IBM Rescue and Restore with IBM Rapid Restore Ultra V4

[drew154]

Here is what I have and what I need to know. I called IBM and the answere I rec'd was not right, so I thought I give it shot here before I call them back again.

I have a R40 2723 with CD RW, DVD, 40G HDD, 512 mem (actually I own 2 identical units.
I have an 08K6080 Option 2nd HDD Adapter with a 12 G TravelStar drive
I also have a USB Hard drive (actual 2, an IOMEGA 80G 3.5" and a clone with a 2.5 12G Travelstar
I made a Rescue CD
I did a IBM R&R BASE backup on the laptop
I also have a completed built spare 40G drive that works I can swap in (see below how I finally made it)

I upgraded the all the needed things on the laptop, including adding the subject program.

Here is what I found.

1. In Windows with the the IBM Rescure program I can copy my BASE image off the PC to the USB drive OR the 2 HDD (that is in the CD bay).

2. Running R&R from the predesktop area I cannot access (see) the USB drive, though I can access the 2HDD.

IF R&R is OK on the HDD, if I need to restore that is OK. If I want to restore off the 2HDD that is OK too, but not the USB drive.

Now I have senerios I need to know how to handle.

1. If the drive is totally screwed (so I can;t use its copy of R&R) up OR I install a new drive, how do I do a restore from an external source?

If I boot from the Rescue CD, it is in the same slot that I need to put in the 2 HDD, so I can't how I can do the restore. On cannot boot from the second HDD adaper HDD (verified by IBM)

The USB drive is not seen so that does not work. I did not make a bootable USB drive.

I guess if someone could tell me how to restore to a blank new drive with the IBM Rapid restore program that would give me most of what I need to know.

IBM said if I boot with the Rescue CD I can install the program on the new HD, then shut down, out the 2 HDD in, somehow boot into R&R on the new drive and themn restore from the 2HDD. I do nto see a way to install R&R from the Rescue CD and not sure if a regular install from the file from IBM wil linstall on the HD if it is not partitioned, formatted or anything.

On another note, I also have GHOST images save which I have not used. However I had been CLONING my HD to a 40G HDD (Exact model as in the laptop) in an 2 HDD adapter and that ran, BUT, when I swapped drives it would boot but when I logged in it hung with a blue screen and a cursor arrow. I had to do a R&R on the drive which did make it work.

Is ther some special parameter I need to use GHOST. I also found GHOST did not see my USB drive as a 2.0 device.

This is driving me nuts! I need to get this all ready before my daughter leave for college.

[drew154]

1. There is another IBM manual with all the info, IBM Rescue and Recovery with Rapid Restore Custimization and Deployment Guide Ver 1.5, it explains a lot of what I was looking for.

2. When GHOSTING, you must:

a. Select the DISK not the partition within it if you want the Ghost paramterer expalined in the IBM manual to work (-ib). The IBM manual could have said this clearer than it did but I figured it out and wrote it more clearly here.

b. Use the -ib parameter to back up the complete boot section

Still if I use USB 2.0 in GHOST it hangs afyer the mouse driver, so I still am using 1.1 for now and a painfully slow backup. I have made some GHOST boot floppies with different drivers to see if I can 2.0 to work properly. IOMEGA says to use 1.1 but that makes the whole thing a big joke. I';; test those in a few hours.

I am not finished reading the who IBM manual yet and did not tests to get all the rest of my answers. But right now I have a base IBM backup on the laptop, a copy on the 2 HDD, and in a few hours a proper GHOST IMAGE. Plus I have an entire spare pre-imaged and tested HDD to swap in an emergency.

[drew154]

We'll using a DOS GHOST boot floppy with differnt USB drivers found on line I was able to get the 2.0 max speed just about. You can't do the backup from XP because the batch files it writes out use their bad drivers. You would think GHOST would be fixed by now. As it stands without making a real workable boot disk, it is too slow.