Combining recovery CDs onto 1 DVD

[Nohbody]

I purchased, earlier this week, a set of recovery discs for my R51-1830BTU, and was wondering if there was a way of combining the 7 non-startup CDs onto one DVD-R. I tried a straight copy of the discs into one HDD folder with the intention of burning that folder onto a DVD, but a lot of the files had the same name, so they wouldn't be able to co-exist in one directory.

Is there some special technique for combining them, or am I stuck with disc swapping like I was back to the days of data transfer via floppies over sneakernet?

I'm guessing that just each disc in its own subdirectory won't help, as R&R won't know where to look for the contents of those discs.

(R&Ring onto the laptop then setting up a DVD copy isn't an option, the only DVD burner I have access to is on the desktop I'm using to send this message. Buying a USB external burner for just one task seems a bit wasteful, and the notion of buying the drive then returning it after I'm done with that one task bugs me on a moral level, not to mention that I don't have the money to spare for the initial purchase anyway. )

[Nohbody]

So, is everyone baffled, or have y'all grown tired of me already?

[Harryc]

It's never been done, so is baffled the correct word? I foresee the Pioneer spirit in your near future ...

[GomJabbar]

I know some users have uses a CD for the first disk and a DVD for the remainder when creating the recovery software using the built in app. Not sure if you can put it all on one DVD or not.

[Harryc]

Not sure if you can put it all on one DVD or not.

the only DVD burner I have access to is on the desktop

I am almost positive you cannot network a DVD burner and actually burn DVD's. Also, I have never seen a work-around for the one boot CD and additional recovery media DVD or CD's requirement. The simple answer is for the OP to post a WTB Ad in Marketplace here and ask for what he needs.

[Nohbody]

Sorry, I didn't make myself clear. The R&R boot disc wasn't what I was looking to put on the DVD, just the 7 CD set for the rest of the stuff. For my R51, there's a total of 8 discs: the bootable CD with R&R itself, and 7 CDs of the actual contents of a factory-fresh HDD ready for going out on the market. I don't mind flipping one disc, but doing it 7 times, given how CD drives aren't instant-access (close, but this is neither horseshoes, hand grenades, nor nukes, so "close" doesn't count ) isn't something I'm looking forward to (waiting on the new HDD to be delivered, should be in today).

Also, I wasn't talking about networking anything. I have the 8 CD R&R set already that I had purchased through the marketplace forum here, what I was looking to do was to take the contents of the 7 non-bootup CDs and put them onto one DVD, with the combining done using the DVD burner on my desktop.

If it's not possible, though, I guess I'll have to suck it up. Joy.

[GomJabbar]

Look at the contents of the CD's. You might be able to copy them to a DVD. You will still need the first CD to boot into Rescue and Recovery.

[Nohbody]

Eh, I decided I wasn't that enthusiastic about playing with the options for a DVD copy, and just sucked up my dislike of disc swapping. (Not having handy DVDRWs helped with that decision. )

Finishing off R&R on the new drive now.

[jronald]

In theory:
The end of the first CD "asks" for the next CD and an input (Enter Key)
Im guessing its done in DOS for at least the first request, after that I guess it could be done in windows.

If a body were to go into the CDs and find the "request" for the 2nd CD, and then delete that reference or rework the request so that its NOT looking for a CD or the Enter Key punch.
Then rework the second beginning of the CD so that it does not "reload" the useless info to restart the process it should be doable.

The end of each CD would need to be modified, the beginning of each CD would need to be modified to make it work.

Im 100% positive it can be done. Im also 100% positive I can not do it

Ron

[Nohbody]

I know I can't do it. Coder I'm not.

[rkawakami]

My guess is that it could be possible but you would have to edit a bunch of DOS batch files (.bat) in order to get it to work right. The contents of each CD could be put into its own directory on a hard drive (Disk1, Disk2, etc.). Find and edit all of the batch files so that when the install routine executes it will reference the appropriate directory. Then write all of the "disk" directories onto a DVD and hope that everything has been edited correctly otherwise it's back to square one .

If what you are trying to do is to make it easier to re-install the OS on the same machine in the future, then I suggest once you get everything installed from the CDs, run all of the Windows updates since the CDs were created (i.e., SP2, SP3), update all of the drivers that you want/need, then create an image of the drive. That could be done with a spare hard drive (externally connected or via an Ultrabay HD adapter). Or if you get a clone/imaging program that supports it, write the image to a blank DVD (or two). I use Norton Ghost 2003 to this.

[Nohbody]

It looks like R&R uses INI files, actually. Each \Recovery\ directory on each disc contains recovery.ini, with the following content:

[SETTINGS]
OS=XPPRO
DBCSSupport=0
KoreanNLS=0
disk=[disk number]
[Disks]
Disk1=XPPRO
Disk2=XPPRO
Disk3=XPPRO
Disk4=XPPRO
Disk5=XPPRO
Disk6=XPPRO
Disk7=XPPRO

I may try later to see about putting in a recovery.ini in the root DVD directory and omit the disk number reference, to see how that works, but that depends on whether or not I muster sufficient ambition to bother with it now that the system is up and running on the R&Red drive.