T30 Recovery - Success Without IBM Recovery Disk

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RhoXS · #1 Post by **RhoXS** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 7:45 am

For a number of reasons I needed to rebuild my system with a clean install on a new hard drive. I wanted to upgrade the HD to a larger 7200 rpm unit and I was having Windows XP issues that even Microsoft pay per incident support could not resolve. Although I ordered a recovery disk from Lenovo on Saturday night, I became impatient yesterday so I just proceeded without it to see if I could get the machine back in service. I was successful beyond my expectations making the recovery disk that is still costing me $51.00 (inc. shipping & Tax) completely redundant. I thought the process I followed might prove useful to others so here is a description of what I did.

1. Replaced the original 40 Gb 5400 rpm drive with a new 80 GB 7200 rpm drive. This is a very easy exercise on the T30 and does not require any dissassembly of the machine.
2. Installed an off the shelf version of Windows XP Professional. The F11 option on the start-up splash screen allows a boot from a CD. It installed quickly with very little user intervention. The Windows XP installation CD will format the new virgin hard drive to the NTFS file system.
3. The off the shelf version of XP Pro did not recognize the internal wireless adapter but it did install drivers for the ethernet port. I used a hard wired ethernet connection to download all 65 updates from Microsoft. These updates, interestingly, included hardware specific drivers for the T30. It appears the Microsoft Update web site was able to identify the machine and then was able to provide machine specific hardware drivers.
4. I then used the automatic update feature on IBM/Lenovo's web site to download and install all the product specific driver's and applications (e.g. battery monitor, etc.). This also went very smoothly and behaved very similar to Microsoft's Update.
5. Found a Russian web site with all of IBM's wallpaper backgrounds. Downloaded the one originally on the machine (blue map of world).
6. Entered my wireless LAN SSID and WEP codes and the wireless adapter sprang to life.
7. Using an IDE cable adapter, I temporarily installed the old 40 Gb hard drive as a slave drive in my desktop computer. Using my wireless LAN, I transfered all the "My Documents" folders and files to the appropriate locations on the new drive. I also transfered other data files as necessary.

The only thing left is to reinstall the various applications. This is certain to be time consuming but I think this will be a small price to pay for a machine that now runs significantly faster, snappier, and without all the issues that had gradually built in over the past three years or so.

I hope this can prove useful to someone.

uberT · #2 Post by **uberT** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 8:22 am

Very nice. You have two step sixes, BTW.

I'd like to re-format my HD just to clean it up. The machine runs slower and slower with the passing of time. I do have the two "recovery" CDs for my T30. The files appear very limited on these two discs. I assume they're pulling the software from the portion of the hard drive we don't access (??) Total file size on the disc looks like 650MB or so.

I am always reluctant to take on this project as many hours are required (in my case) to restore data back to all the places it belongs. I might do this over the xmas break when I don't have to have the machine available for work.

Thanks for the write-up.

RhoXS · #3 Post by **RhoXS** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 10:09 am

Thanks, fixed step numbers.

To get to the point I am now at (loading useful applications) did not take as long as I thought it would. I started circa 1500 and finished about 2100. This included dinner with my wife, a walk with my wife to admire our christmas lights, another walk to check out a fruit tree in our yard for my wife, and the time necessary to take and download a new picture for my wife's business card and web site. It is best to do this when no significant other is competing for your time. Actually some of the distractions occurred while XP was installing itself so the distractions really were not that comsequential.

I first tried using the IBM recovery partition in a clone I made of the original HD on the new 80 GB drive. This installed without obvious issue but left almost 30 GB of drive space as unallocated space. I used an Acronis product to expand the main partition into the unallocated section but then the drive would not boot. It was then that I just lost patience with it ordered a recovery disk. If I had to do it over again, and had a late version of XP available, I do not know that I would use the IBM disks. First, they create the dam recovery partition which makes it impossible to use Acronis TI10 or Ghost to make a clone backup. Second, IBM installs a lot of unnecessary "value added" junk to clutter things up.

