Ordered T60, need advice about backup/recovery options

[iev]

Hello,

I recently ordered a new T60 and I am eagerly waiting for it. My Lab bought one for me about 1.5 year ago and I am so pleased, that I ordered myself one. However, as I will soon leave the US to go back to my own country, I want to be sure that I will be able to reinstall my laptop, in case something happens. I have looked throughout this and other forums to see what options I have. I found the following, but still have a few questions about them, which I was not able to answer by reading all these posts:

1) Rescue and Recovery CDs/DVDs from Lenovo. If I understand correctly, these are not included with my shipment. How much do they cost to order from Lenovo and how long does it take to get them? Couldn't find anything on their site. Do they include all these unnecessary applications that are preloaded in the laptop?

2) The "Rescue and Recovery" program that comes with the laptop, to create backup/recovery CDs/DVDs. How are they different from the ones I can order directly from Lenovo? Do they also save these unnecessary preloaded applications?

3) Recovery partition on the hard-drive. Again, what is the difference with the previous 2 options? And again, what about all these preloaded applications?

4) "Windows Vista Anytime Upgrade" CD from CompUSA. Is it possible to format a drive and cleanly install Windows Vista Home Premium from this CD? Or is it only possible to upgrade an existing installation? Cost-wise, this is the best option, provided that it is possible to perform a clean install. In this case, I have to use the activation code that comes with my laptop, right?

5) Any other options?

I hope that someone can answer my questions and put all these options in order for me

Thank you in advance for your time,

Ioannis

[mgo]

found the following, but still have a few questions about them, which I was not able to answer by reading all these posts:

1) Rescue and Recovery CDs/DVDs from Lenovo. If I understand correctly, these are not included with my shipment. How much do they cost to order from Lenovo and how long does it take to get them?
2) The "Rescue and Recovery" program that comes with the laptop, to create backup/recovery CDs/DVDs. How are they different from the ones I can order directly from Lenovo? Do they also save these unnecessary preloaded applications?

3) Recovery partition on the hard-drive. Again, what is the difference with the previous 2 options? And again, what about all these preloaded applications?

4) "Windows Vista Anytime Upgrade" CD from CompUSA. 5) Any other options?

Ioannis

Rescue & Recovery is a program that comes on your new ThinkPad. It is used to create a set of CDs which can be used to restore your machine to factory original if need be. The recovery partition on the hard drive is the source partition and the CDs are created from that compressed image.

Running Rescue & Recovery to create the CD set takes about -two hours- which is really a huge chore.

Should you need to recover the system, it takes another two hours.

You can also use Rescue & Recovery to back up your personal files, but why? It's clunky and awful. Use Robocopy which comes free with Vista and is fast and very reliable.

The very -best- method of backing up your computer is to use a commercial program like Acronis or Ghost. I have used Acronis for years and it's great. The backup image takes less than 20 minutes to create, and less than 20 minutes should you need to recover the system.

Rescue and Recovery only restores your machine to factory original. That means any partitions you create would be destroyed in the recovery process.

If you order the recovery CD set from Lenovo the price is around $45.00. If you buy Acronis, it's around $40.00.
Do you want to spend $45.00 for a CD set that only does one thing and takes two hours, or do you want to spend $40.00 for a program that is continuously useful and would backup several versions of your machine in just a few minutes?

Windows Vista anytime upgrade is not worth the money. If you want to get a different version of Vista, buy it in the store or order it from a dealer on line.

What else do you want from Vista that would not be on your new machine?

By the way, I am running Vista Home Premium on my T60 right now. It works just fine. Run the "Classic" mode for best speed. Also do the usual speedup performance tweaks in Performance for improved responsiveness. The visual effects like Aero and Flip are just noveties and eat up power and slow the machine. I have two gig or ram which is very helpful in Vista.

[ZaZ]

The Anytime Upgrade Disc is great. It allows you to do a clean install of Vista without all the extra crap you don't need. There is a guide here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=144783

If you get a Seagate drive, you can get a free download of DiscWizard from Seagate's site. DiscWizard is essentially Acronis True Image. It works in XP or Vista.

I like to do a clean install of whatever OS I am using, putting on only the things I use. Then I can make an image which I can restore at any time I need to. If you partition the drive, you can put it on the other partition so you won't need an external drive to store the image.

[Billmanweh]

The very -best- method of backing up your computer is to use a commercial program like Acronis or Ghost. I have used Acronis for years and it's great. The backup image takes less than 20 minutes to create, and less than 20 minutes should you need to recover the system.

how exactly does that work? does it create an identical image of your HD on another HD?

[mgo]

The very -best- method of backing up your computer is to use a commercial program like Acronis or Ghost. I have used Acronis for years and it's great. The backup image takes less than 20 minutes to create, and less than 20 minutes should you need to recover the system.

how exactly does that work? does it create an identical image of your HD on another HD?

Greetings:
Yes, that is exactly what happens. My Acronis program will create the backup image right out of Windows and it takes less than 10 minutes. I can work as usual while this is going on. To restore, it is necessary for Acronis to close Windows and start up its own virtual operating system and then restore the image that the user selects. That only takes 15 minutes or less for around 12 gig on the drive. It then re-starts the machine with the recovered image.

All of this is pretty much automatic and only requires the user to say "yes" to the process.

Of course, if your personal data (like in Documents) is not backed up, you will lose the new data and get the old data back. This is why a separate backup operation is critically important. It's also good to have Documents on a second partition. Easier to manage, and restoring C: does not disturb the Documents on the other partition.

It is also very important to create a bootable CD for the times when the hard drive will not run at all or is un-bootable. The CD is booted over and allows restore of the image. It's pretty easy to do. I do not work for Acronis, but it's the program I am familiar with. I'm sure Ghost or other imaging programs run about the same way.

