Rescue & Recovery rant

[Paul Unger]

So I just borrowed a friend's external DVD writer to burn a set of recovery discs for my new T61. While they're gleaming in their multi-coloured splendour on my desk, System Update informs me that there is an update available for Rescue & Recovery: from 4.0 -> 4.1. Since it promises to improve backups and recovery I go for it, only to find at the end of the process that the recovery discs I just made are hereby relegated to coaster status! This rates a very big AAAARRRRGGG from me! Now to re-borrow the DVD burner and scrounge a few more DVDs . . . What a waste!

[bill bolton]

What a waste!

Since 4.1 has been around for quite a while now, why didn't you check for an update before making your copies!

[BeeJayEmm]

Mr. Unger said it was a "new T61." Isn't the standard advice around here to burn the Recovery disks before doing anything else?

[Ken Fox]

If what you burned are a standard set of product recovery disks, they will still work and nothing has changed. Those disks WOULD restore the hard disk to the out-of-the-factory condition in which you received it. If needed, those disks could be used, and the system could again be updated.

The purpose of product recovery disks is that in the event of a catastrophic disk failure, unrecoverable software problem such as a virus infection, or in the case of selling the machine and wanting to return it to the state in which you received it, that you can restore the system. Any "up to date" system will become dated shortly thereafter as new updates come out on a weekly basis.

It IS true that after your system is updated to version 4.2 of R&R, that most probably the system will allow you to burn yet another set of recovery disks, this time with the first disk in the set (which runs the R&R environment) creating the R&R 4.2 environment instead of 4.0 (or 4.1 or 3 or whatever you had before). And, I believe it is true that this first disk won't work with the subsequent disks in a set that were produced with a different R&R environment. But none of this matters if you just keep the disks in a set, all together and if need be, use them as a set. SO, the disk set you made before is a bit dated compared to what is on your system right now; in the greater scheme of things this is of no consequence whatever.

If what you want to accomplish is to be able to restore your system to its current condition, what you want to use is a whole disk imaging program such as True Image or Norton Ghost (or others). You can use these programs to image your entire disk and master boot record (MBR), preferably to an image file residing on another hard disk. This is something you should do regularly, and the R&R recovery disk set you burned is not designed to accomplish this, no matter what version of R&R you have installed at the time you make this set.

[Paul Unger]

Mr. Unger said it was a "new T61." Isn't the standard advice around here to burn the Recovery disks before doing anything else?

Thank you.

@Ken Fox: So even though R&R 4.1 is now installed on my machine it will still 'read' and/or 'run' R&R 4.0 discs? That's somewhat of a relief. I think I'll give them a try, just to be safe. But what you say sounds reasonable: the intent of the discs is to restore to factory condition, which happened to be a R&R 4.0 environment.

[Ken Fox]

@Ken Fox: So even though R&R 4.1 is now installed on my machine it will still 'read' and/or 'run' R&R 4.0 discs? That's somewhat of a relief. I think I'll give them a try, just to be safe. But what you say sounds reasonable: the intent of the discs is to restore to factory condition, which happened to be a R&R 4.0 environment.

I'm talking about the situation where you boot up the system with the first disk you made in the set, then feed in the other disk(s) as requested. If you use the blue button to boot the system up into R&R, all bets are off. My guess is that you would not be able to supply your old disks in that situation.

At the same time, there is no reason why you would ever want to do that; the blue button will allow you to boot up into the R&R version you have now. If the goal is to then restore the system to factory contents, everything necessary should be on your service partition (which is what you used with the blue button to boot up into R&R, this way). You won't need any disks at all in this "blue button" scenario. All of this assumes you have an intact hard disk and service partition. If your hard disk is defective or corrupt, you would need your disks to restore the system, which is why you made the disks in the first place.