I purchased the T30 in July, 2004. Before all this started it had degraded to take almost four minutes to boot and generally became very slow and clunky in spite of my best efforts to control startup items, etc. Although no applications (except for Firefox) have been installed yet, its behavior now is very snappy and crisp.

MarT40 · #4 Post by **MarT40** » Wed Dec 13, 2006 3:46 pm

RhoXS

The reason people fuss with recovery disks is that XP Professional complete off the shelf is about $300.

ronbo613 · #5 Post by **ronbo613** » Wed Dec 13, 2006 4:35 pm

The OEM version of XP Pro on my PCs was about $135.USD.

RhoXS-What hard drive did you get to replace the original? I'm looking to upgrade the drive in my T30, but not sure which hard drive to get.

RhoXS · #6 Post by **RhoXS** » Wed Dec 13, 2006 6:39 pm

I purchased an 80 Gig 7200 rpm Hitachi 7K100 from Newegg for $94.00 + shipping. I also upgraded the memory and replaced the original two 256 Mb modules with a single 1 GB module. However, I did not notice any performance gain from doubling the available memory.

After I built the new single partition system on the new 80 GB drive, and before I started to load applications, I used Ghost to write an iso image to the hard drive on my desk top computer. I wanted to keep the basic system readily available to clone a new drive if that should ever again become necessary and save all the time it took to get this far. I then used this image to clone a spare 20 GB drive I was not using. To my surprise, the 20 GB clone would not boot when I tested it. The T30 no longer has the excuse relating to its original two partition setup so I do not know why this will not work.

In other words, if you change drives, expect to have to build a new system from scratch and forget any hope of making regular clones to another drive to use as a backup.

ronbo613 · #7 Post by **ronbo613** » Wed Dec 13, 2006 7:26 pm

I have a spare boot drive for all my desktop computers, cloned with Acronis TI9, I had planned to do the same with the T30, but seem to have run into a few issues similar to the ones you are having.
My first plan was to clone the original Thinkpad drive to a drive in a USB enclosure, install a new drive, clone the new drive from the USB drive and keep the original as a spare. The cloning seemed to have gone OK, but I can't boot the T30 from the USB drive and even though it seems like it's all there, the clone is a few kilobytes short of the original, so I've got a bad feeling about that.
I saw your post over at the Acronis forum so I asked a similar question myself there and at another forum where I discuss hardware. It was suggested I create a disc image, not a clone, of the original drive on the external USB drive(or network drive, I guess would be the same), install the new laptop drive, then boot the computer using the Acronis Rescue/Restore Disc and restore the image to the new drive.
Don't know why a disc image would work when a clone does not, but I've only cloned drives with Acronis, not create images, so I can't say for sure. Also, if you install XP from scratch without the Thinkpad crap, why wouldn't you be able to clone the drive?
As far as your increased memory goes, you won't notice any overall improvement unless you use memory-intensive applications like a photo editing program, then you'll notice. WinXP uses about 250MB or so of memory to run, since you had 512MB originally, you were already in the green for most common apps.
I'd be curious how much hotter the 7200rpm drive will be over your original. I'd settled on a 5400rpm because of heat and power draw concerns.
The fact you can't back up the hard drive on a laptop really stinks. Laptop drives are small and can't be that durable, especially if you use the computer a lot. If I can't clone or copy the drive I have, there is no point in getting another drive until the original dies, but that's not sensible data management.
Between this hard drive crapola and EZ Serve cracking the case and lid of my T30, this Thinkpad will most likely be my first, and last IBM/Lenovo laptop.

ashleys · #8 Post by **ashleys** » Thu Dec 14, 2006 6:49 am

I've just upgraded my Hard Drive to 100Gb Hitachi without any trouble at all.

My machines (desktop and Tpad) have the following configuration,

C: System partition including all applications
D: *ALL* user data

On the Tpad I always use Rescue and Recovery to backup C: (either full or incremental) to an external USB disk.

