More R&R

[sbjoe]

I'm responsible for maintaining 2 laptops, T42p & T60p, in a home environment and don't for a minute pretend to be all that astute. My main object is to insure the integrity of both systems. We're not heavy duty users and our machines tend to remain fairly stable over long periods, so what concerns me most is being able to recover - relatively painlessly - from a hdd failure. I've searched Lenovo support and so far have been unable to find any detailed guidance. What I'm wondering mainly is whether it's hopeless naive of me to expect to achieve my object by relying on Rescue and Recovery to first allow me to bring a new hdd to life with recovery disk(s) and then to restore it to it's most recently backed up state using an R&R created backup to an external usb drive.

If this isn't a totally vain expectation do I need concern myself with the characteristics of the usb drive? Does it need be recognizable in bios? If so, are there specific steps that need be taken to accomplish this? What I have in hand is as WD Elements 1TB drive that should at least have the requisite capacity to handle backups of all our machines.

Sorry, just remembered I need to update my sig. ;(

[robert213]

1) SilverStone's RAVEN RVS01 USB/eSATA HD Enclosure
http://www.silverstonetek.com/raven/pro ... 1&area=usa
http://www.frys.com/product/5881493

2) HITACHI Travelstar 5K500.B HTS545050B9A300 (0A57915) 500GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache
This is the latest 5K500.B HD. Not the older 5K500. Purchase OEM version, which is priced at $10.00 less than one packaged in retail box.

3) Acronis True Image Home

More info here...
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... tone+raven

[sbjoe]

1) SilverStone's RAVEN RVS01 USB/eSATA HD Enclosure
http://www.silverstonetek.com/raven/pro ... 1&area=usa
http://www.frys.com/product/5881493

2) HITACHI Travelstar 5K500.B HTS545050B9A300 (0A57915) 500GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache
This is the latest 5K500.B HD. Not the older 5K500. Purchase OEM version, which is priced at $10.00 less than one packaged in retail box.

3) Acronis True Image Home

More info here...
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... tone+raven

OK, thanks. So is Rescue and Recovery just not all it's cracked up to be or am I just woefully unclear on the concept? I'm not lookin' for absolute bullet proof, just something that's reliable should /when the old hdd explodes.

[sbjoe]

I think I've about satisfied myself that what I'm proposing is possible. I started Rescue & Recovery on my T42p and found that my previously done backup is an available option. So the scenario is that as long as I have recovery media I should be able to configure a new hdd to the state of the original as supplied, and then using Rescue & Recovery restore the new drive the the state of my last backup....?

One remaining issue is that when I created that backup I saw no option that would allow me to place the backup into a uniquely recognizable location on the usb drive. So presumably if I want to back up more than one machine to that drive I'll need to first partition the drive using the Computer Management Console and allocate a distinctly recognizable extended partition for each of the machines I want to back up. Hopefully I can do something similar with our 2 Intellistations as well.

Anybody see any real problems with this approach?

[killer]

IIRC, you need to have an external HDD with the first partition on it as a bootable R&R backup. The rest of the external HDD you can fill with whatever you wish.

So, if you need more than one machine to have a bootable recovery then they will each require an external HDD.

As external HDDs have become reasonably priced these days this approach is a viable option.

So, for example, my wife and I each have an external HDD. Each HDD has more than one partition. The first partition contains a bootable R&R, and the other partitions contain photos, copies of documents, etc.

I hope this makes sense and helps.

[sbjoe]

IIRC, you need to have an external HDD with the first partition on it as a bootable R&R backup. The rest of the external HDD you can fill with whatever you wish.

So, if you need more than one machine to have a bootable recovery then they will each require an external HDD.

As external HDDs have become reasonably priced these days this approach is a viable option.

So, for example, my wife and I each have an external HDD. Each HDD has more than one partition. The first partition contains a bootable R&R, and the other partitions contain photos, copies of documents, etc.

I hope this makes sense and helps.

