Question About Creating Recovery Disks

[ArtShapiro]

I've had a T61 for a week now, and have it pretty much the way I'd like it.

As an aside, I've never had / created / dealt with recovery disks before, despite having quite a few Thinkpads, so I guess this makes me a newbie.

I think it would be useful to burn recovery disks at this point. I actually wanted (still want) to do so on the previously purchased machine (my X61) but the external USB device I purchased doesn't write DVDs. But the T61 has a DVD writer, so we should be good to go. That way, if I do something stupid like putting Vista on it, I can always go back to good old XP Pro.

The gently-used T61 had been restored to the factory image when I received it.

When I open up ThinkVantage tools, I expect to see the option to burn recovery CDs. I don't. Similarly, when I run R&R, there doesn't seem to be any option for creating the recovery disks.

I'm vaguely aware that creating the recovery disks is a "one shot" thing, and perhaps the original owner had done so. But shouldn't the restore operation he did prior to sending it have put me back into the original situation of getting one chance to burn the disks?

Hopefully someone can elucidate what's going on.

Art

[carbon_unit]

Yeah, the option should be there. If it was restored to factory condition from the original recovery partition or from discs you should be able to make 1 set. If that has already been done it will tell you that a set has already been created. In that case restoring to factory condition will allow you to make another set.
if the option to create is not there then something is wrong.

[ArtShapiro]

Well, I accidentally stumbled on the solution, if anyone cares.

System Update had been prompting me for an update to R&R. I'd not installed that update because I don't really use R&R - it's such a dog of a program, at least to a network share, that it exceeds my substantial pain tolerance.

Today I let the update install.

To my surprise, although there was no indication of the Recovery Disk creation out of either R&R or the dialog that comes up when the Thinkpad button is pressed (or the equivalent shortcut), I found the program in the list when I went to Start / Programs / Thinkvantage.

So I burned a set without incident.

I don't know what to do with them, as nothing I've stumbled upon in the documentation seems to discuss this point, but I've got one CD and one DVD in front of me, so I guess Things Are Good.

Art

[crashnburn]

Interesting ArtShapiro. Good find.

[mpcook]

Thanks for the tip. I had an identical issue with my newly purchased used T43 and the solution was identical.

Mike

[rbena]

I've had a T61 for a week now, and have it pretty much the way I'd like it.

I think it would be useful to burn recovery disks at this point.

Actually, it may be useful to also create an image of your hard drive at this point. In addition to the system settings from the original installation, the image would also save any updates you've installed together with all the settings and configuration changes you've made for all your programs.

You'll not have to start from scratch again when you do a system restore, unlike simply using the product recovery disks which reset your computer to its original factory state.