got recovery disks - should i delete rapid restore?

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kangazoom · #1 Post by **kangazoom** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 10:53 pm

IBM sent me recovery disks about a week or two ago, because I had to install a new hard drive.

I know that Rapid Restore (i think that's what it's called) takes up a fair amount of space. Should I just delete it, since I have the recovery disks? Or should I tinker with the settings to just lessen the amount of space it takes up? What are the disadvantages of doing this?

Thanks a bunch!

HKILP7M8 · #2 Post by **HKILP7M8** » Sun Jul 11, 2004 12:08 am

I did...

#3 Post by **BillMorrow** » Sun Jul 11, 2004 12:14 am

unless things have changed,
rapid restore is a backup facility, not the recovery partition..

i suppose i should look since the T42 recovery CD set is 8 CD's..

Hangfire · #4 Post by **Hangfire** » Sun Jul 11, 2004 12:16 am

HKILP7M8 wrote:I did...

You did what? Delete it, or tinker with the settings to lessen the amount of space used?

Can you elaborate?

Thanks!

kangazoom · #5 Post by **kangazoom** » Sun Jul 11, 2004 2:47 am

yeah, so sorry -- i was referring to the backup partition.

i think. um... i guess i'm sort of confused. sorry

HKILP7M8 · #6 Post by **HKILP7M8** » Sun Jul 11, 2004 7:52 am

I deleted the whole service partition. I gained close to 5 GB HDD space.
Everything is working perfectly.

kangazoom · #7 Post by **kangazoom** » Sun Jul 11, 2004 5:00 pm

is it safe to do, provided i have all the recovery disks?

and how exactly would one go about it...?

thanks!

nikemen · #8 Post by **nikemen** » Sun Jul 11, 2004 5:49 pm

HKILP7M8 wrote:I deleted the whole service partition. I gained close to 5 GB HDD space.
Everything is working perfectly.

some specifics.

just point by point, not too detailed but the gross points?
thanks

Humpa · #9 Post by **Humpa** » Sun Jul 11, 2004 9:15 pm

Here's a thread on a way to do it:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=1009

For me, I just disabled the hidden partition in the Bios and then deleted it with Partition Magic. Then I reclaimed the extra space and repartitioned it to my liking. I also deleted the i386 and the IBMTOOLS folders (they are over 1.5Gig I think?).
And instead of the recovery cd's, I have a Norton Ghost image of the Windows partition I can use if needed.

tselling · #10 Post by **tselling** » Sun Jul 11, 2004 10:56 pm

The new IBM Rescue & Recovery software does have the added benefit of being able to restore selected files. Like in the commercial, you can reboot, press the blue Access IBM button and recover previously backed up file(s). This could come in handy if out of town without backup CD's etc.

Leon · #11 Post by **Leon** » Mon Jul 12, 2004 9:51 am

so, you can backup (your own stuff), put it in the hidden partition, and restore that too if you have a crash????

edelrc · #12 Post by **edelrc** » Mon Jul 12, 2004 1:59 pm

Leon, me,and many people have defenitly a lot of confusion on this...
Could some one resolve this questions regarding Rapid Response:
-Does it restore saved files from a partition or can it, like Ghost/DriveImage/TrueImage do, restore the entire OS partition?
-What is its advantage vs. Ghost/DriveImage/TrueImage? (Besides that I have to have the rescue CD for these... not even that since I could install the rescue bootable CD in a mere 20MB partition)
-If the Recovery CDs are installed, would it mess with all your reajusted partitions or only those you specify?

tselling · #13 Post by **tselling** » Mon Jul 12, 2004 3:21 pm

Leon wrote:so, you can backup (your own stuff), put it in the hidden partition, and restore that too if you have a crash????

Yes. You can make a complete backup from within windows to the IBM recovery partition with the Rapid Restore program. Then when you press the blue Access IBM button on bootup and go into Rescue & Recovery, you have 3 choices for recovery:
Rescue files
Resore from backup
Restore factory contents

So you can restore just a few files, completely restore from a backup, or restore back to factory contents. I think its pretty cool myself.

Leon · #14 Post by **Leon** » Mon Jul 12, 2004 5:02 pm

Does making a bakup to the recovery partition expand that partition? Or is the partittion set from day 1 to a size large enough to save the entire hard disk that it is resident on?