You may well be correct, but I'm not quite yet ready to give up on my original plan. My intent is to have DVD recovery media that should if I'm not mistaken restore basic Windows function and access to R&R on a replacement hdd - guess I should be clear that I'm running XP Pro in all machines. After that I should be able to launch R&R and access the USB drive from which to restore to the state at the last backup. Guess I may have to acquire at least one spare hdd in order to confirm this... The only potential impediment I'm seeing so far to this plan is the issue of being able to cubby hole backups for each machine so that each is distinctly recognizable on the USB drive from the R&R console. It's a shortcoming as I see it that the R&R software doesn't allow for just dropping the backups into individual folders. Guess it boils down to whether the partitions can be configured to be individually recognizable in the R&R console...

[killer]

However, if a hard disk crashes, and you use factory restore, your R&R partition on that hard disk will be overwritten. I know that that is what happens because I just recently did a factory restore on my wife's T43p prior to selling it. It removed all the old R&R stuff.

About 18 months ago the hard disk on my T43 had irrecoverable errors and I had to use my recovery disks to do a factory restore. I lost everything that wasn't backed up on an external drive.

I think you need to be aware of that. If in doubt go for a belt and braces approach to hard disk management.

[sbjoe]

However, if a hard disk crashes, and you use factory restore, your R&R partition on that hard disk will be overwritten. I know that that is what happens because I just recently did a factory restore on my wife's T43p prior to selling it. It removed all the old R&R stuff.

About 18 months ago the hard disk on my T43 had irrecoverable errors and I had to use my recovery disks to do a factory restore. I lost everything that wasn't backed up on an external drive.

I think you need to be aware of that. If in doubt go for a belt and braces approach to hard disk management.

Thanks. Are you saying that the recovery disks I made do *not* have the R&R partition on them as well? If so, that is a shocker & probably will blow my little plan right out of the water.

[killer]

That is exactly what I am saying. When you do a factory restore it wipes the hard drive, including the hidden R&R partition.

So be very clear about your strategy or it will go t!ts up, if you catch my drift.

R&R is an amazing tool for restoring data, system files, etc. Its flaw is being resident on the internal hard disk. Always make a copy of your backups to an external drive.

[sbjoe]

Thx. I'm still not sure we're comparing apples with apples though. I already have made dvd recovery media on which it's been my understanding that the R&R partition is included. Even it it isn't, can't that be downloaded and installed directly from Lenovo? My expectation has been that if a hdd explodes, I would obtain a replacement, pop it in the bay & run the restore from my dvd media after which I would launch R&R and recover my latest full backup from the usb drive, also created using R&R, thus restoring my system to its status as of the date of the latest full system backup. Not viable you say?

[killer]

Sorry to disappoint you, matey, but the Create Recovery Media allows you to make a set of disks that do a factory restore. In other words it returns your machine (and its hard disk) to the state it was in when it left the factory. It does NOT copy your recovery partition as it is now. You need an external hard disk drive for that, whether you use R&R or any other software such as Acronis.

I hate being the bearer of bad news but you need to know this.

[sbjoe]

That's a bit of a disappointment as the hdd on my machine did in fact leave the factory with the Rescue & Recovery partition so I had assumed the recovery media would format the new disk and restore R&R as well. Even so, after I've applied the recovery media and have web access, what's to stop me from going to lenovo, downloading and installing R&R which presumably would restore that hidden partition (ServiceV001, 4.58 GB FAT32 on my T42p) which should I would think give me access to the full backups on the external usb drive? Or does that partition have some purpose other that to act as a repository for R&R? The primary partition on this XP machine is of course NTFS.
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-70034

[killer]

Maybe I have caused confusion here, even though that was far from being my intention.

If you do a factore restore then you will end up with the same machine that arrived when it was new. It will have the Recovery partition which will contain nothing except the ability to do another factory restore. It will not contain any of your previous backups as they will have been lost during the factory restore operation.

Recently we bought a new X201 for my wife's business. So I transferred all the data from her T43p and then did a factory restore. After that restore we did all the Windows and Lenovo updates and loaded an antivirus program. At that point I did a backup using R&R. I can assure you that the recovery partition was empty until that backup was taken, despite the fact that prior to factory restore it had backups done once a week.