To upgrade my hard drive I just took a full RnR backup and then installed the new drive. Then used Rescue and Recovery to restore the entire C: partition. Once the system was back I restored all my user data from the external USB disk into the D: partition.

Then one thing that *IS* lacking in the stand-alone RnR is an ability to partition the target drive.

ronbo613 · #9 Post by **ronbo613** » Thu Dec 14, 2006 11:41 am

Looks like Hitachi would be the best way to go for a T30 replacement hard drive.
Is it possible that the Rescue and Recovery program has some kind of proprietary feature that will allow backing up the drive to an external disc when a program like Acronis won't work?

RhoXS · #10 Post by **RhoXS** » Thu Dec 14, 2006 3:19 pm

I am now having second thoughts about not being patient for a few days to wait for the IBM Recovery Disks to be delivered. The automatic update feature on IBM/Lenovo's web site did not update everything as I previously thought. As a result, some of the bundled applications (RnR, Record Now, etc.) are not now available. They are certainly not essential but they would now be nice to have.

I was actually unaware of RnR prior to this thread but it appears that RnR might solve the problem of creating a recovery image that could actually be useful. Second, some of the CD/DVD apps (e.g. Record Now) seemed like useful but scaled down versions of their bloated retail counterparts.

Although the recovery disks were delivered a few days ago, the only way to recover these apps off the disks is to do a full recovery. I just put too much work into recovering the T30 this past week to start again. Also, the machine is now running really well so I do not want to fix something that is not broke by starting over.

ronbo613 · #11 Post by **ronbo613** » Thu Dec 14, 2006 3:32 pm

The main reason I want to clone my current hard drive is because it has a full MS Office package and I don't want to lose it.
Because I have a "corporate" setup on my T30, I don't think I even have Rescue and Recovery.

ashleys · #12 Post by **ashleys** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 3:33 am

I would recommend using Rescue & Recovery.
It provides full and incremental backups. You can backup to external USB devices or CD. There is also a bootable version that can be placed on both a CD or an external drive (I've got both).

As I said previoulsy, the only drawback I've found is when installing a larger drive. The standalone version appears to attempt to re-size the target partition in relation to it's original size. In my situation, it made my C: partition larger than I wanted.
Therefore, I temporarily installed W2K (with Service Pack 4) and IE6. I could then install Rescue & Recovery. I then did a full restore of my C: partition which wiped out my temporary installation and re-instated my previous C: partition.

Regarding disks, yes I use Hitachi across the board, namely in my Desktop, Tpad and my two external USB backup devices. Having first used Hitachi disks back in the 1980's on large systems, I wouldn't use anything else

ashleys · #13 Post by **ashleys** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 3:38 am

The fact you can't back up the hard drive on a laptop really stinks

???

I missed that earlier, even if you don't want to use Rescue & Recovery you can always use ntbackup. It may not be the slickest interface but I run it on my desktop and it works a treat. I created a simple dos batch file to run it with all the correct switches set and it takes a full backup of my C: partition (with system state). I've also tested that it can be used to restore the system as well

RhoXS · #14 Post by **RhoXS** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 8:25 am

Is the "Recovery & Rescue" software the same as IBM's "Rapid Restore"?

Last night I discovered a folder on the old HD called "IBM Tools". To my pleasant surprise, the uninstalled software for many of the IBM applications resided in this folder. I was able to successfully install Record Now and WinDVD.

I did not see an application called "Recovery & Restore" What I did see, and only started to install, was an application called "Rapid Restore". I stopped the installation when a message appeared warning that a new partition to hold the recovery data would be installed. I want nothing more to do with two partitions so I stopped the installation. I noticed from the Add/Remove programs dialog that Rapid Restore was already registered so I uninstalled it.

The discussion above on "Recovery & Restore" makes me think this might be a worthwhile application so I want to figure out where to find it, if it does exist on the original factory created HD.

ashleys · #15 Post by **ashleys** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 9:25 am

Rapid restore was a previous more basic product.

