Rapid Restore program

[jhujb]

Hello,
I am about to installing Rapid Restore program. The software asks me about "a space to be reserve for backup" I think it will partition my hard drive. Anyone knows if I can resize the this size (after I choose a size)?
If I can not resize again (without formatting), any recommendation for the size? My understanding of Rapid Restore is that it will make a image file (compressed file). Do you know what is approximate ratio from Actual file to Compressed file? (for example if I have 10GB used file, what size of the file after Rapid Resore)

Thanks
John

[ashleys]

IBM Rescue and Recovery with Rapid Restore no longer requires a
recovery partition. The backups are made in a hidden folder (called RRBackups) in any partition of your choosing.

Regarding compression, I get about 2:1 ratio. For example, my C: partition of 10GB is about 50% full (so 5GB active data). When I do a complete backup of my C: drive the recovery file saved in RRBackups folder is about 2.5GB.

Hope that helps,
Ashley.

[mpcook]

Given the backups are not stored on a separate partition, would it be wise to store the backups to a separate drive or CD in order to keep them safe if there is a hard drive crash? Or is the hidden folder safe enough?
Thanks
Mike

[ashleys]

Currently I'm using R&R to protect against being unable to boot Windows.

I have my HD partitioned as follows,

C: - System partition
D: - All my personal data files, downloads, E-Mail folders etc.
R: - Recovery backups

I take regular complete backups of my C: drive to the RRBackup folder on my R: drive. I don't bother with any incrementals, so I always have a full C: copy ready to restore. My personal data on D: is backed up to either CD or Zip drive regularly.

Therefore, in the event of windows or C: partition getting trashed I can boot R&R from my rescue media CD and restore C: from R:. If the whole drive is broken I restore C: from the Recovery product CD, restore D: from CD/Zip and then service my system back to my last known level (all my NT fixes, IBM downloads etc are in folders on my D: drive).

PS. To satisfy myself that my recovery procedures work I've restored a complete system partition using R&R and it worked.

[Peter_S]

.....when I buy my ThinkPad, I will establish similar procedures! I'm curious ashleys, if you have any experience with the imaging products out there. For example, Norton Ghost, Powerquest Drive Image, Acronis True Image or Terabyte's BootIt NG. If so, how does R&R compare to those products? From what I've read, R&R is quite similar.

I should add that, since I work in the IT field, I use Terabyte's BootIt NG product which is very,very powerful, but quite technical with a text-based user interface (DOS like in appearance). In addition to partition and disk images, BootIt NG also is a complete partition management tool - as fully capable as Partition Magic or similar products on the market. Lastly, BootIt NG is also a full-featured boot manager.

[s0larian]

@Peter_S:
I tested IBM R&R and Acronis True Image. Acronis is much faster and easier to handle, but you can't exclude certain file types. If you use security software like Utimaco Safeguard Easy to encrypt the whole harddisk, then just R&R is able to create backups without decrypting the harddisk or partition first.

[ashleys]

Peter_S,
No I'm afraid I haven't tried any of the image copying products.

Currently I'm happy with what Rescue & Recovery gives me in conjunction with regular external media backups.

After 25 years in the business, backups become a way of life

Ashley.

[egibbs]

Personal opinion based on personal experience with Rapid Restore (the predecessor to R&R) and reading postings by others here...

I would not rely on R&R as the only backup (or even the primary backup) method.

Used in conjunction with another backup method it is probably ok. But it's free software, and you usually get what you pay for.

Ed Gibbs

[Peter_S]

....I agree with you, backups are absolutely a must, a way of life! I find it ironic, working in the IT field, that quite a few of my associates fail to backup their personal computers at home! When the occasional problem occurs, there is much gnashing of teeth!

Based on what I've read, I will continue to use BootIt NG to image my hard drive and individual partitions. Just as you suggested, Ashley, I image my OS partition on a weekly basis. I do not want the hassles/headaches involved with incremental headaches. IF worst comes to worst, I want to simply restore the entire partition and be "good to go".

Lastly, I agree whole-heartedly, Ashley, with your comment that since R&R works for you, there is no need for you to change. The same holds for me in regards to BootIt NG. My new IBM T42 notebook is my first, personal IBM notebook (my company has issued me IBM notebooks in the past). Given that, I have not had any prior experience with R&R.