[sbjoe]

Certainly no offense taken. I'm simply sailing in what for me are uncharted waters and trying to keep from foundering. I think I can appreciate at least some of the arguments for doing a completely fresh install from time to time as machine behavior dictates. What I'm trying to avoid is the tedium of going through that in the event of a hdd meltdown if there'd been no other indications that a fresh install is warranted. The proof in this case will apparently be in the pudding. I think my first step will be to repartition the external usb drive and do R&R backups of all my machines to that drive. If I'm able to accomplish that so that the backups are accessible and identifiable in the R&R console on the currently configured machines I'll order up a spare replacement hdd, plug it in and give it a whirl, first using my recovery media to get to Windows, then - after downloading and installing R&R if necessary - seeing if I can restore my backup from the usb drive to the new hdd. Maybe I'll download R&R to a thumb drive just to have it available before I start the exercise, thus hopefully avoiding the necessity of even having to set up internet access.

I've certainly no reason to be overly confident that there are no show stoppers in this scenario, but absent any clear indications beforehand that it can't be done I'm kind of determined to try. Many thanks for your patience and for helping me to come up with what I hope is a pretty clearly defined strategy, however ill conceived it may be.

[BeeJayEmm]

Hi sbjoe,
I think your original plan is fine, the 1 TB external drive should work well and as long as you test your approach on both machines successfully, you may proceed with confidence. I'm not sure you need to partition the USB drive to accommodate both ThinkPads. You could try making a separate folder for each in the root of the drive and specify that as your archive location.
I want to mention a caveat: I used to use R&R on our two R52 ThinkPads and it worked fine but it never worked properly on my R60 (which had a different version of it). I tried to figure out the problem and never could. It would say the backup completed successfully but when I attempted to restore (as a test), the backup was corrupted and unusable. I switched to Acronis True Image and it worked so well, I use it exclusively now for all our computers. Hopefully, you won't encounter a similar problem.
One more thing: if you are buying a spare internal drive for each ThinkPad on which to try your strategy, remember that the T42 uses a PATA drive, whereas the T60 uses SATA, so you'll need one of each.

[sbjoe]

Thx BeeJay,
I didn't receive notice of your post and only just now got back to this issue and found it. Reason I'm thinking of partitioning is that I couldn't find an option to further define the location of the first backup to the usb drive. It seemed to want to dump the backup directly onto the root folder which would make doing multiple backups of more than one machine more than a little confusing. Guess I should try again and look a bit harder. Sure wish I could find time to focus on this until I've got it worked out.

[sbjoe]

Hi sbjoe,
I think your original plan is fine, the 1 TB external drive should work well and as long as you test your approach on both machines successfully, you may proceed with confidence. I'm not sure you need to partition the USB drive to accommodate both ThinkPads. You could try making a separate folder for each in the root of the drive and specify that as your archive location.
I want to mention a caveat: I used to use R&R on our two R52 ThinkPads and it worked fine but it never worked properly on my R60 (which had a different version of it). I tried to figure out the problem and never could. It would say the backup completed successfully but when I attempted to restore (as a test), the backup was corrupted and unusable. I switched to Acronis True Image and it worked so well, I use it exclusively now for all our computers. Hopefully, you won't encounter a similar problem.
One more thing: if you are buying a spare internal drive for each ThinkPad on which to try your strategy, remember that the T42 uses a PATA drive, whereas the T60 uses SATA, so you'll need one of each.

Got back to this today and confirmed - I think - that Rescue & Recovery will only dump the backup onto the root folder of the WD Elements USB drive, which btw doesn't seem to support multiple partitions anyway. The obvious solution was to create my own folder structure on the drive and to discretely relocate each backup after its creation. As part of any restoration I may have to dump the desired backup back onto the root folder of the drive so that it can be found by R&R but that's a small enough bump in the road.