#15 Post by **BillMorrow** » Tue Jul 13, 2004 3:08 am

Leon wrote:Does making a bakup to the recovery partition expand that partition? Or is the partittion set from day 1 to a size large enough to save the entire hard disk that it is resident on?

AFAIK it makes a new partition and keeps it there.. up to a point..

FWIW, i personally have not used this.. yet..
i clone the work drive to a spare..

Leon · #16 Post by **Leon** » Tue Jul 13, 2004 11:35 am

you mean, a THIRD partiton (i.e. NOT inside of the IBM "protected" one? If so, is this one also "protected"?

jjlists123 · #17 Post by **jjlists123** » Tue Sep 13, 2005 9:40 pm

BillMorrow wrote:unless things have changed,
rapid restore is a backup facility, not the recovery partition..

i suppose i should look since the T42 recovery CD set is 8 CD's..

After creating the 8 CD images, is there any way to rework and reburn these to 2 DVD's?

There is a much better change of me carrying two DVD's than 8 CD's.

#18 Post by **GomJabbar** » Tue Sep 13, 2005 10:31 pm

jjlists123 wrote:After creating the 8 CD images, is there any way to rework and reburn these to 2 DVD's?

There is a much better change of me carrying two DVD's than 8 CD's.

I've read here (by Ground Loop) that if you restore your system to 'Factory State', you can then again burn (1) Recovery CD set. That's a rather drastic measure to take, but some may consider it an option. There is also a registry hack listed there.

jjlists123 · #19 Post by **jjlists123** » Wed Sep 14, 2005 12:41 am

GomJabbar wrote: I've read here (by Ground Loop) that if you restore your system to 'Factory State', you can then again burn (1) Recovery CD set. That's a rather drastic measure to take, but some may consider it an option. There is also a registry hack listed there.

Thanks for the link.

I don't have a dvd burner in my thinkpad, just in my dekstop machine.
I was hoping there is some way to put those CD's onto a DVD in a way that they are usable.

fschwep · #20 Post by **fschwep** » Wed Sep 14, 2005 4:23 am

AFAIK (looking at my own T42), Rescue and Recovery does not backup your harddisk to either the hidden factory install partition or to a new partition. What it does is simply to backup everything into a series of hidden backup files, that reside on your own normal harddisk (C:). They are called RRUBackup... etc, and if you set Windows to show hidden files in Explorer or when you use a different file manager, you can see them sitting there, eating up space. If C: is half full, a backup of everything will eat another third or so of the space. There is the possibility to move it to an external harddisk or to a DVD, if your TP is equipped with a DVD burner.
The main advantage is that you can restore accidentally erased or corrupted files while on the road, but the disvantage is that a) you lose a lot of useful space on your harddisk, and b) if that disk suffers a physical failure, you also lose the backup.
So it's fine for road warriors who travel with a basic set of software and some business data, and who want to carry an absolute minimum of equipment (the kind of people TinkPads were designed for, I guess), but for power users who load their disks with a plethora of software and store a lifetime worth of data in their laptop, it is not very practical.
The best solution for backups is to use a small (2.5 inch) external harddisk in a case with USB connectors. I took the 20 Gig drive from a broken A22m, put it in a tiny 15-euro external USB case, and R&R will backup the whole of my three-quarters full 40 GB harddrive (three-quarters of 35 GB actually, after subtracting the hidden service partition) to it. I use Windows Backup (aarggh) for normal backups to another, larger external HD that has been partitioned with partitions for backups from different machines (an older desktop, my T42 and an R51), as well as a data partition that holds vital documents, photos and such that I can then access from any machine after a crash. Unfortunately, R&R will not backup to a partitioned USB drive without erasing and repartitioning it, which is why I am using Windows backup for now, while looking for something better. .

#21 Post by **GomJabbar** » Wed Sep 14, 2005 6:56 am

jjlists123 wrote:I don't have a dvd burner in my thinkpad, just in my dekstop machine.
I was hoping there is some way to put those CD's onto a DVD in a way that they are usable.

You can buy an external USB DVD burner for a little over a hundred dollars (US). I bought one from Office Max about 3 months ago for $130. If you buy a desktop DVD burner, and a USB enclosure, you can probably spend less.

fschwp wrote:Unfortunately, R&R will not backup to a partitioned USB drive without erasing and repartitioning it, which is why I am using Windows backup for now, while looking for something better.

I have been using StompSoft Backup MyPC for a couple of years now, and I am quite happy with it. They just upgraded it to version 6.

