Recreating a Recovery Disk (USB)

(This is regarding an x220)

I'd initially created a 15gb partition on a spare 160GB external drive, and created the Factory recovery disk into this partition. (10GB wasn't enough, but I digress)

Last night, I decided to have a dedicated 16GB usb flash drive as the recovery disk. But when I tried creating the recovery disk, it told me that I can only have one at a time, and exited the application.

I rebooted the pc, hit the blue button, and did a factory restore. Re-tried creating a recovery disk on the 16gb flash, and it failed again. Mind you, I didn't recover from my initially created recovery disk (external hdd), but from the partition in my primary hdd that's inside the laptop. Does that matter?

Cliff notes: I need help getting my recovery disk on a new USB device, even though I've already created one before.

Q2. I intend to replace my 120GB Samsung SSD, with a 64GB mSATA+spinner. Can I just to a recover on the mSATA, and it will take care of everything? If yes, do I lose any functionality? Like the blue button etc?

Q3. Will it also install a recovery partition on my new drive? If yes, do I just use Disk Management and delete it?

Q4. I don't mind putting the recovery partition on the secondary drive (spinner). Can the blue button still be used to bring up recovery during boot up?

Sorry to ask so many questions in one thread, but they are all interrelated, and I didn't want to spam the section with multiple threads.

 

Yeah, you can only have 1 set of recovery disks. There is a thread on this forum somewhere that will allow you to create more.

2. The "blue button" functionality is lost quite easily, so I'm not sure in this case. I have my recovery partition still, and use GRUB as my bootloader as I am dual booting with Linux, and the ThinkVantage button does nothing but bring up a boot menu when I press it now.

3. You can select the "Windows Partition Only" when restoring.

4. Not sure.

 

Thanks. In addition to boot time, I also like pressing the blue button while windows is up, to pull up the thinkvantage apps. I suppose, I really don't like having a prominent button on the keyboard, that does nothing (if I were to lose the functionality). Any input from Non-dualbooters would also be appreciated.

Does the "Windows Partition Only" option come up when you do a recovery to a fresh disk? Because I did not see it when I did a recovery on the stock SSD that came from the factory.

 

Bump. Anyone?

Really need to get another set of recovery media made. Since, I've installed the mSATA, the blue button doesn't bring up the recovery partition of the boot drive anymore. And it doesn't like the recovery media I made on the USB external hdd.

 

I did the very same thing... I backed up the recovery USB stick that I couldn't make bootable. whoops... then it wouldn't let me make another disk... Now if i could just remember... there was an .ini file under the recovery partition that needed to be deleted... and then another system recovery disk could be made

It was a pretty obvious name

 

1. Open up Explorer and go to Tools / Folder Options / View / Check Show hidden files and folders. Also uncheck Hide protected operating system files (Recommended).
This was the first step allowing you to see the hidden files & folders from the restore partition.

2. Go open your recovery partition – there is everything needed to create your disks, is all the data saved for later on use, which will go to your disks so you can restore your computer to factory settings. Is this what you want, to restore your computer to the factory settings? If so, go to the next step.

3. Open FactoryRecovery folder and look for service_done.ini. Now pay attention – copy this file in a different place just to have a backup file. After that, open the original one FactoryRecovery\service_done.ini and change the string done=1 to done=0. Some people recommend deleting this file but I found out that this method works just fine, no need to delete this file. Save the file and close it.

 

Thanks very much spook161, I almost gave up on being able to do a factory restore on the new drive. Will give this a shot after work.

Update: Worked like a charm, thanks again!