Having reached this point, I think it's time to test this strategy with a new drive. Unfortunately, Lenovo doesn't seem to supply PATA drives as required in my T42p anymore. Does anyone have suggestions as to sourcing compatible drives? And of course any pertinent caveats will also be much appreciated. Presumably I should look for a drive with an ATA-6 interface...? Anything else? Of course I'd much prefer a new drive.

[RealBlackStuff]

You can use any drive (PATA or SATA) you like, if you use a USB enclosure with the matching (PATA or SATA) interface.
Your laptops couldn't care less about what type of hard disk they connect to.
I do suggest to use Acronis instead, rather than that heartburn-causing R&R.
I have nearly 20 Thinkpads, and none of them even have R&R installed, and none of them have a recovery partition either!
I do have the recovery disks, but it's much quicker to load an Acronis image than install afresh from these CDs.

[sbjoe]

Thank you RBS, but I'm afraid you miss my point. I'm looking for a replacement hdd for the original, not for a supplemental drive, so a usb drive is not an option. So the question remains as to what I should look for, and what to avoid, in a PATA replacement.

As for using Acronis or other cloning software, I'll certainly bear that in mind, but I'm rather unwilling to abandon my present course until I've at least seen a result.

[RealBlackStuff]

Well, this is the first time you mention wanting replacement disks!
You've been yapping about R&R and backup strategies instead!
For PATA, there's the choice between a Samsung 160GB and a WD Scorpio Blue 320GB (largest PATA on the market).
There are a few more out there, but these two have proven their reliability.
For SATA, your budget is the only limit, but again, the WD Scorpio Blue SATA (any size) is a great drive.

[sbjoe]

Thx for the suggestions which finally are at least to the point.

[sbjoe]

Survey time: What would you all buy if prices were comparable:

Lenovo 41N5737 (160 GB, Serial ATA, 8 MB) *7200 RPM*

or

Western Digital 160 GB Scorpio Blue SATA 5400 RPM 8 MB Cache

or

.....?

That is of course assuming you might be in the market for something remotely comparable.

[RealBlackStuff]

Apart from the price aspect (5400rpm is cheaper), modern 5400rpm HDs are about as fast as 7200rpm HDs, but have the advantage of using less power and running less warm.
Both highly preferred specifications for a laptop HD.
If you don't care about those specs AND about economics, your wallet will decide.

[sbjoe]

Actually, I've run across both at virtually the same price, but I think cooler and nearly as fast by rights ought to carry the day. Thx!

[AIX]

Apart from the price aspect (5400rpm is cheaper), modern 5400rpm HDs are about as fast as 7200rpm HDs, but have the advantage of using less power and running less warm.
Both highly preferred specifications for a laptop HD.
If you don't care about those specs AND about economics, your wallet will decide.

My new Seagate 7200.4 250GB HDD (one platter drive) uses less power than my old 80 GB 5400rpm Hitachi HDD (2-platters drive, '06 model).

LE: I forgot to mention that the new drive it's almost 3 times faster!

[sbjoe]

Thought I'd sum up my experience to date and hopefully close this chapter. In short, as I'd been advised, attempting to use Rescue & Recovery for backup purposes turned out to be a waste of time. When the new hd the T42p arrived I restored factory installed contents from my recovery disks and attempted to restore the recent backup made using R&R and wound up with a semi-familiar desktop that could be used for web surfing but not much else. Virtually none of the apps/programs I'd previously installed worked at all.

Having finally given up on that approach I cast about for some free backup software and decided to give Macrium Reflect a whirl. That choice appears to have turned out to be a stroke of good fortune. The installed interface is very user friendly and the backup image I made to the usb drive from the old hd went almost without a hitch. The only problem I encountered was that the first image I made left me with an installation on the new hd that initially wouldn't get past post. I made a second image and instead of using the existing master boot record in that image I allowed MR to install a generic XP mbr and that appears to have been the cat's meow. I've been using this machine with the newly installed hd for about a week now and except for the impression that it's a bit faster than the old the two are virtually indistinguishable.