I do my backups to DVD's, but the software allows backups to hard disks or other media if desired.

I agree with you, that if your hard disk suffers a physical failure, your backups with Rescue and Recovery to the internal hard drive are useless. I've had too many hard drive physical failures (in various computers) to trust my backups to reside on the internal hard drive.

pipspeak · #22 Post by **pipspeak** » Wed Sep 14, 2005 12:46 pm

Someone shoudl sticky this or the other current RR-related thread because there seems to be a lot of confusion about what exactly all the IBM tool can and cannot do.

If I'm reading it correctly (and please correct me if I'm not), IBM's Rescue and Recovery backs up an image of your your hard drive to... your hard drive, which might be useful in some situations but IMO is not a great way to back up data since part of the reason to backup is to protect against hard drive failures.

The only other option for backups/cloning using R&R seems to be to burn recovery CDs, which I did after receiving the computer. So now I can restore my machine to the factory state using the CDs but not to any later state.

I'm wondering if it's possible to use R&R to make a current, clone-style backup to a DVD or a partition on an external drive, or am i stuck with using either the Windows backup utility or buying an app like Norton ghost?

keku · #23 Post by **keku** » Wed Sep 14, 2005 1:20 pm

Ok guyz let's remove confusion first (if there any)
IBM has two things.

1. Rescue & Recovery Partition -> A hidden partition of about 4 GB containing Diagonostic utilities and OS image.
2. Rapid Restore Utility(RRU) -> A service in Windows that backs up your HDD to restore back up files.

When you create Recovery CDs, it creates 6 CDs (1+5) it copy factory image from Recovery partition. (I'm assuming T43p it create 6 Cds for me) if it create 7 -8 -9 on yours, then you have special tp

It's my Experience if you Hard Drive is crashed, you have to have Cds to restore, I spend 1 hour to boot my system when I just deleted C: parition and thought I can install factory image using that 4 GB hidden partition. but couldn't even Boot System. I pressed F12 for boot menu and didn't see any thing there. I tried Blue IBM Access Button but still can't see option to boot from hidden partition. I had to use recory Disc very first one to boot.
if you can boot from hidden partition you are lucky. But I was not able to boot.
This is recovery partition. Please note one thing in my experience nothing gets written to R&R partition once it's set up. even if you update drivers and all those utilities IBM sends you it won't update image on hidden partition. it will still be original factory image with original drivers sent to you when yours system was build.

Now let's move to Rapid Restore utility it's a service you can see in windows services, it creates a folder something likem RRUbackup (I don't remember exact name coz I stopped the service and deleted this folder, but it was somehting like that).
Try deleting this folder you will get access denied or some weired windows msg. This is the one that backs up your data.
When you create CDs/DVDs with Data option it create few more CDs containing Image to resotre HDD in exact same state when image was created.
Here also note if you use Recovery parition to recover system it gives you three options and when you select full back up with data etc. it looks up for RRUbackup on HDD if it is founds it restore system with latest data.
Also if you can't use partition and have recovery CDs you have to have Databackup CD created using IBM Restore utility. you can find it in Access IBM program group.

SO don't get confused with Rapid Restore and Rescue & Recovery I know both are RR but when we talk about Rapid Restore it's a utility and when term Rescue and Recovery is used it's image in hidden parition.

just to get things little more complicated, when you create CD image, in one go you can create CDs with Factory image + your data. in this care both Rapid Restore and Rescue & Recovery comes together.

Hope it helps.

thedonnybrook · #24 Post by **thedonnybrook** » Wed Sep 14, 2005 1:42 pm

i set up my machine with a large fat32 partition along with the partition that runs windows under ntfs. i used the tutorial found here to create a recovery cd, which is your basic windows install disk with sp2 slipstreamed in to the install. at the end of the tutorial it gives directions on how to disable and remove the recovery pratition. so far i haven't had any problems, but its only day two of regular usage.

pipspeak · #25 Post by **pipspeak** » Wed Sep 14, 2005 1:56 pm

keku wrote: just to get things little more complicated, when you create CD image, in one go you can create CDs with Factory image + your data. in this care both Rapid Restore and Rescue & Recovery comes together.

OK, so how does one do this? I've already made my recovery CDs for the factory preload, so can I now make a set that includes both the factory image and all data/applications added since then? I was under the impression that you get to make one set of recovery CDs only.

got recovery disks - should i delete rapid restore?

got recovery disks - should i delete rapid restore?

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