[ashleys]

For me the data that *MUST* be backed up is all the personal data on a home PC.
If you lose Windows then, at a push, you can reload from the Recovery CD or even a product disk and then with nothing else, use Windows Update to service it. However, the user data is unique and cannot be recreated without backups.
Keeping track of user data is critical. That's why all mine is kept on a separate partition and all my folders have easily identied names and I don't use subdirectories unless I cannot avoid it (the folder tells me what's in it).

Personally I have no qualms about using R&R. IBM take data availability pretty seriously *AND* it's a product that's supplied with new TP's, so they're expecting people to use it.

[Peter_S]

....regarding the relative importance of personal data files versus system files. Your segregating personal data files on a separate partition is the optimal solution. Heck, I wonder, do you work in the Information Technology (IT) field? Not many lay people would bother to go through the trouble of separating out their personal data files/folders from the operating system files. That in itself tells me you are an experienced PC user!

p.s. One piece of trivia regarding the "imaging" of partitions and hard drives (as opposed to regular, garden-variety backups). IBM basically invented and pioneered the imaging process back in the mid-1960s when developing a mainframe hierarchical database system (later to be known as IMS) for the NASA spaceflight program.

[ashleys]

Peter,
Yes, 25 years in IT !!!

Started out in Mainframes and still there. Seen most problems with data backups and recovery

My C: and D: drive approach has served me well over the years. I've lost count of the number of times I've needed (or wanted to) format C: and install again. I can do that again and again and never touch my user data

[CraigR]

ashleys,

I am a big fan of partitioned hard drives. I have never owned a ThinkPad before and have always used DriveImage to backup and restore images.

Having just purchased a T42P, all I have done so far is create recovery disks using the supplied software.

Ideally I would like the opportunity to partiton the hard drive on my new T42P - any advice on the easiest way to do that would be appreciated. If the IBM supplied software will give me the opportunity to create the partitions during recovery, that is probably what I would do - it sounds easier than installing DriveImage, creating a second backup and then restoring.

Any advice greatly appreciated!
thanks,
Craig

[Zeitgeist]

Ideally I would like the opportunity to partiton the hard drive on my new T42P - any advice on the easiest way to do that would be appreciated. If the IBM supplied software will give me the opportunity to create the partitions during recovery, that is probably what I would do - it sounds easier than installing DriveImage, creating a second backup and then restoring.

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=4328

[ashleys]

CraigR,
My TP was a replacement for an ageing desktop machine. I still had my W2K product disks from the desktop so I used those. First I got the product recovery CD's from IBM. Then, using the W2K product disk, I started a W2K install on the TP. Early on it asks you to partition the HD so I partitioned it with just a C: drive (of 10GB) and let the setup continue. At the end of the initial W2K setup it reboots. At this point I just rebooted with the TP recovery CD. It saw my C: drive and just re-formatted it and started the TP recovery.

Any method of standalone formatting will do. I have no partitioning software so my main criteria was to get the partition sizes right. I have my 40GB (well 37.25GB usable) partitioned as follows,

C: System volume - 10GB
D: Data volume - 20GB
R: Recovery backups - 7.25GB

I'm running W2K at SP4 with all recommended reach ahead service (aka hot fixes) installed. Usual mix of office applications etc are also installed. The C: drive is about 58% full (with no hiberfile.sys allocated). The D: drives contains all data files, downloads, E-Mail files (basically anything that is not a windows system file or in Program Files). Keeping this data away from C: is a must as far as I'm concerned. When I migrated to the TP, all I had to do was backup all the folders on D: on my old desktop and restore them to the TP. The R: partition is just my way of keeping a partition set aside for backups (either temporary of permanent). My old desktop had exactly the same partition configuration and I would use R: to take copies of data and used it a couple of times when I needed to re-size C: and D:. The current bonus of taking Rescue & Recovery backups to R: is the fragmentation problem. R&R backups are stored in a hidden file (not partition) called RRBackups. These files appear to have block size of 48K but are not allocated contiguously and thus are reported as fragmented. Having the RRBackups on R: means I can run defrags on C: and D: without any problems.

Hope that helps,
Ashley.

[CraigR]

ashleys,

thanks for the the post - I really appreciate you taking the time and trouble to give me some detail. I guess since I have just created a backup to DVD I can use that rather than bug IBM for the Product recovery CDs. I'll probably follow a similar strategy to yours - booting off one of the WinXP Pro CDs I have for my other PCs, then switching to the TP recovery CD once I have partitioned the harddrive.

I'm a little confused about the RRBackup file you mention - does that only get created if you backup to your local hard drive? Since I have only ever backed up to DVD, will I not have one ( haven't looked yet! ) or do IBM provide one anyway on new machines with the initial configuration?

