Thinkpads Forum

I'm anticipating getting my first Lenovo laptop, a X61s (ordered 6/1/07, yet to be shipped, but that's another problem). I've ordered it along with the X6 Ultrabase & DVD recorder. I want to know whether I can dock the system into the base with recorder, and before the first initialization of the system to XP Pro, I can instead boot from a True Image boot CD in the DVD recorder to make an image of the entire new system hard drive (ie. all partitions)? If I can, what key would I hit to bypass the standard boot to Hard drive and go instead to the DVD. On my Dell, I would normally hit the F12 key for boot sequence choice. Thanks in advance.

Well, as you for sure already know, you have to configure the boot order in the BIOS first. So you usually press F1 when the Thinkpad is starting and change the boot order to the DVD.

However note that I personally never used an X6 Ultrabase and thus can't tell you if there is maybe a different procedure to perform, in order to access the DVD of the Ultrabase. But I'am sure a bunch of people here in the forum have an X-Series model with an Ultrabase based DVD burner and so can tell you for sure.

BTW, the Thinkpads do come also with their own backup and recovery imaging software, which allows to do complete image backups etc. So your X61s should already have an Thinkpad Advantage menu option to save it's hidden initial factory settings partition and it also allows you to backup it's whole used partitions.

You may also want to look at the Lenovo/IBM website and download the user manuals etc. There should also be some manuals on the Lenovo website which explain their backup & recovery software in every detail.

Yes you can boot to dos via dvd drive and backup the entire drive.

Press F12 to bring up the boot menu and select cd/dvd drive.

If you only need to boot to CD once, use F12. If the computer will need to reboot to the CD then it would be better to use F1 and change the boot order.

Where does One get an Acoonis boot disc?

proaudioguy wrote:Where does One get an Acoonis boot disc?

http://www.acronis.com/

Acronis TrueImage when first time used asks the user if hewant's to create a boot disc. But there is also a menu option for creating boot disks whenever the user want's to do so.

My personal experiences with TI are that it is a very good and easy to use software imager. I prefer it over Ghost and other such tools. The Acronis support is very responsive and they also do throw out updates frequently.

Absolutely! We do this all of the time at work. Like the others have mentioned, press F12 as soon as you boot it out of the box, boot to a bootable 'CD, and use something like Acronis or Symantec Ghost to grab a prestine image.

Thank you all. This helps me out. No when I get my X61s........

Why bother to use some 3rd party software to backup the image while ThinkVantage itself has a function called "Create Receovery Media" (Go to Start\ThinkVantage\Creat....". This feature allow you to make a complete set of recovery disk (1 CD & 1 DVD). You can use these disks to restore the whole thing on your harddisk, or let say you upgrade the new HDD, you can use the disk to create a partition exactly same as the factory default.

phongdt wrote:Why bother to use some 3rd party software to backup the image while ThinkVantage itself has a function called "Create Receovery Media" (Go to Start\ThinkVantage\Creat....". This feature allow you to make a complete set of recovery disk (1 CD & 1 DVD).

Not everyone has a CDROM drive or DVD burner for their Thinkpad, you know!

But once you have the dock, there should be a DVD burner, am I right?

I order the x61 and it include an USB external double layer DVD Writer.

The dock does not come with a drive.

Altadena_Mark wrote:I'm anticipating getting my first Lenovo laptop, a X61s (ordered 6/1/07, yet to be shipped, but that's another problem). I've ordered it along with the X6 Ultrabase & DVD recorder. I want to know whether I can dock the system into the base with recorder, and before the first initialization of the system to XP Pro, I can instead boot from a True Image boot CD in the DVD recorder to make an image of the entire new system hard drive (ie. all partitions)? If I can, what key would I hit to bypass the standard boot to Hard drive and go instead to the DVD. On my Dell, I would normally hit the F12 key for boot sequence choice. Thanks in advance.

I have a True Image boot CD made on my X40 running Windows XP. Will I be able to boot from this CD to make an image of the entire new system drive of my (soon to be ordered) X61T running VISTA? The question is identical to Altadena_Mark's post, except that mine will be running VISTA whereas my Acronis Ture Image boot CD was made on an XP machine.

Acronis Ttrue Image 10 supports Vista. What is your version?

sugo wrote:Acronis Ttrue Image 10 supports Vista. What is your version?

I made the boot CD with Acronis True Image 10, but on an XP machine. Will I be able to use that CD to boot from a VISTA machine?

Acronis True Image boot CD boots with a linux environment. It's totally independent of the operating system of the machine. I think it should work fine.

Altadena_Mark wrote:Acronis True Image boot CD boots with a linux environment. It's totally independent of the operating system of the machine. I think it should work fine.

Thanks

I just received my X61Tablet last week.

Before I booted the machine, I attached an external USB DVD drive, inserted the Acronis True Image Boot CD, and booted the machine. The machine booted True Image, and I did a complete backup of the computer's hard drive to another USB hard drive, as well as DVD. The entire operation went without a hitch.

I then booted the computer, started up Vista, and did a "Create Recovery Media" (Start -> ThinkVantage -> Create Recovery Media). This time I used the media slice. Worked fine.

I love Acronis True Image. I have v10. I have not installed the application under Vista, as I am not sure yet about compatibility, but the Boot CD process works flawlessly (as would be expected).

timendres wrote:I just received my X61Tablet last week.

Before I booted the machine, I attached an external USB DVD drive, inserted the Acronis True Image Boot CD, and booted the machine. The machine booted True Image, and I did a complete backup of the computer's hard drive to another USB hard drive, as well as DVD. The entire operation went without a hitch.

I then booted the computer, started up Vista, and did a "Create Recovery Media" (Start -> ThinkVantage -> Create Recovery Media). This time I used the media slice. Worked fine.

I love Acronis True Image. I have v10. I have not installed the application under Vista, as I am not sure yet about compatibility, but the Boot CD process works flawlessly (as would be expected).

Great ! And did you need to change the boot order in the BIOS to make it boot from your USB Drive? F12?

What DVD Drive did you use? For portability reasons, I'm planning to buy a Plextor PX-608CU. Don't want the Thinkpad slimline DVD drive, because then I have to carry around the Ultrabase as well when traveling.

I did not change the BIOS, but I did press the ThinkVantage button during the boot process and selected the DVD drive as the boot drive.

I have an HP dvd640 Lightscribe, which is hardly "portable". But I am sure than any reasonable DVD drive is going to work for you just fine. Acronis is very good software, and they made a brilliant decision to avoid DOS in favor of Linux for their boot application. It is more stable and has vastly better driver support.