Thinkpads Forum

Greetings -

Recently purchased an X220i. Delightful machine.

Sadly, no OS media included. And there's NO documentation
of the ThinkVantage utilities that I can find.

So ....

I've run the Recovery utility (invoked by clicking on the Q: drive) to a USB drive.
The utility created ~8GB of files:

* AUTORUN.INF
* bootmgr
* LenovoQDrive.exe
* qdrive.ico
* usb.tag
* winRE.wim (288.5MB)
* Boot (17MB - a folder)
* factoryrecovery (7.63GB - a folder)

Does anyone know if these files will allow me to recreate the factory OS (Win7 Home Premium 64)
should the hard drive fail? Will additional files (or Recovery disks) be needed?

I've posted a similar note on the Lenovo forum -- no answer yet.

Insight welcome.

Thanks kindly,

- Richard

Hello and welcome to the forum

I don't have Windows 7, but with Vista, in order to prepare for hard disk failure, one has to install a program called ThinkVantage Rescue and Recovery and then burn optical recovery media. On my computer, it burned one CD and two DVDs. You can download the installation file for Rescue and Recovery from Lenovo's support site. Here is a link to Lenovo's support for Rescue and Recovery:

http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail. ... IGR-4Q2QAK

Lenovo also should have put the installation file on your hard disk. Check if you can find
C:\SWTOOLS\apps\rnr43en or similar folder.

Here is a link on how to create recovery media:

http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloa ... MIGR-68317

Yes, what i do is restart hit f2 at the lenovo screen. You will get a windows option screen, then hit f8. That will take you to the option to do a factory install. Like the day you got it. Lenovo stopped issuing restore disk alooong time ago. Just give that a try.

The Q drive is your recovery software dont delete the partition........

@TTY -
Thanks for the welcome, and the link (WinXP & Vista refs notwithstanding )
FWIW, the screen shots on that link look similar to (but not exactly like)
the screens I saw when running the X220's Recovery routines.

@illini71
> The Q drive is your recovery software dont delete the partition........

Presumably, the Recovery process copied the Q: drive -- it's ~8GB, as is the 'rescue' DVD. Wouldn't make sense otherwise, because the Q: drive will be lost when the drive fails. (Yes, I said 'when'. ).

But really, this stuff *SHOULD* be (better) documented, yes?

Thanks again,

- Richard

Don't know whether this is documented on an X220i, but Lenovo's support site has some instructions. It might not be as easy to find as one could wish for, the reason being that until a few months ago, IBM ran web support for Lenovo products. Lenovo has just taken over web support for their own products, they have set up a new support site - and yes, in some aspects, the support site still is work in progress.

Links to how to create recovery media can be found on Lenovo's support site under
Diagnose and Fix > common issues.

What kind of benefit does Lenovo Recovery Utility have over creating a system image and restoring a healthy state using that?
Most laptops today are compatible with windows' own recovery utility at bootup, with an option to restore to factory defaults, especially if the recovery partition is provided by the OEM.

I would prefer to keep an image on the side, and use windows backup to periodically keep a backup of most important data on an 32GB SD or external USB drive, and possibly keeping dropbox running on my documents and other important folders.

for "Q Drive will be lost if drive fails"
the image created by windows 7 will come to rescue when you install your new HDD.

Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Backup and Restore, and click on Create System Image.
If you are running Windows 7 Professional, you can create the image on a NAS/Workstation nearby.