Hello Everyone. I'm a brand new member here. I have been searching all over the web for literally weeks and have made tiny incremental steps toward finding my total solution. Please allow me to get some of the details out of the way first.
Me: I have been doing computer support since 1990; first with Apple ProDOS and Mac OS 6.x through early OS X, then shifting to Windows 9x/NT/2k. I have concentrated on Windows since then, trough XP, Vista, 7, and now 8/8.1. I have "tinkered" with various Linux flavors. My strengths are troubleshooting and Anal Retentiveness. My weaknesses are command line and Anal Retentiveness.
HW/ SW: (1) Lenovo IdeaPad G510 (Intel i5)/Win 8.1 Standard/all orig hw except upgraded RAM. (2) Lenovo IdeaPad G585 (AMD xx)/Win 8 Standard/ all orig hw. (3) Spare 500GB SATA hdd.
The G585 belongs to my teenaged daughter. Both laptops are well outside factory warranties.
My Bozo move: (I won't get into too many details here): I inadvertently destroyed the ability to factory restore the G585 from the recovery partition. Lenovo would not even sell me a replacement pre-imaged hdd. All I could buy were the OS Recovery disks, which wipe all partitions and install a clean OS on a single drive-encompassing partition.
My short term fix: because the initiator of this fiasco was the frequent viral infections my daughter was experiencing, and the fact that she does need her laptop for school, I did a clean install of Ubuntu, which she likes well enough, but prohibits her playing of some PC games.
My Brainstorm: What if I could clone MY hdd, replace her original drive with the clone, then do a factory restore on her system?
FIRST TEST: I pulled my hdd and put it in her laptop to verify that my copy of 8.1 would indeed be able to boot her system. IT WORKED! WOOHOO!
Next step: Clone my orig 500GB SATA hdd to the Spare 500GB SATA hdd.
I have tried multiple cloning tools: Acronis True Image, Macrium, Aomei, and others. (I really like the Aomei interface.) I repeatedly get (seemingly) good clones, that successfully boot and run my laptop. But every single one ends up with the exact same issue: when I launch Lenovo's Onekey Recovery tool, and tell it I want to restore to factory defaults, the tool is unable to locate the needed recovery partition(s) and so cannot reboot into recovery mode.
My most recent attempt: Used Aomei to create a bootable Aomei WinPE CD, put the spare hdd INSIDE the laptop (drive 0) and my orig hdd into an external SATA -> USB 2.0 case, Booted from WinPE CD (without external hdd) and deleted all partitions on the internal hdd, then rebooted (from CD again) and connected external (original) hdd. I then "successfully" cloned the external/original onto the internal/spare. I can boot and run from that latest clone (I'm running off it right now, as I type this post), but once again, when I launch Onekey and attempt to perform a factory restore, Onekey claims it cannot locate the required partition(s).
I know, from my research, that it has SOMEthing to do with the location and/or identification of the recovery partion(s) on the drive. What I don't know is how to resolve that. I have learned how to run various DiskPart commands from within Windows PowerShell, to pull up various reports on the drives, volumes, and partitions. But I really do not understand most of the info that I see, nor how to use and/or modify it.
I'm sure somebody here can provide me with instructions, but please keep in mind that the command line force is NOT strong with THIS Skywalker. So I will need baby step/ newb level instructions - not only on what to type, but (please?) explanations of what it is I am typing and why. Perhaps then, if I run into a minor snafu, I will have enough understanding to sort it out on my own (my absolute BEST way to learn).
I will gladly post my additional steps and results for future reference.
Thank you all, not least for tolerating my longwindedness, but also in advance for any and all positive feedback.