[Billmanweh]

So I guess the absolute best way to go would be to keep a recovery disc with your OS on it, then something similar to one of the Ghost type programs where you can keep a backup of your HD on an external HD, and then also occasionally backup your data.

MOD EDIT: Kindly, please trim down your quoting.

[mgo]

[quote="Billmanweh"][So I guess the absolute best way to go would be to keep a recovery disc with your OS on it, then something similar to one of the Ghost type programs where you can keep a backup of your HD on an external HD, and then also occasionally backup your data.quote]

If you say a "recovery disc with your OS on it", I assume you are taling about Rescue & Recovery. That makes a disc -set- not just one disc. Yes, it is a good idea to create this set, plus the separate boot media disk that Rescue & Recovery offers to do. You might need that for the recovery process...I have needed it.

Yes, use a 3rd party imaging program also. I always keep my operating system on C: and the rest of my data on a second partition like D: or E:, depending on how the computer names the CD drive.

I keep my personal data on the second partition, and do backups -frequently- using Robocopy which comes free with Vista. Robocypy can be set up to just copy new and changed files so the backup only takes a few seconds.

[iev]

Hello,

Thank you all for the help you provide. From the answers above, I deduce that the only way to get a clean installation of Windows Vista (i.e., without the pre-installed software from Lenovo) is the "Windows Vista Anytime Upgrade" CD from CompUSA. I think that this is what I will do and immediately after the clean installation I will use Ghost or Acronis to make an image of my disk.

I think this is the best possible solution for what I want to do.

Thanks again!

Ioannis

P.S: Of course, I will also create all CDs/DVDs with the Rescue&Recovery program from Lenovo, just in case.

[mgo]

I deduce that the only way to get a clean installation of Windows Vista (i.e., without the pre-installed software from Lenovo) is the "Windows Vista Anytime Upgrade" CD from CompUSA.

Perhaps I do not understand why you want to do a clean install of Vista and spend the more than 200 dollars for an operating system you already have?

Why not just uninstall the programs you don't like? After all, once you were to clean install a purchased version of Vista you would still need to download some of the necessary utilities from the Lenovo site and install them. That is fairly easy to do, but it's also very easy to simply uninstall programs that are already there.

What Lenovo programs do you -not- want on your ThinkPad? Your new machine will have Vista on board, won't it, or will it have XP?

[iev]

Oh, there is probably a misunderstanding. The CD I am talking about is this one:

http://www.compusa.com/products/product ... =XSELLPROD

which is only $5 and according to an answer above, it is possible to make a clean install of Windows Vista. But it does not include an activation code! You just use the activation code that came with your laptop, so you don't need to pay again for Windows. Somewhere I have seen that even Microsoft sells Windows CDs without activation codes, for similar reasons.

I generally have the habit to make a clean install of Windows, just because I don't feel comfortable with everything that comes pre-installed and because an uninstall always leaves stuff in the registry.

I don't remember which programs I uninstalled last time, but there were quite a few. I now have only System Update, Presentation Manager and Active Protection System. These are the only ones I use.

Ioannis

[mgo]

Oh, there is probably a misunderstanding. The CD I am talking about is this one: You just use the activation code that came with your laptop, so you don't need to pay again for Windows.

Well, now I finally understand! Heck, if that is your preference and it works, why not? Enjoy your new computer!

[iev]

My laptop finally arrived, I created all my backup DVDs and made a clean install of Windows Vista Home Premium (and Fedora 8 ). Everything went smoothly, due to the many helpful replies I had and the excellent information I found on this site.

The laptop has a 2.20GHz Core 2 Duo with 4MB L2 cache, 2GB RAM, 160GB Hitachi hard-drive, Intel GM965 Integrated Graphics Accelerator (X3100), Intel 4965AGN WiFi and 14.1" SXGA+ dislpay (1400x1050).

But the question now is whether the clean install was worth it. The pre-installed version was loading 94 processes, required 1.02GB(!!!) of memory and took up 27GB on my hard-drive. This was immediately after booting the machine. After the clean install, it loaded 34 processes, required 422MB of memory and took up 7GB on the hard-drive. The difference in boot-up times was also very obvious.

Unfortunately, my joy didn't last for long. As soon as I installed the latest video drivers and Windows noticed it, it enabled more eye-candy and now my system loads 64 processes and requires 850MB of memory. The boot-up time is still a bit better that the pre-installed version, but not much.

Overall, I didn't see the same improvements I saw on my previous ThinkPad, after installing a clean version of XP. Maybe I have to turn off some "features" of Vista to bring run-times down to an acceptable level. But this is my first try with Vista, so I have first to search what to do. But starting both laptops at the same time reveals that my old laptop (1.83GHz Core 2 Duo, 1.5GB RAM, XP SP2) , boots and loads Windows much faster than my new laptop!!! This is a disappointment.

On the other hand, the speed difference between my old and new laptop is very obvious in Fedora 8. And due to the integrated Intel graphics card, I was able for the first time to use compiz-fusion. Very nice and not as heavy as Aero.

Conclusion: If I can disable some non-essential components of Vista and make it more responsive, maybe the clean install was worth it. In the worst case, I just freed 20GB on my hard-drive, which is not bad in itself. The difference compared to my old laptop shows however with Fedora 8, which is where I spend most of my time anyway.

So, I am impressed with my new hardware, very happy for the improved speed and eye-candy in Fedora 8 but still not convinced with Vista.

[ZaZ]

Vista looks better than XP, but it's just slower. There's no way around it. Hopefully they'll fix it.