Rescue and Recovery is useless?!

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spoon · #1 Post by **spoon** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 2:56 pm

Hi guys,
I did a backup of my system some months ago with the Rescue and Recovery utility from IBM. This morning windows crashed and I tried to recover it from the RyR CD's I created. No way, none of this CD is able to boot the machine. Even more, the origial Rescue disks from IBM to format all the HD and leave it brand new stop and do nothing.
Solution, I'll receive tomorrow a case, and I'll be a good while without my laptop.
Is that normal?
Regards

P.D. I forgot to mention that my laptop is a T42 2378fvu

Ground Loop · #2 Post by **Ground Loop** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 3:31 pm

Are you able to boot from any CD-ROM?

It sounds like you're just not set up to boot from external media, and it's going straight to your hard disk.

Press F12 while booting to get the boot list? Is the ATAPI CD-ROM listed? Does it show in the BIOS setup?

Somehow you need to get the machine to disregard your corrupt drive and boot from the recovery CD-ROM instead.

spoon · #3 Post by **spoon** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 8:10 pm

Hi Ground,
yes, indeed is the first thing that I took care of, the start sequence in the BIOS. I've been thinking it might be a problem with a virus, i don't know, but I didn't think of the CD-Drive. Good advice, I'll check it out. Thanks

spoon · #4 Post by **spoon** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 9:20 pm

well, finally the CD-Drive is ok. I switched my recently purchased Seagate Momentus 100GB for the Fujitsu 40GB and now the Recovery CD's from IBM work fine. Now the question is to know what happens with the Fujitsu HD. I've a dual boot with linux in the Fujitsu, so I only can think in two kind of problems.
a) a failure in the HD in the windows partation
b) a virus?!. A virus can do the recovery CD's not to work?

REgards

#5 Post by **GomJabbar** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 9:34 pm

Well, just guessing here, but seeing as how the Rescue and Recovery CD's need to creat the HPA (hidden partition), and to do that, it adjusts the number of cylinders reported to the BIOS from the hard drive controller. Perhaps since this is a new drive, and one IBM/Lenovo is not supporting at this time, the R & R software can't figure out how to report the altered number of drive cylinders, via the hard drive controller, to the BIOS. It could even be a problem of the hard drive being too large, and outside of the parameters set up in the R & R software.

You also might take a look at the sticky on top of the T Series page regarding firmware update problems for the 100 GB drive.

I am basing the above on what I read here:

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/ibm ... 1431575eae

spoon · #6 Post by **spoon** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 9:45 pm

Hi GomJabbar,
the new Seagate drive is ok, I'm installing the R&R CD's in it without pain. The problem is with old drive (the standard 40GB Fujitsu of the T42 2378). However in the old drive I've also linux, and linux keeps working fine, so the only possiblity is either a failure in the windows partition of the old drive, or a virus....
Thanks for the input.

#7 Post by **GomJabbar** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 9:58 pm

It seems like I've read that the R & R software has to be used on a hard drive that is unformatted and unpartitioned for it to work properly. However, it will work fine on a drive that was originally set up with R & R, such as on an original factory drive that had the hidden partition already on it.

If you went in and removed all partitions on the Fujitsu using your Linux disk, I think that R & R would work then.

spoon · #8 Post by **spoon** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 10:24 pm

well, if that's the case I don't understand very well the utility of the R&R software...
What kind of soft should I use to make backups in CD/DVD in a HD that is highly partitioned?
Regards

#9 Post by **GomJabbar** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 11:31 pm

I'm sorry, what I wrote is incorrect. I was thinking about the Recovery Disks that restore the computer to the factory state, when I wrote the above. I guess the terminology is too simular to me. Rescue and Recovery vs. Recovery Disks.

Rescue and Recovery I know less about, but from what I've read, it allows you to boot and go into the HPA or hidden partition to perform recovery and repair tasks. If the HPA or hidden partition no longer exists, these disks won't work.

Files backed up using Rapid Restore Ultra also work with the HPA or hidden partition to restore your computer to the state it was in, when you made the last backup with this program. If the HPA or hidden partition no longer exists, you can load Windows from a Windows CD, or restore factory contents from the Recovery Disks I originally wrote about. Then you can restore the backup that you made previously to CD's or DVD's, after having installed the Rapid Restore Ultra program again (which is a free download from IBM/Lenovo).

The version of Rapid and Restore Ultra that you use, needs to be the same version as the one you used when you created the backup CD's or DVD's. It would seem wise to keep a version of the Rapid and Restore Ultra installation program that you used for your backups, on a CD of its own.

I hope this helps. See below for some information I copied from the help file for Rapid Restore Ultra:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: Backup files that are backed up directly to CD or DVD can be restored using the IBM Rescue and Recovery environment. Backup files that are copied to CD or DVD can be restored directly from the Windows interface.

spoon · #10 Post by **spoon** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 12:01 am

GomJabbar, thanks for your explanation. I think now I understand. If I have removed the hidden partition I need to install windows from a CD, after install the Rapid Restore program, and finally use this program to return the computer to the state of last backup. Upsss, really good information.
Thanks again!

Ground Loop · #11 Post by **Ground Loop** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 12:13 pm

Really? That's different than what I understood from the documentation, though I haven't actually tried a restore.

First, there's the HPA partition.. it's a bootable FAT32 with the R&R software on it, and a full image of the factory WinXP partition.

When you make the Restore CDs (one copy only), it burns two things -- one CD-ROM that is the R&R boot environment, and five CDs that are the WinXP installation image.

That one bootable CD, I thought was the same as the bootable environment on the HPA.. and could do all the same stuff. If you wanted to restore the factory WinXP, then you would need the five others.

So.. on my machine, where I have reclaimed the HPA and erased it, I hoped I could boot the Recovery CD, and use it to restore my backup from the network onto a blank partition. That would be my ideal scenario -- going from blank hard drive to totally restored with just one bootable CD and a big Network Share backup image.

Is this not the case? If I understood GomJabbar's post, I would actually have to boot the R&R CD, restore all five WinXP factory image CDs, then boot WinXP, configure it (convert to NTFS etc), then download the IBM Restore Ultra software, and then use that to suck down the network backup and restore it over the running partition.. whew..

I don't think that's the case, and I'd sure be disappointed to find out I'm wrong.

You know what they say about backup systems.. if you haven't tested it, it probably doesn't work.

I might have to run through this just to see how it comes together, before I have too much invested in my installation.

#12 Post by **GomJabbar** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 12:35 pm

Well Ground Loop, that's just how I read and understand the documentation. If you find out different, then let us know. Like you, I actually haven't tried a restore yet.

Rescue and Recovery is useless?!

Rescue and Recovery is useless?!

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