T500 Rescue and Recovery Clarification

[cachong]

Hi,

I'm new to the forum but have had a read of many postings prior to joining.
Just received a T500 - 2242CTO, Vista Business 64

Got a few questions that I could not find answers to in the FAQ.

When creating the Product Recovery CD/DVD does it matter what media is used for the 1st disk?
Postings I've read mention to expect 1 CD and 2 DVD's after the recovery process.

I read in the Thinkvantage help that recovering from discs results in the entire harddrive being formated with existing partitions being lost. At the end of the recovery to Factory installed state are the partitions recreated?

I received XP recovery discs but was considering a clean install instead. Is it possbile to install XP on the C partion while preserving the other Vista recovery partitions in tact?

That way if I decide to go back to Vista B64 I can use Think Vantage Factory restore from the partitions.
Is this also possible?

Thanks for your help.

Chris

[NJ_Dave]

Chris,

I'm going to answer this within my somewhat limited experience:

- The first CD of the product recovery media set, aka "Start Recovery Disc," will fit on a CD, so the program asks for a CD-R. I don't know whether a DVD-R will work for the first disc; it might. The actual recovery data goes on the subsequent DVD-Rs.

- The media set you create with ThinkVantage Create Product Recovery Media and the XP recovery media you received with your T500 do the same job (except of course for the OS written to disk) -- that is, they will build your hard disk from scratch, including the extra partitions. (As far as I can make out, the S partition is for recovery, and the Q partition is a source for installing optional bloatware, er software.) If I remember right, the C partition is installed not directly from the optical media, but indirectly from the just-built recovery partition.

So if you restore from your XP discs, they will replace your Vista recovery partition with a brand new XP one. This means you had better create Vista product recovery media first! (If you had generic MSFT XP install media, you could install to the C partition without touching the recovery partition, but then you'd need to integrate the Lenovo drivers yourself.)

- 32-bit XP (or 32-bit Vista, for that matter) will cut you off at around 2.5 GB of usable RAM, depending on the devices installed in your CTO system. If you have more RAM, I would highly recommend sticking with Vista x64. (See this link for more info.)

Hope that helps -- and congrats on your new T500!

Dave

[cachong]

Dave,

Thanks for the info.
When I ran Think Vantage to create the Product Recovery discs,
the program asked for CD/DVD. It did not specifically ask for a CD so I got skeptical.
If I use a DVD-R would the Start Recovery Disc only be put on it and then the program would ask for the other discs? Or would part of the recovery data be put on the remaining space on the DVD-R? Hoping someone who did this recently can advise.

Chris

Chris,

I'm going to answer this within my somewhat limited experience:

- The first CD of the product recovery media set, aka "Start Recovery Disc," will fit on a CD, so the program asks for a CD-R. I don't know whether a DVD-R will work for the first disc; it might. The actual recovery data goes on the subsequent DVD-Rs.

- The media set you create with ThinkVantage Create Product Recovery Media and the XP recovery media you received with your T500 do the same job (except of course for the OS written to disk) -- that is, they will build your hard disk from scratch, including the extra partitions. (As far as I can make out, the S partition is for recovery, and the Q partition is a source for installing optional bloatware, er software.) If I remember right, the C partition is installed not directly from the optical media, but indirectly from the just-built recovery partition.

So if you restore from your XP discs, they will replace your Vista recovery partition with a brand new XP one. This means you had better create Vista product recovery media first! (If you had generic MSFT XP install media, you could install to the C partition without touching the recovery partition, but then you'd need to integrate the Lenovo drivers yourself.)

- 32-bit XP (or 32-bit Vista, for that matter) will cut you off at around 2.5 GB of usable RAM, depending on the devices installed in your CTO system. If you have more RAM, I would highly recommend sticking with Vista x64. (See this link for more info.)

Hope that helps -- and congrats on your new T500!

Dave

[NJ_Dave]

Chris,

Now you went and did it -- you included my post in your reply. Now I can't just edit my post to hide my mistakes...

According to this info page from Lenovo, the S partition holds critical boot info -- I'm thinking this includes the choice to boot into Vista or R&R -- and the Q partition holds the "factory backup". (It's hidden as a "protected operating system file" which is why I couldn't see it.) I think this also means that you might have a hard time installing generic MSFT media onto the existing C partition with any success -- I only mention this to correct my previous statement.

My strong hunch is that whether you use a CD or DVD for the "Start Disc," the actual recovery data will go on subsequent disks. The program instructs you to label the first disc "Start recovery disc" and the subsequent discs "Product recovery disc 1," "Product recovery disc 2" etc. At present 2 DVD-Rs should be enough; I suspect you could even use CD-Rs (many!) if you were desperate.

This Lenovo forum page indicates that restoring from the recovery discs will indeed rebuild all three partitions.

It is frickin' frustrating that there should be such confusion about such a vital function. Lenovo should have done better on this score; I dunno why good documentation on this function should be so hard to come by. Anyway, I hope this helps!

Cheers,
Dave

[cachong]

Thanks for the response to my questions Dave.
Sorry if I put you on the spot.

I did a little searching and found the following
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-70804
This link outlines what to do to create the Product Recovery Discs.
For Vista it instructs to use a DVD-R for the first disc
For XP it instructs to use a CD-R for the first disc.

I do agree with you that The documentation for the Rescue and Recovery is very poor.

The ThinkVantage help file I am referring to was the one I read in the environment after pushing the blue ThinkVantage button during startup. Not the one in Vista.

I fond this other link which might be of interests. It compares Rescue and Recovery to Windows Backup
http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/mess ... ge.id=6061

[NJ_Dave]

Chris,

Word to the wise: the link you've posted shows how to create "Recovery Media," not "Product Recovery Media." I believe "Recovery Media" is a backup of your system's current state, while "Product Recovery Media" allows you to recreate its original state.

Weirdly, this infodoc called "How can I get a Product Recovery CD or DVD?" does not mention the "Create Product Recovery Media" option at all, though it does mention you can use R&R to "create a personalized backup on CDs or DVDs, that includes all of your added software, setting changes, and data files" -- in other words, Recovery Media.

Clear as day, right? Still, every bit of new info helps!

Dave

[cachong]

Thanks for the heads up.

I ended up creating the Product Recovery Discs using 3 DVD-R discs.
I re-read the link I posted.
I think the instructions there are for a different version of ThinkVnatage because I do not see those scren shots when I run it on my T500.
I also created the Disc from the Product Media option.

So far no glitches.
Have not tested the discs as yet though.
I'm a little hesitant as I'm not sure what to expect.

Chris

[cachong]

Thanks for the heads up.

I ended up creating the Product Recovery Discs using 3 DVD-R discs.
I re-read the link I posted.
I think the instructions there are for a different version of ThinkVnatage because I do not see those scren shots when I run it on my T500.
I also created the Disc from the Product Media option.

So far no glitches.
Have not tested the discs as yet though.
I'm a little hesitant as I'm not sure what to expect.

Chris

Update I installed the XP recovery discs that came with my system and it worked fine.
What I noticed is that with Vista there were 3 partitions but now with the XP installed there are two partitions with only one being active.
The active partition is the C: drive and is visible from the file manager.
The other partition is not active but visible from disc manager. It is labelled SERVICE001 with an FAT32 EISA configuration.
It is 5GB in size but mostly full. Not sure what files are on it.
I'm wondering if this is necessary for future re-installations of Vista.