The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    RnR and partitions... general questions

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by pipspeak, Jul 27, 2009.

  1. pipspeak

    pipspeak Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    94
    Messages:
    1,041
    Likes Received:
    55
    Trophy Points:
    66
    Searches pulled up a few answers to my questions, but not all, so here goes:

    1. Are either of the two Lenovo partitions on the HDD necessary to recover the machine to the factory state using the recovery CD/DVDs?

    2. Is only one partition, or are both, needed to recover the machine to factory state using the pre-boot Rescue and Recovery application?

    2.a. If the answer to #2 is only one partition, then what's the other one for?

    3. Which of the two Lenovo partitions (if any) are used by RnR when it is told to make a backup of the system?

    4. If I have the recovery discs, a copy of the SWTools folder, and an image of the system partition (via True Image) is there any reason at all to keep the two Lenovo partitions?

    Thanks for you patience in answering yet more Lenovo partition questions. Someone should sticky this information to clear up the confusion (if it's already stickied then sorry).
     
    pipspeak, Jul 27, 2009
    #1
  2. ZaZ

    ZaZ Super Model Super Moderator

    Reputations:
    4,982
    Messages:
    34,001
    Likes Received:
    1,415
    Trophy Points:
    581
    4. I would say no, but I'm not as up to date on how the newer systems work. On my R60 the recovery discs completely restore the system to it's factory state, recovery partition and all, but I'm not sure if the newer ones do.
     
    ZaZ, Jul 28, 2009
    #2
  3. jonlumpkin

    jonlumpkin NBR Transmogrifier

    Reputations:
    826
    Messages:
    3,240
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    105
    1) Both are necessary to restore the system to factory.

    2) The smaller partition is the PreBoot rescue and recovery application.

    2a) The larger partition is a compressed image of your system in factory state (the smaller partition loads this).

    3) Are you talking about making supplemental backups in Windows? If so, I don't believe either partition is used (although the small one would be used to restore the system).

    4) If you've done all that you don't NEED either partition. However, if you keep the smaller one you should still be able to use the ThinkVantage button preboot to recover files (if your OS crashes) or restore your system using a factory image.
     
    jonlumpkin, Jul 28, 2009
    #3
  4. pipspeak

    pipspeak Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    94
    Messages:
    1,041
    Likes Received:
    55
    Trophy Points:
    66
    OK, thanks for the info. Next question is if I uninstall RnR via Windows, does that affect the pre-boot "version" of RnR? In other words, by uninstalling do I lose the ability to run pre-boot diagnostics and recovery in any way?
     
    pipspeak, Jul 28, 2009
    #4