Thinkpads Forum

I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this question, but I want to hear it from the experts on the forum.

If you have a set of recovery discs, they can be used by themselves (i.e. no need to push the ThinkVantage button at boot) to restore a ThinkPad to the factory preload. Is this correct?

I've successfully created a set of discs and tested them so I know they work. But I want to blow everything off of the HD to prepare for a clean install of Vista. I'm on the fence about keeping the recovery partition, but as long as the recovery discs are usable stand-alone, it's an easy decision.

Thanks in advance!

Edited out since my experience was not for model questioned.

Forgot to add that I have a T60p. Sorry I didn't include this info in the original post!

You should be just fine. I had to completely wipe the recovery partition with my laptop, because I got it from school, and they had a custom recovery system on it. The first disc in the set is usually the boot disc, which loads the recovery environment (this is also the first disc created if you burn your own set), and the subsequent discs contain the recovery images. This is the case on my T60, should be the same for you.

To put some thought to this, the recovery discs would not be very good if they couldn't be used after a total disc corruption, or to restore a onto a new hdd. Anyways, like I said, I restored from the IBM discs with no recovery partition (the first disc has the exact same software that comes up when you enter the recovery environment by hitting the blue button).

You can use the recovery discs to completely restore the system to factory state to a new HD if you want to.