Used Notebook. See if recovery media has been burned?

Hi!

Im thinking of buying a used Thinkpad and I am wondering if there is any way to check if recovery discs have already been burned before I buy, if the owner doesnt know? (Since it can only be burned once)

 

They can only be burned once, but if you do a full system restore using the recovery partition I think you might be able to burn them again... Someone else please confirm or deny.

 

Worst case if it has, order them through IBM, it's like 30 bucks. OR if it's under warranty, Lenovo will ship them to you once.

 

Oh really? Thats great. I have been looking at third party resellers of the recovery discs but im not sure I really trust them. I've also decided to not buy one older model than the T400 as long as it is original windows 7 on it. Then it shouldnt be older than the three year warranty I think.

 

I believe it's $45 plus tax if they're still offering them. Older machines won't have the option. You may wish to post over on ThinkPads.com. Someone may have a set they'll sell at cost.

 

Yes thats definetley an alternative if they dont offer from lenovo anymore. I think im gonna hold of for a while and see if I can't find a used one with recovery media. I will probably want to upgrade to SSD some time in the near future also so I would really like to not have to download all the drivers and utilities manually. But maybe im lazy...

This would be great BTW, but I think I read the opposite somewhere in the forums (only once regardless of restore). Somebody can confirm/deny?

 

mod note: link removed per forum rules.

 

You are definitely lazy.

You don't have to download the drivers and utilities manually. They are all in the C:\SWTOOLS folder. Save that folder on, say, a USB flash drive.

If you upgrade to SSD, do a clean Windows 7 install, then go down the Devices list and point to the SWTOOLS folder on the external device to have Windows find and install the required device drivers. (The drivers may be selectively updated later, as you wish.)

Check out the Hearst guide and the Lenovo guide ( this or this) for clean Windows installation.

If the used notebook is in good shape and you can get it for a good price, you should not worry about "recovery media."

 

Thanks. Now I have a good overview. I was thinking of a worst case scenario where you dont even get the "c:\swtools" folder. So the only thing you need instead of recovery media is essentialy (1) a windows dvd and then (2) download thinkvantage that will download all the drivers and software automatically for you. That seems easy enough.

 

If you buy a used machine, the most secure thing to do is wipe the volumes on the drive and rebuild it from scratch. This includes volume creation, full formats, and OS installation. All of the drivers needed after OS installation are on support.lenovo.com.

Most of used machines I've received come with a small capacity HDD. I don't even bother with the drive. It gets pulled then recycled. I never even let it get on the network.

 

Yes i guess thats true, even recovery discs can have been tampered with... Clean install is probably the safest.
Only thing is I won't get the recovery partition but I guess that is not needed.

 

Get bigger RAM sticks and a bigger (possibly faster, or much faster) drive.

Definitely do a clean install. (You can then create a restorable image of the system as you have set up, OS and apps and preferences and whatever.)

Soon, recovery media and recovery partition will go the way of the floppy disks.