Thinkpads Forum

Ordered refurb T430u from tiger direct and bought the 2 yr warranty also. Have had it for several months and never created the factory recovery disk. My attempt failed to do so with an error message that only one factory recovery disk is allowed to be created. Since I vnever created one, perhaps the prior owner did and this setting was never changed. I looked for hacks but none that I found applied to this model. Fortunately the HD and componenets work fine but sicne I experienced blown HDs on two other computers this year I would like the warm fuzzy feeling of knowing I had a recovery disk. Ideas???? Hacks????

Welcome to thinkpads.com!

First off, if the system is still covered by a Lenovo factory warranty (not the Tiger Direct one), you can order a free set of recovery disks. Go here:

http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/warrantylookup

and plug in the relevant information (i.e. 7 character serial number; don't specify the "-"). If your system is not covered, you can order a set from IBM which will run you about $45. You will need to provide them with the model type and serial number of the system and they will send you a disk set that matches whatever Microsoft COA you have (or had) on the system.

In either case, call 1-800-426-7378 to get in touch with the Support group that handles recovery disks.

My understanding is that if you still have an intact recovery partition, you could restore the system and then burn a set of recovery disks. Note that I've not personally done this as I mostly ignore and/or delete this partition on my systems. You will of course, wipe out your existing disk setup so if you want to retain all your files, then you'll have to back them up. Alternately, you could first clone your system onto another drive, then use that drive to obtain the recovery disks. Also note that although most cloning tools should be able to handle the clone operation with different sized disks, you may run into a problem of not being able to access the recovery partition on the cloned drive. In that case, choose another cloning tool or, if you verified that the cloned disk is able to boot properly and everything seems correct, then run the restore operation on your original disk.

I went to Lenovo and am getting the recovery disks for free under the warranty. Thanks for the advice.