Anyway - thanks again.

Zeitgeist,

thanks for providing me with that link.

Craig

[ashleys]

CraigR,
Yes, the RRBackups folder (it's marked as hidden) is created when you make a backup. So, when I took my first backup to R: a new RRBackups folder was created in that partition. I would expect to find a folder by that name on your external media as well. In fact, by default, they appear to create one on C: as I have one there as well but I have never taken a backup to my C: drive.

Personally, I think R&R not using a recovery partition but using folders instead is an improvement. When I got my T30 it was still being shipped with a recovery partition and Rapid Restore. However, as described previously, I re-partitioned to what I was used to. Until Rescue & Recovery came along I never used Rapid Restore.

Ashley.

[CraigR]

ashleys,

Thanks again for your info - sorry for all of my questions but it's much better to get this stuff right in the beginning!

So far, the only "backup" I have taken is CREATE RECOVERY DISKS. I backed up to my DVD Writer and ended up with 2 DVDs:
1 - IBM® Rescue & Recovery ™ with Rapid Restore ™
2 - Product Recovery Disk.

I assume that this gives me the same as if I had ordered the Product Recovery CDs from IBM ( Or would it be a good idea to try and get those anyway ? )

I scanned my harddrive and I do not have any files or folders called RRBackups but I assume this is because I have not yet used the IBM Rapid Restore Ultra program to create one - I thought I would wait until I have partitioned my HD before I do this so I can backup to a seperate partition.

I also notice I have the hidden IBM_SERVICE partition on my harddrive taking up about 4.3GB. I'm still not entirely sure if I need this, but as I have a 60GB HD I guess I can spare the room. Does this just hold IBM Software used for recovery if the OS Partition has problems ?

I was going to follow your strategy of using an OS CD to boot and create the partitions and then swap out the OS CD for the TP Recovery CD. As a check I first tried booting from the Recovery DVD I just burnt and it seemed to run ok but one of the dialog boxes indicated that if you are running the RR from CD, then it would reformat your C: to one partition and then restore on to that. Whereas if you were running ths RR from your HD, it would give you the option of keeping your partitions. I believe I have read posts on this board which support the belief that the RR CD will undo any partitioning of mine during recovery.

I'm also a little unclear if the act of partitioning my current IBM_PRELOAD partition into 3 ( C, D and R as in your situation ) would have any effect on the IBM_SERVICE partition but I dont really see why it would.

So, for the moment it seems to me that I would either need to install Drive Image Pro ( which I own ) and use that to do the Backup and subsequent restore after partitioning as I know that will allow me to keep my partitions, or to purchase Partition magic or something which would allow me to change my partitions without going into a recovery situation.

Again - sorry to labour this, and thanks for your advice.

Craig

[CraigR]

Oh - one other thing, I notice I have another Backup / Recovery Program - "Create Rescue Media". I assume that has been superceded by IBM Rapid Restore Ultra V4.0 ( which is also installed on my TP ) ??

[ashleys]

CraigR,
Sounds like your configuration is slightly different to mine.

The Rescue and Recovery disk is the bootable "Recovery desktop" as IBM call it. It's basically a cut down NT based system (the folder is even called minint !!!). This gives you a bootable system in which to reload your backed up system. I'm not sure the procedure you used to "Create recovery disks" so I cannot be sure of what was created, however, it does sound like you've got a bootable disk and a backup of your current system.

The service partition was used by the old Rapid Restore program to recover your system (Rapid Restore with a recovery partition pre-dates Rescue and Recovery). Basically Rescue and Recovery has done away with the requirement of the service partition. With R&R you can make backups to any local/networked or external media and then boot into the "Recovery desktop" from either the C: drive or your boot CD.

As mentioned in my previous post, I trashed my recovery partition as soon as I got my T30. I wasn't going to use Rapid Restore (Rescue and Recovery wasn't yet available) so I saw no reason to keep it. The Product Recovery CD does not re-partition the drive or at least, it didn't with mine. Furthermore, once Rescue and Recovery was available, I installed that and did a test restore of one of my full system backups. That also did not re-partition my disk, it just reformatted C: and did the restore (I had only backed up C: and that was all I requested to restore).

Personally I would use whichever method you feel most happy with. If you're confident with DriveImage use that. If you've previously used any software and your confodent with it, that's the best thing to use to ensure the least number of mistakes.

