Building new HD drive using Rescue & Recover, important TIPS

[burns334]

Thinkpaders, while trying to build a new hard drive I ran into a problem getting the R&R console to work with the restore CD's. I have 1 bootable disk and 7 recovery disks for my T42. You should probably wipe the new hard drive with DBAN using autonuke command first.

1. Using F1 at startup go into the bios and set boot order to CD drive then HDD0,
2. Insert bootable CD in drive, hit F10 to save and boot
3. Go thru all the easy steps, restore to factory, accept etc
4. The program will transfer bootable files to the new hard drive, this takes about 10 minutes and you will see it on the screen when the laptop starts to shut down manually eject the bootable CD
5. Laptop will now start off of the files just put on the hard drive and ask for the recovery disks

Sounds easy once you know how.

burns

[TRS-80]

Funny, I am just waiting for my R51 recovery disks to download, and then I was going to start working on replacing my failing HDD.

But I don't think I want to do the out of the box recovery. I don't want any IBM / Lenovo crap / bloatware, just a plain vanilla XP Pro install. Am I thinking about this in the wrong way? I know Thinkpads have some security stuff going on in the BIOS, etc... Do I need to just do it the regular way via recovery as outlined here to avoid problems?

Also, I had considered doing it via USB drive, as I don't feel like burning (and subsequently, storing) a bunch of optical disks that I will rarely use. Or am I approaching this all the wrong way?

[Easy Wind]

But I don't think I want to do the out of the box recovery. I don't want any IBM / Lenovo crap / bloatware, just a plain vanilla XP Pro install.

Also, I had considered doing it via USB drive, as I don't feel like burning (and subsequently, storing) a bunch of optical disks that I will rarely use

hmm, the only way you are going to get that is with actual Microsoft OS installation discs, and not Windows install discs branded by the computer manufacturer (ie Dell/Lenovo etc)

When there are multiple discs involved, I know of no way to get a single ISO created out of the multiple discs. There might be a way, but I've never looked/found a way. If you had a single ISO that contained everything, you could then get that copied onto a bootable thumbdrive versus burning a bunch of cd's as I've done this for my Windows 7 install media as well as my Vista 64 install media

[rkawakami]

Correct. If these ISOs are copies of the original IBM/Lenovo restore/recovery disk set, then what you get after installation is a Windows OS with the proper drivers for your system (assuming your model matches the disk set) AND whatever the factory has decided you should have in addition. That is usually Norton AV, Drive Letter Access (DLA), a DVD player (if your system has one installed during installation), Adobe Reader (way out-of-date version) and a few other things. I generally remove all of these programs, run the Service Pack updates, run Windows update, install my usual programs/utilities, set Windows up to my preferences and then image the system onto a DVD (or two).

[TRS-80]

What I thought I'd try is, open up the ISOs, copy everything over onto a USB stick, boot from that, and then install everything to the newly wiped / formatted drive. I already checked in my R51's BIOS, you can boot from USB as an option. Anything else I am missing? Gotchas or things to look out for?

[rkawakami]

I've never tried to do that but I'd imagine that you'll have some problems. During a normal installation from CDs, the process stops and waits for you to change disks. My guess is that whatever is controlling the installation (batch file/utility program) checks the disk labels to make sure it has the right disk before continuing. If true, you'd have to find some way to dynamically change the thumbdrive label during the install OR hack the install routine.

[Easy Wind]

Sounds easy once you know how.

yes it is

1. Using F1 at startup go into the bios and set boot order to CD drive then HDD0,
2. Insert bootable CD in drive, hit F10 to save and boot

the first two listed items could be replaced by pressing F12 during POST. That will get you to the boot menu and from there you scroll down to the cd drive and hit enter. So thus no need to get into the BIOS and change anything

[Easy Wind]

I've never tried to do that but I'd imagine that you'll have some problems. During a normal installation from CDs, the process stops and waits for you to change disks. My guess is that whatever is controlling the installation (batch file/utility program) checks the disk labels to make sure it has the right disk before continuing. If true, you'd have to find some way to dynamically change the thumbdrive label during the install OR hack the install routine.

what I got to work, once, was left disc 1 alone, but for discs 2-5 (or whatever), I was able to get them all onto the same DVD disc. So instead of 5+ install CD's, disc 1 (of 5) is a cd, then the rest of the install discs/files are on my own burned DVD. Tried this once and it worked. Still have the discs to replicate, but I'd rather just ghost an image down

[TRS-80]

I've never tried to do that but I'd imagine that you'll have some problems. During a normal installation from CDs, the process stops and waits for you to change disks. My guess is that whatever is controlling the installation (batch file/utility program) checks the disk labels to make sure it has the right disk before continuing. If true, you'd have to find some way to dynamically change the thumbdrive label during the install OR hack the install routine.

I may try anyway, "in the interest of science." If it turns into too much hair pulling, I'll just burn the disks. Looks like I'll be waiting a couple more hours for those ISOs to finish DLing anyway ([censored] slow DropBox, only getting 90K/sec per file).

And it's raining outside, so I can't do the tune up on my truck now. Looks like I will be perusing the forums for a bit, so if you read this in the next couple hours, feel free to chime in if you've ever attempted (or especially, succeeded) at USB installation as I propose.