The latest version of Rescue and Recvovery can be downloaded from here,

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... Q2QAK.html Take note, the download is big

Once you have it installed you can launch it from Windows or use PF11 during the boot sequence to load the Pre-Desktop flavour.

If you wish to create the bootable version, either on CD or make a bootable USB disk launch the application called "Create Rescue Media" from Programs -> ThinkVantage

Ps. If you've got Microsoft fix KB917422 applied, you'll need the following fix to Rescue and Recovery (as noted in the product download page).

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-65379

#16 Post by **GomJabbar** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 10:24 am

RhoXS wrote:Is the "Recovery & Rescue" software the same as IBM's "Rapid Restore"?

The discussion above on "Recovery & Restore" makes me think this might be a worthwhile application so I want to figure out where to find it, if it does exist on the original factory created HD.

Basically yes.

On my T42 it is here: C:\IBMTOOLS\APPS\IBMRNR\

Personally I think it is better to stay with the version that came with the factory preload because:

Any machine that has IBM Rescue and Recovery with Rapid Restore Ultra 1.0 or IBM Rescue and Recovery 2.0 factory preloaded, then installs Rescue and Recovery 3.0, will lose the ability to have Rescue and Recovery installed on the machine after a Restore to Factory contents action is selected when booting from the computer's hard drive.

ronbo613 · #17 Post by **ronbo613** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 10:40 am

On this page: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... Q2QAK.html I don't see the T30 in the supported systems, but if I use the page with my T30 system specs added, I get this page: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-65794 for Rescue and Recovery v3.01.0042.
I don't have any on the IBM Tools, including Rescue and Recovery installed on my rig so I think I'll try using Acronis and an external USB drive to install a new hard drive, then install the IBM Tools and give that a shot.

ashleys · #18 Post by **ashleys** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 10:50 am

I'm using the latest RnR 3.10 as per the link I gave.

I know it says the T30 isn't supported but that's only because they didn't bother to test it. It works fine on my T30.

I trashed the hidden partition as soon as I got my T30 so any restrictions with "restore to factory state" don't apply. As I mentioned in a post elsewhere, why would I want to restore to a factory state ? If my machine goes bad, or indeed I upgrade my HDD, I want my *current* system back not the factory pre-load.

ronbo613 · #19 Post by **ronbo613** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 11:45 am

My only interest in the R&R program would be it's ability to backup or clone the contents of the hard drive that is installed on the computer to another drive.

RhoXS · #20 Post by **RhoXS** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 6:06 am

I appreciate all the good information about the Rescue & Recovery client posted above. I am downloading it now but it is a huge download, alomost 500 MB. Glad I have a fast DSL connection.

Some specific questions I hope can be answered:

-Will it install clean without a previous version already installed or is it only an update like much of the other apps available from IBM/Lenovo?

-Can I successfully clone a plug & play replacement HD? Both Ghost and Acronis TI10 have been unsucsessful so I am skeptical that Rescue & Recovery will do something the other two cannot.

-Will it creat a second partition like Rapid Restore?

A 500 MB app is a big app to install and then find it will not work.

ashleys · #21 Post by **ashleys** » Sun Dec 17, 2006 7:13 am

Answers,

1. Yes, it will install with no previous versions installed. As I posted before, when I upgraded my HDD I only had W2K SP4 and IE6 installed when I installed 3.10 to enable me to restore my C: drive.

2. I've never used a cloning product but I assume they attempt to make an exact image on the target drive. Rescue & Recovery is a logical backup. All the data is backed up in a file within the RRBackups folder. This is why I was able to restore my C: drive into a larger C: partition on my newly installed HDD.

3. Sorry, can you be more specific about a "second partition" Do you mean the hidden partition ? If so no. As I posted before, when I first got my T30 years ago I deleted the hidden partition. Rescue & Recovery will install a number of folders (most notably MiniNt and preboot) on C: These are used when you take the F11 option to boot directly into the pre-desktop area.

T30 Recovery - Success Without IBM Recovery Disk

T30 Recovery - Success Without IBM Recovery Disk

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