The "Create rescue media" is the procedure in Rescue & Recovery to create the bootable "Recovery Desktop" as I mentioned at the top of the post.

It's a little confusing with all the recovery terms and the fact that Rescue and Recovery V1 still obviously used Rapid Restore. With Rescue and Recovery V2 they've removed a lot of the Rapid Restore branding from the product.

Good luck,
Ashley.

[jsteele]

I upgraded to the latest release and it seems to work fine.

On problem however. The previous versions had an option to 'wake' the PC if it was in suspend mode when the backup was to run an it woirked fine --- I was able to backup at 3AM when the PC was idel.

The new version "Help" mentions the option but there isn't one on any of the menu items. And this morning it did not do the backup.

[ashleys]

CraigR,
Sorry forgot to add, the deployment guide gives a good description of the Rescue & Recovery environment. Chapter 1 shows you where all the components are installed (there *ARE* differences depending on whether you've got a service partition or not).

Deployment guide link,

ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/pc/pccbbs/th ... r20mst.pdf

[CraigR]

Thanks for the info.

Talking to the IBM tech support folk wasnt really enlightening for me.

I took my Create Rescue Media option and now understand things a bit better. It just created about 280MB of data which is understand is the Recovery Desktop you talk about.

So now I still need to do my backup to go along with the Create Rescue Media, but I dont really want to use the IBM Rapid Restore Ultra 4.0 so I will check out the latest software you speak of or use Drive Image.

One other thought occurs to me - if you repartition and then restore are you not in danger of having trouble with your drive letters?

For example you backup a system where C: was your only HD and D: was your CD Rom. You then repartition to have C and D and R and then restore your backup into C. Dont you have registry entries in the backup that will still think your CD Drive is D?

Craig

[ashleys]

You're right, the drives are mapped incorrectly immediately following the restore. However, the first thing I do is go into the Disk Management snap-in and change them In my experience, R: is OK it's just D: that's mapped to the CD drive.

[CraigR]

OK Well my first attempt at this was kind of thwarted.

I backed up IBM_RELOAD and IBM_SERVICE images to another computer on my home network and then booted off a Win XP Pro CD and deleted all of my HD Partitions and then created a new 30GB partition.

I have a 60GB HD and my plan was to create 3 partitions:

C: - Windows 30GB
D: - Data 15GB
R: - Recovery/Backups 15GB

I then exited the Windows XP Install and booted off the Drive Image PQRE ( Powerquest Recovery Environment CD ) I quite happily mapped a drive to my network and located the image to restore but when I selected the HD partition to restore to - I got an error message like "Destination Directory not valid" and an error id.

Scanning the net gave me only one hit on the message ID - a japanese site. Of course Powerquest have been bought out by Symantic and it seems most of the knowlege base for Drive Image 7 is gone.

Eventually I figured out that the problem was my target partition being smaller than the original partition that was imaged. Even though the partition only contained about 7GB of data, the image was of a 55GB partition and could not be restored to the new 30GB partition by Drive Image.

At this point I decided to try to take an option to restore and file/folder level rather than image level, so I selected all files and folders in the image and tried to restore those to the smaller partition. The software let me do this but I noticed as it ran it seemed to get slower and slower and after a couple of hours it was taking 1-2seconds to restore files which were only 1 or 2 KB in size. Don't know what the problem was but I cancelled that restore.

Plan B ( or is it C? ) I tried to use the Recovery DVDs I originally burnt of the new machine. Could well be user error here but I booted of the Recovery Disc 1 and got a confusing array of menu options - I just tried to take the one to restore factory settings but it didnt seem to progress in a logical manner to me. Eventually I was told to put in the Product Recovery CD ( DVD ) I did this and it seemed to be restoring quite happily. Eventually it got to the point where it rebooted - the progress bar had grown to maximum and I guessed it must be restored so I removed the DVD and rebooted and I seemed to be back at square one again with the R & R software running, still asking me to do a Product Recovery. I rebooted and came back again to the R & R software even though the CD had been removed. I can only surmise that I missed some step of the process to cause it to do that but hey it is after 1am now. Call me Mr picky but I would have thought that if you have a set of recovery CDs to restore to factory settings you should just be able to throw them in the drive and let it do its thing with no user intervention other than loading CDs.

Anyway, at this point I decided to put my HD back as it was originally while I regroup. I booted off the Powerquest CD again but this time took the option to delete all partitions before doing my restore. This let me recover the IBM_PRELOAD partition which seemed to have been set back to the original size ( about 55GB ) I then took the option to restore the IBM_SERVICE partion to the remaining space left on the HD and that seemed to work fine.

