Recovery disc

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, that includes a self-running operating system: 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 operating system's functionality (and subsequently restore the contents of one's latest backups). The rescue/recovery tool uses media containing a backup of the original factory condition or a favored condition of a computer as configured by an 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 and reinstall the operating system and pre-installed software as it was when it was shipped. Many modern systems have eliminated use of a physical recovery disc and instead store this software in a separate partition on the hard disk itself. As an alternative to using media supplied with a system, it is possible to make one's own rescue/recovery disk. The Macintosh computer tool's name is Disk First Aid; on Windows systems there is a Create Disk function. Factory reset When a factory reset 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, 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-based operating systems involves booting from a separate hard drive partition, CD-ROM, or DVD, reformating the hard drive and then copying operating system and software files.