Recovery Disks or Cloning?

[kevinc]

I may be ordering a new X240 and am considering alternatives to burning recovery disks to DVDs. First, how many DVDs would that require? I may clone the original drive out of the box, using Acronis and save the it to reinstall when I sell the ThinkPad. If I clone it, will Acronis transfer the partitions properly? After cloning will I be able to make recovery disks from one or both drives if the need arises? Does anyone recommend a cloning program other than Acronis?
It seems cloning the drive would be much less cumbersome than juggling recovery disks. Am I missing something? Thanks

[dr_st]

Cloning should work fine, and Acronis is what I would recommend. My experience with it has been very positive all along. I've used it for cloning as well as for backup/restore.

[Brad]

As far as the number of DVD's you may need in my experience from two to four.

I have had good success with Acronis too. Mostly lately with making an image then restoring that image with 100% success including the recovery partition. Recovery DVD's can be made from the restored images as long as the source image has not created the DVD's before. I haven't tried it but I have read that changing a configuration file will allow creation of the recovery DVD's again as long as the recovery partition is intact.

Brad

[ansible212]

From memory the first recovery disc of the set only requires a CD, rather than a DVD...

[kevinc]

[quote="Brad"]As far as the number of DVD's you may need in my experience from two to four.

I have had good success with Acronis too. Mostly lately with making an image then restoring that image with 100% success including the recovery partition. Recovery DVD's can be made from the restored images as long as the source image has not created the DVD's before. I haven't tried it but I have read that changing a configuration file will allow creation of the recovery DVD's again as long as the recovery partition is intact.

Brad[/quote]

Thanks.