Patent ID: 7216251

Claim:
An initial setup method for a purpose such as facilitating recovery from corruption or other loss of data stored on a computer disk attached to a computer, the method comprising: storing on the disk recovery tools which comprise virtual booting code and imaging code, the virtual booting code being capable of booting the computer attached to the disk without requiring any changes to BIOS or disk firmware from an image that was stored on the disk even if the disk has no working, hidden or other partitions at the time the virtual booting code runs, and the imaging code being capable of creating an image of a main working partition on the disk without using a second partition of any kind, storing that image in a container in the main working partition on the disk, and deploying that image back over the main partition's location onto the disk outside the container; and storing on the disk a further setup script which when executed will cause the computer to perform steps that comprise: selecting and reserving space from anywhere on the disk in the main working partition for the container; recording on the disk a physical address for identifying the location of the container space; creating the image of the main working partition excluding the container space; and storing the image in the container.