[rkawakami]

Upon further reflection, I'd have to sum this up to: Occum's Razor .

The simplest thing you can do is burn the 5 ISOs onto CD-RW disks, providing of course that you have a CD burner that can do this. That way you can erase and re-use them after you install Windows (no disks to store or waste). As long as you start with a blank HD and the laptop hardware is fully functional, the install should go smoothly. The amount of work and time needed to nuke the "bloatware" should be much less than trying to figure out how to adapt the install procedure for the thumbdrive. For example, if one of the changes you make to the install procedure is not correct for the fifth "disk image", you probably will have to start from scratch again. That means wiping the disk and re-starting the install.

[RealBlackStuff]

I would suggest one complete installation with all bloatware removed, and all updates installed, as well as your own programs added.
Then take an image of that onto an external drive, using e.g. Acronis True Image, Clonezilla, and perhaps others.
If you stay within your envisaged T4x/R5x (or T6x/R6x) group, the same image can be copied onto each laptop's hard drive.
Just do a few updates for some drivers afterwards...

[TRS-80]

Upon further reflection, I'd have to sum this up to: Occum's Razor .

The simplest thing you can do is burn the 5 ISOs onto CD-RW disks, providing of course that you have a CD burner that can do this. That way you can erase and re-use them after you install Windows (no disks to store or waste). As long as you start with a blank HD and the laptop hardware is fully functional, the install should go smoothly. The amount of work and time needed to nuke the "bloatware" should be much less than trying to figure out how to adapt the install procedure for the thumbdrive. For example, if one of the changes you make to the install procedure is not correct for the fifth "disk image", you probably will have to start from scratch again. That means wiping the disk and re-starting the install.

Yeah, I pretty much came to that realization already as well. I think I knew it all along, I'm just thick, you see, and things take a while to settle in. lol

I would suggest one complete installation with all bloatware removed, and all updates installed, as well as your own programs added.
Then take an image of that onto an external drive, using e.g. Acronis True Image, Clonezilla, and perhaps others.
If you stay within your envisaged T4x/R5x (or T6x/R6x) group, the same image can be copied onto each laptop's hard drive.
Just do a few updates for some drivers afterwards...

That is exactly what I had planned on doing. This is only going to be a time consuming hassle once.

[TRS-80]

Well, against rkawakami's probably good advice, I am trying to do this sans CDs anyway. Even though I have already burnt the discs. lol Maybe I am just in it now for the technical challenge while I wait for a clean legit OEM ISO of Win XP Pro to surface.

Anyway, I am halfway there. I have put disc 1 on a USB stick I have set up with a multiboot ISO launcher called YUMI. It can select from a number of different bootable ISOs, it's a pretty slick tool, something I just came across and started playing with recently. So far I have added UBCD, Hiren's Boot CD, Falcon Four's Boot CD, Spinrite, Win XP install disc (a sketchy version from a torrent that I would rather not use), and now disc 1 of R51 recovery. That's a pretty neat suite of tools to have at your disposal when doing computer work, especially reinstalling OSes, formatting, dealing with partitions, etc.

But... now how to get that pre boot environment to recognize or mount ISOs (which I could also keep on the USB thunb drive) without using the CD drive? I am sure there is a way, I will play around with my new tools and find out. This could be useful in a case where there was no optical drive (I know many people have replaced theirs with additional HDDs or SSDs, etc.).

I think the solution lie in some sort of virtual CD mount, like Virtual Clone Drive or something like that, except available in the pre boot environment. There has to be some tool in one of those collections...

[rkawakami]

Well, against rkawakami's probably good advice, I am trying to do this sans CDs anyway.

I will still applaud your decision to go ahead and experiment with the USB boot. It's people like you that are willing to spend some time and then share your results that makes this forum very useful for the rest of us .

I've tried doing something similar to this before: merging two, three or four floppy disk images into a single CD. The older Thinkpads had a diagnostic program called PC Doctor available. In the "old" days, that meant you needed to create a floppy disk set; first diskette was bootable and then you'd swap disks to complete loading of the program. Somebody figured out how to get the 3-diskette version of PC Doctor for the T2x systems onto a bootable CD image. Made everything much easier. Operationally, it was just like using the original diskettes. You still had to hit the ENTER key a couple of times to tell the DOS batch file that the next "disk" was ready. I wanted to do the same thing for the versions of PC Doctor used on A2x, A3x, X2x, and X4x laptops but as I was never able to disassemble the CD image to see what changes had been made, I gave up on the project. Later on IBM/Lenovo started issuing bootable CD images of PC Doctor that handled the A3x and X4s series so there was even less incentive to return to this job.

[burns334]

Sounds easy once you know how.

yes it is

1. Using F1 at startup go into the bios and set boot order to CD drive then HDD0,
2. Insert bootable CD in drive, hit F10 to save and boot

the first two listed items could be replaced by pressing F12 during POST. That will get you to the boot menu and from there you scroll down to the cd drive and hit enter. So thus no need to get into the BIOS and change anything

Easy Wind, you are correct saves a step