Recovery Discs T61 (number of discs?)

How many Recovery Discs are you supposed to get when you burn them using ThinkVantage for a T61? How many discs do you need for XP, and how many do you need for Vista? (Let's say I am going to use all DVD+R or DVD-R).

 

for windows xp it is 1 CD-r rw and 1 DVD+-R the cd being the boot cd and all the back up would be on the DVD. Other wise you need 6 CD's plus one for the boot cd.

 

For Vista you need 1 CD and 2 DVDs. If you like you could just use 3 DVDs but that might be a waste of a DVD for you.

 

ther is 3 dvd recovery cds just call ibm and they will send it over to you.

1) thinkpad bios or thinkvantage software
2) OS
3) applications and drivers.

 

Recovery discs are overrated in my opinion, I started mine but it started going up to 7 cds (I only have a cd writer) so I just stopped.

So from that experience it depends on how bloated your install is since you started using it. You might be able to do it after a clean install with the Thinkvantage tools but I'm really not sure about this.

I wish they would just let you make a dvd imagine of your drive so you can send it to a desktop dvd writer.

 

Just made these 2 nights ago on my new T61. Only called for (2) DVD's. That was it. I also tried 2 do a clean (Sterile really) XP install several times acording to the sticky, finally gave up (2 hours each attempt) reinstalled full bloat with disks and just deleted the s/w I didnt want.

 

I think you can only make recovery discs once, after that it wont let you again, just FYI. If you need them you will most likly have to give IBM a call.

 

Thanks to all for the info. I safely burned the Vista backup on 3 DVD's (yes 1 DVD is kind of wasted).

I did a clean install for Vista and XP on the same Thinkpad (just to see if I could). I installed the WiFi drivers first and then install ThinkVantage System Update. Then I used that to install the rest of the ThinkVantage software. It takes a lot of time to clean install with all those drivers and software.

There is not really that much bloat on the default install for Thinkpads aside form Windows Live Toolbar, Picasa (for some at least), and the mother of them all, NORTON. Some people would argue that Vista is the biggest bloatware in existence though. Sony notebooks has so much bloat, it is faster to just clean install. Lenovo is not too bad.

I am back to using the default Thinkpad install. I am too lazy to do that clean install stuff. My other two desktops already take enough time as it is to setup.

That is why I got the DVD drive. Using all those CDs to restore your computer to factory installation takes too much time inserting and removing CDs.

I loathe installing some of my older games as they come in multiple CDs (i.e. Unreal Tournament 2004 has 6 CDs! ). DVDs take less user intervention than multiple CDs.