Thinkpads Forum

I thought I had it figured out... went to the Create Recovery Media program, asked it to create CD/DVD media. There was no option to specify CD or DVD, so I assumed it would auto-detect the media and take appropriate action.

I put in a blank DVD, and it started burning happily away. However, the resulting boot disc is only 514 MB. It then prompted me for "disc 1"... not wanting to waste another DVD, I fed it CD-R's.

Is there a way to create a recovery *DVD* instead of multiple CD's? This is on a T60 with a DVD burner.

From my experience. The first will fit on a CD (your rescue media disc), then the rest will be a copy of your image which will fill multiple DVDs (2 for my image).

I was rather ticked the first time I did this and used a DVD for the first disc.

chadwicktr is correct.
The first disc is just a boot disc and will fit on a CDR. The recovery set will fit on a DVD or a handful of CDR's.
You are only allowed to make one set of recovery discs so if you want a DVD recovery set you will now need to restore your computer using F11 at boot. Then you can make another recovery set. Create the recovery set by using a CDR first and then a DVD second.

Ah, so I just put the discs in the wrong order. I cancelled the first try after it burnt the first R&R CD, but I didn't quit out of the app. It appears to be allowing me to burn a second complete set now (CD first, then DVD next).

Yeah, if you don't complete the set you can try again. Once you make a complete set you have to do a recovery before you can make another set.

I suppose at that point, you can use more conventional methods to clone the discs.

Update to my original post: Yep, I was just being dumb... putting in a CD-R first followed by a DVD-R works as advertised. You get one bootable CD and a recovery DVD. My image all fit into one DVD too.

It is pretty handy if you lose your recovery set or you buy a used laptop where someone else made a set but didn't send them.