So I'm pretty much back to square one. I think I have a copy of some Acronis program on a CD from a magazine so maybe I will use that to resize the partitions as I want them and then take another image backup.

I'm kind of in 2 minds about Drive Image 7 now - it seems to have served me ok in the past but I dont really like to rely on old unsupported software especially when it seems a lot of the old knowledgebase documentation has gone.

I'm tempted to use R&R but even though I have over 20 years in IT ( mostly AS/400s I admit! ) my initial perusal of the pdf manual left me with the impression that it was a bit technical and not very user friendly.

I guess at 1:30am I better sleep on it...

If any have you have managed to read this far - well I applaud your persistence and apologise for the length and boringness ( ok I know that's not a word but my mind is a blank and I should be asleep ) of this diatribe.

thankyou and goodnight!
Craig

[bevross]

"Plan B ( or is it C? ) I tried to use the Recovery DVDs I originally burnt of the new machine. ... Eventually I was told to put in the Product Recovery CD ( DVD ) I did this and it seemed to be restoring quite happily. Eventually it got to the point where it rebooted ... so I removed the DVD and rebooted and I seemed to be back at square one again with the R & R software running, still asking me to do a Product Recovery. I rebooted and came back again to the R & R software even though the CD had been removed. ... "

Hey, I just spent a day doing a complete restore to a new 60G 7200 hard drive using the CDs I got from IBM. I know the point your are talking about. What I figured out is that the step you describe (reading from all the CDs) is to reload the rescue partition on the hard drive (that's why it would boot from the hard drive). Well, you just need to pick something like "restore to factory contents" from the recovery menu (left, maybe 2nd from bottom). It'll do so from the partition it just created. You're still left with that "hidden" rescue partition.

[CraigR]

bevross,

thanks for your comment.

I'm pretty sure that the first option I selected once the R&R main screen came up was the one to "restore to factory contents" During this operation it used the first DVD which it originally told me to label "IBM (R) Rescue & Recovery (TM) with Rapid Restore. Eventually I got prompted to load the "Product Recovery CD" which I duly did and I sat and watched it chug along for quite some time. Once the progress bar got to the end and the system said it was going to reboot, I figured the recovery was over since I had loaded both CDs so I removed the "Product Recovery" CD before rebooting, expecting that my HD had been restored to the original factory settings and I would not need the CDs for any further processing.
This is the bit where I was suprised that it still seemed to be running the R&R program and came back with a dialogue box asking me to perform the "Product Recovery".

So, I'm still not sure what the problem was but I assume I either missed a step or wrongly assumed the process had completed on the last reboot when I remove the "product recovery" CD.

Even though I have put the system back using Drive Image, I may trawl through the help text again and try to understand what I did wrong. Maybe give the ThinkPad recovery process another go - I would like to know that I can get this working if it should ever become necessary.

regards,
Craig

[bevross]

... I'm pretty sure that the first option I selected once the R&R main screen came up was the one to "restore to factory contents"

I know it was real confusing when I did it & I haven't gone back to the menu again but. think of it, before it can recover it has to copy everything over. So, even if it's the same option number ("Restore factory contents") it does something different. I don't think I'd go through the whole thing again just to see if it works but it did for me.

[CraigR]

bevross,

thanks again.

I created a separate post about this to try to explain the steps I took, I have now run it 3 times.

As I write this, I am watching my laptop which is still in the state where it goes back to the R&R menu all the time. This time I just let it carry on with the Product Recovery again even though it ( initially at least ) looks to just be a repeat of what I did in the first place.

I think you may be correct that although it looks to be back at square one, it is actually doing something different. I now have a "IBM Product Recovery" dialogue box that says "Recovering your system, this may take several minutes"

I removed the CD some reboots ago and the process running looks almost identical to the original process but its now running from HD and running considerably faster by the looks.

I'll let you know how it gets on...

regards,
Craig

[CraigR]

OK so, After you get the message ( You must restart your computer to compete this process ) you are only about halfway there. You get thrown back to R&R and "Restore factory contents" and although you figure you have already done this, you need to go through the process again.

This time it seemed to be doing a lot of the same things but was running from HD ( I had removed the CD by now ) and eventually rebooted and started running scripts and stuff.

Sorry for wasting everyone's time - but IMHO the software or help text could be a little more user friendly to prevent folks from jumping to the conclusion that the software has got messed up and is repeating itself!

regards,
Craig