How do burn so called "recovery DVD"?

I have a brand new Lenovo 3000 N100 that came with Vista Business pre-installed (accompanied by a "Anytime Upgrade" DVD).

Before doing clean install, I would like to backup my current installation to a recovery DVD. With older such laptops that came with Windows XP, Lenovo's ThinkVantage tools allowed you to perform once such backup. However, with this laptop, I cannot find it anywhere.

Is this possible at all (with Vista, that is)?

If so, how do I do that?

Thanks,
Victor

 

OK - I just found the answer myself:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=144783&page=2

Thanks!

 

Just finished creating the "Recovery Disc Set" - all went well.

BTW, it doesn't take 3 DVD discs as some suggested, but rather a single CD (bootable or "Start Recovery Disc" as Lenovo calls it) and a single DVD ("Product Recovery Disc). This is for Vista Business.

 

I was stupid and used 2 DVDs isntead of 1 CD and 1 DVD.

 

I followed the Guide and it took me 3 dvds to complete the backup. the system prompted me to name the discs as follow:

- disc 1 > Rescue & recovery "startup"
- disc 2 > Rescue & recovery "1C"
- disc 3 > Rescue 7 recovery "final C"

My T61 is new and I made the backup before I actually using it. Why the number of backup disc varied on different T61?

 

This is really strange, because you are probably not the only one being prompted for a 3rd disc (the first one is startup/boot only, so it really doesn't matter whether it is a CD or DVD - the backup software is not smart enough to use up all available space there).

My speculation: Your ThinkPad came preloaded with much more software than my el-cheapo Lenovo.

Another possibility is that you somehow disabled compression.

Any other ideas?

Victor

 

thats strange, because I have three recovery discs.

 

Let's see... Using Disk Management (in Vista), I see that the hidden partition that contains the "Factory Installed State" is 6.61 GB in size. Could it fit, after compression, into 4.7GB DVD + a boot CD?

I think it can.

The contents of the boot CD (455MB free of 702MB):

Code:

08/07/2007  03:16 PM    -DIR-          BOOT
12/07/2006  11:18 PM           438,840 BOOTMGR
08/07/2007  03:17 PM    -DIR-          PREBOOT
08/07/2007  03:17 PM    -DIR-          RECOVERY
08/07/2007  03:17 PM    -DIR-          TVTOS

The contents of the product recovery DVD (only 3.45 GB used):

Code:

08/07/2007  03:34 PM    -DIR-          RECOVERY

It seems that the hidden partition was well compressed into 3.7 GB (total used space in both CD and DVD).

Without compression, 2 DVDs will be needed (in addition to the boot CD), of course.

Victor

 

I received my T61 yesterday. Too cheap to get DVD-RW so I was stuck burning CDs while listening to the Giants game in the background. Barry hit his 756th, while my lovely T61 burned

1 Rescue & Recovery - Startup Disk
+ 1 Start Recovery Disk
+ 1-9 Product Recovery Disks
11 Disks in total.

Loved how it went burning thru the 11 disks without a hitch. Even woke up from a deep sleep state after I went to watch the home run festivities, and continued on with it's tasks.

My next question is whether I can use this set to selectively install stuff I may want (i.e. Thinkvantage utilities)? I'll search through the forum to see if I can answer my own question.

BTW, I didn't receive an "Upgrade Anytime" CD as some have described. Was that a temporary item during Vista's stabilization?

 

in order for you to be able to do a "custom recovery" you will have to do the full recovery first using all the CD's you burned and then you have to re-run it again using the thinkvantage button.

You can also use base administrator which can be downloaded off lenovo's website if i'm not mistaking.

 

That is interesting. Do I understand correctly that the so called "Rescue & Recovery" actually allows me to remove all the bloatware/spyware that Lenovo pre-installed there?

This is also very helpful information. Thank you.

BTW, if you re-read my just-edited note above, you will notice something very interesting: even the single product recovery DVD that "Create Recovery Media" burned for me is not fully used: it contains only 3.45 GB (while that DVD can easily hold 4.7 GB).

Victor

 

I have a Lenovo 0768-08u. I thought i could restore my computer....but it didnt work properly and all functions are gone! Does anyone have a recovery cd they can send me. I need help!!!!

 

You HAVE to use Base Software Administrator to create a custom recovery installation. Rescue & Recovery alone does not have that functionality. For more instructions, visit my clean install guide within my sig.

 

just call them up and they will give you a free operating system. lol yeah all i can tell you i did it and trust me they are fast they will send you 3 cd's one is for bios, then the OS, & drivers and application

 

FYI, I had to unfortunately resort to the recovery media I created (as described in my previous posts): 1 CD + 1 DVD.

It works perfectly.

So... I have no idea why others needed 3 discs. Mine works with just two - Windows Vista Business preloaded with tons of bloatware/spyware/crapware.

Victor

 

When I made mine a while ago it took 3 discs. However I had a problem when I tried to restore it. I would get half way though the restore process and the mouse would respond but everything else wouldn't and there was no activity on the HDD or the DVD drive. For that reason I'll probably request the restore discs from Lenovo and have them send them to me.