versions (I guess 7 and 8, 8.1) install the bootloader on a separate partition, which is automatically created when you make the first partition on an unformatted HDD. Because the bootloader was intact, it looked for a partition with the boot flag and started the boot process from it.

Rod Smith

Most likely it's a question of precise partition placement. On a BIOS-based computer, Windows is very finicky about where its boot partition begins; if it's moved by as much as a single sector, the boot process wanders off and gets lost. Thus, if you back up a partition that began on, say, sector 63, and restore it to a partition that begins elsewhere, say on sector 2048, the computer will no longer boot. Furthermore, if you restore the partitions to the disk but fail to restore the boot loader, the computer won't boot.

Thus, chances are one of two things happened in your recent experience:

You happened to restore to a partition with the same starting sector number as the original, and either you restored the MBR or the target disk had a compatible MBR in place already.
Your computer uses EFI, which isn't reliant on the MBR and isn't as finicky about partition start points.

The former seems more likely than the latter, because on an EFI-based computer, what GParted reports as the "boot flag" should be assigned to a smallish (typically 100-600MiB) FAT partition, not to an NTFS partition. If you also have a FAT partition with a "boot flag" set, though, it could be that the NTFS partition you mention is mis-labelled or that the computer's manufacturer has set it up strangely.

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F4LLCON

I have an ASUS N53JQ with Windows 7 x64.

My problem started when I used the recovery DVDs from my laptop. Put it in, run the set-up and went to 95%, after that it went to 0% and then to 5%. I got an error code 1029 and could not finish installation. Tried that couple of times and same thing happens every time.

I formatted and deleted and created and formatted and deleted the partition where Windows was on. Tried other Windows 7 installation CDs. 3 in total. Nothing worked. I get a BOOTMGR error when I start the computer, I can't enter F9 recovery partition and F8.

In my BIOS everything is ok. So I tried the repair options from the Windows 7 CDs. Didn't work. I tried:

Repair your computer
System repair. Shows no errors.

In the command screen I tried:

bootrec /rebuildbcd
bootrec.exe /rebuildbcd
bcdedit /export C:\BCD_Backup
ren c:\boot\bcd bcd.old
bootrec /rebuildbcd
bootrec.exe /fixmbr
bootrec.exe /fixboot

Nothing worked.

I restarted with CD again, and hit shift + F10 so the command prompt would show up and went to *diskpart > list disk > select disk number > list partition > select partition number > active*, so that partition would become active.

Partition 1 like 20GB (recovery partition) Primary
Partition 0 like 160 GB (don't know what it is) ?
Partition 2 Like 400GB (looks like partition 3, i only have 500 GB total so it has to be the same as partition 3?) Primary
Partition 3 Like 400GB Logical

The results were:

Partition 1 could be active
Partition 2 could be active
Partition 0 and 3 not.

I read that if a partition is active it will start up first. Did not work for me.

Can someone help me with how to get into F9 Hidden recovery partition while starting up and recovery this machine?

I read somewhere that there were more people with same problem, they had the hidden recovery partition but could not enter it. Saw that some could enter by making that partition active etc. But that didn't work for me. Something about bootloader etc.

I don't want to send it for repair to ASUS because last time I send my last laptop, they shipped it back with a broken frame and defect on my CD player. They say to me they didn't do it, well, I didn't do it either!

Oh and by the way, I can't use an XP CD because I get a BSoD when I use it. Tried 5 different XP CDs, 3 Windows 7 CDs, 1 Vista CD and the Recovery DVDs I made with AI recovery from ASUS.

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Using GParted to copy Windows partition. Boot flag on Recovery partition