New Lenovo 3000 Owner - R&R Questions

[grapejape]

I recently obtained a new Lenovo 3000 N100 laptop w/ Vista Premium installed. One of the first things I did after booting it up was to create the System Recovery Media. This created 7 CDs, which I stored in a safe location. After creating these disks, the option was grayed out. After I finished configuring the laptop software and settings and installing additional software, I performed a backup using the Rescue and Recovery software. This made a 7GB "BASE" image on the hard drive. I then used the "copy to external media" feature to burn a set of 3 Rescue and Recovery DVDs.

After creating all of this media, I then realized that there were a few updates for the Rescue and Recovery software (I hadn't discovered the Lenovo update software yet) - so I proceeded to update it to patch version 4.1 and then upgrade to version 4.2. During this process, I was prompted to dispose of my old recovery media and create new ones. I can see that the System Recovery media setting is no longer grayed out since upgrading the Rescue and Recovery software to version 4.2. This is a little confusing, because there is no option to create the System Recovery discs from within Rescue and Recovery - it uses a separate program.

QUESTIONS:

Do I need to dispose of both my old System Recovery media AND the Rescue and Recovery media and create all new discs? This seems quite burdensome and annoying. My understanding is that the System Restore media will bring the laptop back to it's factory state, while the Rescue and Recovery media will bring it back to the last state where I created the disks. Is this correct?

Perhaps I don't understand the differences between the two sets of media. If this is the case, someone please help me out here. Either way, I'd like to know if I need to trash the 10 discs that I have already created.


thanks in advance.

- Jason

[ryengineer]

Recovery disks restore your machine to out of the box factory state and Rescue media installs Preinstallation Environment of Rescue and Recovery where you can access numerous options like restore your machine from a backup, use a web browser, use an AntiVirus etc etc...

The difference is also explained in the following blog:

Making Your Own Recovery CDs.

I suggest don't create a new set unless you really have to, the worst can happen is everytime you would restore your machine to factory state from Product recovery disks you will need to download and install latest version of Rescue and Recovery.

[grapejape]

Interesting link.

According to this guy (link you sent) - the disks I have will not work anymore.

http://lenovoblogs.com/insidethebox/?p=59#comment-18813



- Jason

[ryengineer]

If you format your drive prior to using the disks then they'll work.

[grapejape]

That makes sense.

Now what about the backup set created with rescue and recovery (not the system restore)? I made a BASE backup, and then another after changing some settings. Then I copied the backup files to external media using the setting under the "advanced" menu. This took 3 or 4 DVDs.

Can these DVDs be used to do a full system restore - bringing the system back to where it was when I performed the backup (not factory default)? If not, then how exactly do you use those disks?


- Jason

[ryengineer]

snip....Can these DVDs be used to do a full system restore - bringing the system back to where it was when I performed the backup (not factory default)?....snip

Yep, that's the very reason of these backups:

Restoring your entire hard disk: You can choose to restore your hard disk to any number of backed-up states. Each backup is differentiated by its creation time and date. The Rescue and Recovery program can restore your system from a backup stored on the local drive, a USB hard drive, a network drive, or from CD or DVD.

When performing a restore operation, all data created after the selected backup was taken is erased.

Note: If you start your computer from an alternate device such as a CD or DVD drive, make sure that you have the appropriate backup CDs or DVDs. The backup CDs or DVDs will be used after this process to format your hard drive. If you do not have your backup CDs or DVDs, all data on your hard drive will be lost.