Thinkpads Forum

Can anyone please tell me if Rescue and Recovery makes a 'true' drive image. Or do I really need Acronis or Ghost etc. I have read all the documentation and looked through posts here but cannot answer the essential question. "If my hard drive fails and I replace it with a brand new one will R&R essentially clone the old image onto the new with everything intact Boot record, service and pre-load etc.

Do I really need to purchase other imaging software?

Thanks and apologizes if I have missed something in the back reading

Jeff, Welcome to the forum.

R&R is held on a hidden partition on your hard disk. If the disk fails then you cannot recover, unless you have copied the R&R backups to an external HD. You can also create a bootable version on an external HD.

Sorry, I have used neither Acronis nor Ghost. No doubt someone will be along soon who has used them.

If you create the Product Recovery Discs, you should be able to use them on a new hard drive. You can also buy these discs from Lenovo, but only for the OS that came preinstalled on your ThinkPad. When you use these discs, you get your ThinkPad with all the software just as it came from the factory.

Theoretically, if you use Rescue and Recovery to make backups onto other media, you could apply the backup(s) after using the Product Recovery Discs, and be up to date to where you are now.

These solutions do not always work for one reason or another. It is best to test them if possible.

None of the above is the same as cloning. Cloning is more straightforward and can be accomplished much faster.

Thank you everyone,

I just recived my T500. I installed all my applications and windows updates etc. Once everything was working, as I wanted, I created an R&R backup to an external hardrive. I then created the R&R Rescue media (tested and bootable) but NOT the Product Recvovery discs (yet).

So from the above comments, it seems that the Resuce Media and the R&R Backup will not be able to get a brand new hardrive up and running - even though the backup includes the operating system. So the R&R Backup does not include the service partion and boot record (i.e. will not make a new hard disk bootable)? For that I need the Product Recovery discs. Is my understanding correct?

It seems that the best thing to do is just to make a drive image with an Imageing program.

Thanks again.

Jeff Lalo wrote:So from the above comments, it seems that the Resuce Media and the R&R Backup will not be able to get a brand new hardrive up and running - even though the backup includes the operating system. So the R&R Backup does not include the service partion and boot record (i.e. will not make a new hard disk bootable)? For that I need the Product Recovery discs. Is my understanding correct?

It seems that the best thing to do is just to make a drive image with an Imageing program.

That is all true. The Rescue Media boots into the Rescue and Recovery Predesktop Area for when you cannot boot there from the hard drive (for whatever reason). While booted into Rescue and Recovery, you can (hopefully) copy data files to another medium, run Diagnostics, and Restore Factory Contents (if the hard drive has the Service Partition [R&R]).

The 1st disc of the Product Recovery Disc set is a Rescue Media CD which is bootable. When you Restore Factory Contents from there, you have to add the remaining discs to copy what is needed to the hard drive to do the restore. Once done, you remove all CDs/DVDs and reboot. You are brought into Rescue and Recovery again, and from here you Restore Factory Contents again. This time Windows and all Factory Software is installed from the Service Partition to the C: drive.