How To Backup Recovery Discs to ISOs without DVDs on Windows 7 using a Virtual Burner

Hey all!

Well alot has been going on, and I don't feel very bloggy about my inner thoughts right now...

So instead I'll do a tutorial on something everyone encounters when buying their new laptop!

Like me!

I've bought an Acer Timeline X 4830TG with awesome specs, in fact this is the first blog post of many that I'm doing on the laptop!

Skipping long Intros that will bore what you are really here for:


How To Backup Recovery Discs to ISOs without DVDs on Windows 7.


What you will need:

1. New Laptop (duh) (PS: any brand works)
2. At least 14 GB free space
3. Phantom Drive Virtual Burner (link) (note: make sure to grab 64-bit version if you have 64-bit system)
4. Preinstalled recovery program that bugs you to waste 4 DVDs
5. Time

Short Explanation:

So I was really happy finally having time to get in touch with my computer, and after turning on I got this small little notification asking me to make a Recovery Disc. Since mine is an Acer, I was asked by the Acer eRecovery to create one for backup! The program asked me to provide like 4 DVDs for a system image and 1 more for drivers and apps! OMG! Wasting my DVDs. Gone where the good old days when you were given a Windows 7 DVD and left to reinstall as vanilla (meaning original, clean)

After a little hunting and empirical thinking, there must be a way around it. 

(this wouldn't be an online blogpost without a troll meme pic :P hehhe )

So here we go~~

STEPS:

* Pardon the watermark, it is a necessary evil. 

1. Download and install Phantom Drive. (as link above) Bear in mind this is an awesome trialware, and you have full functionality of 30 days, more than enough, buy it to support it! This is the only virtual burner I found that works as advertised, without suffering limited functionality during a trial. A driver will be installed (hence the need for a 64-bit if you run 64-bit, which you probably do... hit START+BREAK to check)

2. Double click the Phantom Starter icon, you will be presented with something like below. Click on Phantom Creator.

3. Then you'll be greeted with the below window, under "Create a" choose DVD+R or even DVD-R, it really doesn't matter, you will burn this image to a physical (real) DVD during emergency. See 4.7 GB? 

4. Then tick "Create and ISO image"

5. Take note where you want to save the file as below. (make sure there is ample/enough space) The program creates a .phi file during burning. Also tick insert the new phantom image after creation just for simplicity.

6. Click on the Create button (sorry in the screenshot the watermark covered it). Something like this will flash past (real fast, had to redo a few times to get a shot)

7. This is how it would look like if you navigated to the saved location, don't worry about the 0KB files, leave them alone :)

8. Now go ahead and start your recovery program. Acer Asus Dell HP anything!
When you are at the choose drive, click on a dropdown menu and Choose the Phantom Drive Burner. Whoops, no screenie for that.

9. Click Start or Burn or equivalent.. Here's the screenshot for my third recovery Disc. Notice that it is much faster as the writing speed to a Harddisk is better than optical DVD burner. No errors too!

10. Leave it to verify.... Patience, young Padawan.

11. Within 4 minutes, tada!

12. Before you click ok... REPEAT steps 2 and 6 (namely going to phantom creator and clicking create since the other options remain)

13. Just to be sure, make sure you do steps 2 and 6 again AND THEN ONLY clicking ok.

14. Repeat until you are done with burning what you need, in my case until Recovery4.

15. see below, Success! :D
(press ok and make the program happy by allowing it to finish)

16. Now, navigate to where you initially told Phantom Drive to save the images. Do not worry about it showing as Phantom Drive image, they are ISOs (don't trust me? right click, properties) ... see, told you so!

(example below, default place was at : C:\Users\Public\Phantom Drive Images )

17. Copy the files (the ones that are like big ass sized, total around 12 GB) to a secure area like your external harddisk or some other computer. Steps are the same for the Drivers.

Points to note: make sure you copy the ISO files to another hard drive or even anywhere so long as its not your hard drive, because the sole purpose of restoring your drive image through DVDs is in the event your laptop's Hard drive conked on you. No use storing pieces of cloth for emergency in the middle of a place prone to fire right? (metaphor explanation fail haha)

18. Burn the DVDs when you really need them, don't worry they are bootable. :D

Cheers and Good Luck!
(simple right? or else just use Acronis True Image to image the whole hard drive and skip the dvds all together. :P )

Do comment and share, but please don't steal. This took me time you know? :3 There are alternatives to extract the backup image, but those are much more complicated.  Any other methods do let me know!