Just a few thinkpad questions

So my T61 is coming next week and I am just trying to get a few things straight so I am ready to set it up when it shows up.
1. Do they come with boot up CDs (in order to restore it to factory defaults), or do I have to make them myself? If I have to make them myself how would I do that?
2. Is it possible to do a clean install of Vista if I have not bought a seperate copy? I ask this since the faq written I believe borrowed a copy of vista from school.
I believe that is all that comes to mind right now. I might add more later

 

1. They come with a recovery partition, with the option of making your own backup cd/dvd a single time.

2. There are a few options at least with the Rescue and Recovery for windows xp, that give you the option on the factory restore to not install certain items, but not a "fresh virgin" install or anything.

 

Alright thanks. I got vista business edition on my T61, sadly Canadians could not get XP. Also I am guessing the ability to creat a back up comes from hitting the thinkvantage button, and then somewhere in there?

 

You use rescue and recovery to create backups. Vista Business includes the right to downgrade to XP if you got a disc at least in the US. That of course would mean no ThinkVantage.

 

How? You mean you the disk you first create from the recovery partition when new?

Does XP Pro hlet you "upgrade" to vista, even tho the cost of XPP and Vista Business for a new thinkpad are the same?

 

You'll need a XP Pro disc and call Microsoft to activate it.

 

WHAT?!?!?! Lenovo laptops don't come with a recovery disc? How much space does a recovery partition use?

What happens if you accidentally format your entire HD? Then how do you install vista?

 

You must burn them off when you get the notebook.

 

It's kind of hard to accidently format your entire har disk. And besides, the Recovery Partition is separate from the Windows Partition. You'd have to tell the format utility to format both partitions to erase the entire disk.

 

I wouldn't accidentally format my HD. It was a hypothetical question. I would format my HD just to have more space. Depending on how big the recovery partition is, you could free up a lot of space.

 

I wouldn't be worried about using up all the HDD space as storage isn't too expensive now and a lot of files you can always store in external storage.

 

Recovery partitions can be quite large. If I pay for a 120 gig HD i dont want 20 gigs of that to be reserved for reinstalling windows, when I could just reinstall with a dvd.

 

But once I copy that partition to DVDs I can delete it since it will have no further use right? That is unless I lose the DVDs...

 

It might not work if you simply copy the partition. Plus, recovery partitions are often larger than a dvd because they contain more than the bare OS.

 

Whoa. Missed that until now. It only allows ONE burn....ever?? (Didn't know that) What if the DVD-RW drive fails during it? That would suck big time.

Does it allow the backup to be made to an external drive?

 

It will verify the image, if the image is no good, you can burn it again.

You can backup using the external drive.

You can also made additional backup set if you restore your system (don't see why anyone would want to do that I just make a clone copy of the original backup DVD.

 

The recovery partition is 5GB.

 

The recovery partition for my t60p with vista is about 15gig.

Try this, receive your laptop.
setup windows like you like it.
Use Ghost or some other....to copy your windows partition only (no recovery partition) to another laptop hard drive, then swap them out. If something goes wrong, you just recopy your original drive without the hassle of recovery, and windows re-setup.

 

So can I or cant I just copy it to DVD(s) and then delete it?

 

Correct. I made my factory backups, and then wiped for a clean install.